Israel has concluded a military investigation and has cleared itself in the killing of four boys who were playing soccer on a Gaza beach in 2014.
The boys were:
Ahed Atef Bakr (10)
Zakaria Ahed Bakr (10)
Mohammed Ramez Bakr (11)
Ismael Mohammed Bakr (9)
The incident, which took place during Israel's 2014 summer attack on Gaza, drew wide condemnation at the time, as the event was witnessed by many western journalists who were staying at the nearby hotel. Here is one account by eyewitness Peter Beaumont, of The Guardian:
The first projectile hit the sea wall of Gaza City's little harbour just after four o'clock. As the smoke from the explosion thinned, four figures could be seen running, ragged silhouettes, legs pumping furiously along the wall. Even from a distance of 200 metres, it was obvious that three of them were children.
Jumping off the harbour wall, they turned on to the beach, attempting to cross the short distance to the safety of the Al-Deira hotel, base for many of the journalists covering the Gaza conflict. They waved and shouted at the watching journalists as they passed a little collection of brightly coloured beach tents, used by bathers in peacetime.
It was there that the second shell hit the beach, those firing apparently adjusting their fire to target the fleeing survivors. As it exploded, journalists standing by the terrace wall shouted: "They are only children."
In the space of 40 seconds, four boys who had been playing hide and seek among fishermen's shacks on the wall were dead.
http://www.theguardian.com/...
Following the news today, the father of one of the dead boys said he was outraged that the investigation had not ended with indictments, and that he hoped the boys' killings would be part of the war crimes case presented to the International Criminal Court.
http://hosted.ap.org/...
In its announcement, the Israeli military said the boys had been mistaken for Hamas militants.
Israeli military police had carried out a "criminal investigation", during which testimonies were gathered from Israeli troops involved in planning and carrying out the strike, and from three Palestinians who said they witnessed the attack.
The report said the incident happened in a compound separated from the civilian part of the beach and used exclusively by Hamas militants.
On 16 July, it said, the IDF had intelligence indicating that militants would be gathering there to prepare an attack. It said aerial surveillance saw several individuals believed to be militants entering the compound and that the order was given to launch a strike "after a civilian presence in the area had been ruled out".
"It should be stressed that the figures were not identified at any point during the incident as children," the report said.
"Tragically, in the wake of the incident it became clear that the outcome of the attack was the death of four children, who had entered the military compound for reasons that remain unclear," it said.
The report said it transpired that the targets had been misidentified but that "the attack process in question accorded with Israeli domestic law and international law requirements".
http://www.bbc.com/...
Peter Beaumont, the Guardian reporter who witnessed the attack, covered the announcement today and questioned some of the claims made in the IDF statement:
An account of the investigation, posted late on Thursday by military spokesman Lt Col Peter Lerner, said the strike had targeted a “compound” which had been known as belonging to Hamas’s Naval Police and Naval Force (including naval commandos)”.
But journalists who attended the scene in the immediate aftermath of the attack – including a reporter from the Guardian – saw a small and dilapidated fisherman’s hut containing a few tools where the children had been playing hide-and-seek.
Beaumont states further:
The breakwater is both easily accessible from a side lane and also is located on one of the busiest parts of the public beach in Gaza port and accessible not only to the fishermen who use it, but local Palestinians who come to sunbathe and swim within feet of it.
The container described in the Israeli finding also appeared to contain no military equipment.
and finally:
What is not clear from the Israeli report is why Israeli targeters had failed to identify that children had been playing on the beach prior to the attack.
http://www.theguardian.com/...
So strange how badly Israel's "intelligence" and high-tech equipment failed to determine that four children--probably each less than four feet tall and dressed in beach clothes--were not Hamas militants. This, even though they had equipment accurate enough to follow the targets across the beach and kill the children who had survived the first strike with a second strike all within 40 seconds.
Israel has a bad record with regards to the treatment of children.
DCI-Palestine states that “Israel is the only country in the world that automatically prosecutes children in military courts that lack basic and fundamental fair trial guarantees. Since 2000, at least 8,000 Palestinian children have been arrested and prosecuted in an Israeli military detention system notorious for the systematic ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children.”
Last summer, more than 550 children were killed during Israel’s 51-day attack on the Gaza Strip.
Yet, as The Electronic Intifada reported this week, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon caved in to pressure from Israel and the US and removed the Israeli military from its list of serious violators of children’s rights in an annual report on children in armed conflict.
http://electronicintifada.net/...