Amnesty International investigated nine Israeli airstrikes that resulted in the killing of civilians and in the damage and destruction of residential buildings in the Gaza Strip. Three separate attacks on the first night of bombing on 9 May, in which precision-guided bombs targeted three senior Al-Quds Brigades commanders, killed 10 Palestinian civilians, and injured at least 20 others. They were launched into densely populated urban areas at 2am when families were sleeping at home, which suggests that those who planned and authorized the attacks anticipated – and likely disregarded – the disproportionate harm to civilians. Intentionally launching disproportionate attacks, a pattern Amnesty International has documented in previous Israeli operations, is a war crime.The ICRC says
The principle of proportionality prohibits attacks against military objectives which are “expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated”.
Israel’s deliberate destruction of civilian homes also took a heavy toll on civilians in the Gaza Strip, including on people living with disabilities.On 13 May, Israeli forces targeted a four-storey building in the Jabalia refugee camp. The building was home to 42 people from the extended Nabhan family. Five members of the family live with disabilities, including three being wheelchair users.Hussam Nabhan, an eyewitness to the attack, told Amnesty International he had received a call he believed to be from an Israeli intelligence officer at around 6pm, saying residents of the building had 15 minutes to evacuate. Hussam told the caller that there were people with disabilities in the building and they needed more time, but the caller just repeated the warning.After the strike, 22-year-old Haneen Nabhan was so traumatized she found it hard to talk, saying that her wheelchair had been buried under the rubble of her home so she could no longer move around independently.Research by Amnesty International found no evidence that the Nabhan building – and other residential buildings destroyed or damaged during the last two days of the offensive – had been used to store weapons or any other military equipment or that rockets had been launched from their direct vicinity.“The root cause of this unspeakable violence is Israel’s system of apartheid. This system must be dismantled, the blockade of the Gaza Strip immediately lifted, and those responsible for the crime of apartheid, war crimes and other crimes under international law must be held to account,” said Morayef.
For commission of a war crime, a culpable state of mind is an essential element. Article 8 of the ICC’s Rome Statute requires a showing of either intent to harm civilians or recklessness: ordering an attack with the knowledge that the resulting harm to civilians would be “clearly excessive in relation to the … military advantage anticipated.” The high threshold for proof of a culpable state of mind is no accident. Rather, it is a recognition that a less demanding test would not adequately acknowledge the risk of harm that inevitably flows from the fog of war.
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