Official Israeli statements on the massacre in the An-Nuseirat camp in middle Gaza have attempted to cover up the truth about what happened during Israeli missile strikes there last week.
Helicopter gunships fired into the camp killing eight Palestinians and injuring 65 others.
The Mezan Center for Human Rights completed its own field investigations and collected data disproving Israel’s claims.
Eyewitnesses, including numerous survivors, provided statements that contradict the Israeli officials’ claims.
According to eyewitness affidavits, Israeli helicopter gunships fired a missile at a civilian car at 9:15 pm on Monday October 29, 2003.
A number of people gathered to provide assistance to the two persons inside.
Minutes later the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) fired another two missiles killing and wounding many of people who had gathered around the car.
The victims, all of whom were unarmed, were residents or business people from the camp.
Israel claimed that its Occupation Forces targeted two ‘terrorists’ in a car after they had helped ‘ticking bombs’ (men on their way to carry out attacks against Israel) and that its own aerial images showed no civilian crowds in the area at the time of the bombing.
This explanation both fails to justify extra-judicial killings and contradicts the evidence gathered at the scene.
The Mezan Center’s investigation reveals that three quarters of the victims were people who gathered around the targeted car after the first bombing.
Additionally, this incident took place three kilometers away from where Israel said the ‘ticking bombs’ had been dropped.
The Al Mezan Center presents this information before the international community, and wishes to emphasize the fact that this operation follows a systematic practice of extra-judicial killings by the IOF.
This was not the first time Occupation Forces bombarded a crowd of civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Al Mezan would like to remind readers of the following incidents: July 17, 2002: Occupation Forces fire tank shells on a residential area in the refugee camp of Rafah killing six people, two of whom were old women and children.
Dozens of others were wounded, as well.
October 10, 2002: Occupation forces fire into a crowd of civilians in the Al Katiba area immediately following the withdrawal of Israeli tanks from the area.
Thirteen people were killed and about 200 others wounded.
At the end of an IOF incursion into the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip last fall, the IOF fired a fleschette missile into a crowd of civilians and firemen killing 12 and wounding 130 others.
People were trying to put out a house fire caused by Israeli shelling April 9, 2003: Israeli helicopters fired a car in the Asqula neighborhood of Gaza City.
Twenty minutes later they fired another two missiles into a crowd of people killing seven people and wounding 53 others, 22 of whom were children.
On 13 January 2002, Al Mezan issued a press release contending that Israeli officials’ statements regarding grave breaches of international law were false.
Benjamin Ben Eliezer, then Israel’s Minister of Defense, stated that the IOF had destroyed 21 empty homes in Rafah and found weapons’ smuggling tunnels in them.
Al Mezan produced evidence showing that in fact the IOF destroyed 58 homes in one day, and that all of these homes were occupied by Palestinian refugees.
Al Mezan is deeply troubled by the Israeli escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip and calls upon the international community to end Israel’s crimes and bring those who are responsible for ordering and perpetrating them to justice.
The Center particularly urges the High Contracting Parties to the 4th Geneva Convention to provide effective protection for Palestinian civilians under military occupation in the OPT.
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