The news that Israel has reprimanded two high-ranking soldiers for authorising an artiellery attack which hit a UN compound during last year’s Gaza conflict is a rare official admission of wrongdoing, blogs Jonathan Rugman
Today we witnessed rare and official admission by Israel of potentialy lethal wrongdoing during last year’s Gaza war.
The admission comes buried 30-odd pages into a 46-page report the Israeli Foreign Ministry sent the UN.
The report for the most part reads like an attempt to justify the Israeli army’s own investigation of its soldiers as being sufficiently independent; and perhaps a last-minute attempt too to dissuade the UN’s Secretary General, Ban-Ki Moon, from endorsing the findings of last year’s UN enquiry, which suggested Israel could be prosecuted for war crimes.
But it does tell us that two senior officers have been reprimanded for their conduct during the war, though it seems they have not been disciplined, let alone been punished.
Gaza’s skyline was dominated by the pall of smoke arising from the 15 January 2009 attack on the UN’s main compound, a lifeline to more than 1 million Palestinians, where food and desperately needed medical supplies were stored. The UN found more than 6 phosphorus shells in the compound afterwards, even though the endlessly burning chemical is banned from conflict in populated areas, under international law.
Three Palestinians were injured and over 700 refugees forced to flee. Last month Israel paid the UN $10m in compensation for the destruction, though it admitted no liability.
The UN was furious at this symbolic attack on its authority – not least because the UN Secretary General was in Israel at the time and later saw the destruction in Gaza for himself.
The Israeli submission to the UN is timed just ahead of Ban-Ki Moon reporting back to the UN General Assembly on the conflict. It doesn’t name the officers, though the Israeli media say they are Brigadier-General Eyal Eisenberg, Gaza Division commander, and Colonel Ilan Maka, then head of the Givati brigade.
The report says they “exceeded their authority in a manner which jeopardised the lives of others”
by authorising the “firing of explosive shells which landed in a populated area”.
Reprimanded they may have been, but there’s no admission of phosphorus use in this specific case – and no criminal investigation to follow. And though the army says it has launched 150 investigations into specific incidents, with those investigations said to be independent of the military chain of command, we know of only one criminal conviction – for credit card fraud by Israeli soldiers – to arise from the Gaza war.
A few days after the UN warehouse was hit with phosphorus, a UN school was also bathed in white smoke while terrified civilians were inside. The army said last year it was saddened that civilians were injured and that phosphorus was only used as a smokescreen over “open ground”, making it harder for Hamas militants to fire back . Though open ground in densely populated Gaza is hard to find. And demands that Israel launch a fully independent enquiry will surely not disappear, despite this rare and limited admission of culpability.