Israeli soldiers say 'shoot to kill' orders put civilians in firing line

• Amnesty report condemns Palestinian armed groups over war crimes
• Israel's draconian home demolitions revive questions over deterrence

Jerusalem: Israel's decision to use indiscriminate fire in heavily populated residential neighbourhoods caused the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians in last year's Gaza war, a months-long investigation has found.

Soldiers who served in the Gaza Strip say they received orders to shoot to kill every person they saw in what the army classified a "combat sector", while being led to believe - wrongly - that the area had been cleared of civilians.

An Israeli soldier stands on top of an armoured personnel carrier near the Israel-Gaza Strip border during Operation Protective Edge in July 2014.Credit: Getty Images

In reality, the armed forces entered areas in which "innocent civilians, and sometimes even entire families, remained", the veterans' group Breaking the Silence found.

Casting "grave doubts" on the ethics of the Israel Defence Forces, the soldiers' testimonies indicate that in some cases, the military's open-fire policy was not "directly related to the combat itself or to defending the troops in the field, but rather served political and diplomatic interests", the report found.

Israeli soldiers stand near their tank while smoke rises from Gaza during Operation Protective Edge in July 2014.Credit: Getty Images

The group collected testimonies from just under 70 soldiers, from sergeants to those as high up as lieutenant and major, from the air force, navy and army who served during the 50-day war in Gaza that the IDF called Operation Protective Edge.

As former serving soldiers in the IDF, the researchers from Breaking the Silence say they were shocked by what they heard.

"Ask the soldiers who participated in the operation 'what were your rules of engagement before entering one of the most densely populated areas in the world', their answer was 'there were no rules of engagement'," says Avihai Stollar, the director of research and testimony collection at Breaking the Silence.

"They were told ... every person that you see on the ground in neighbourhoods that you are about to enter, you are supposed to shoot and kill him or her."

A Palestinian girl walks past a house destroyed during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza City.Credit: Reuters

The impact of two key military strategies - known as the Dahiyeh Doctrine and the Hannibal Directive - have been most devastating to civilians in Gaza, Mr Stollar says.

Mohamed al-Hajj, whose sister and her family were killed in an air strike on their home in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.Credit: Ruth Pollard

The Dahiyeh Doctrine, named for the southern Beirut neighbourhood all but destroyed by Israel during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, calls for an unprecedented level of destruction as the cornerstone of military operations against militia such as the armed wings of Hamas or Hezbollah.

What drives this approach, Mr Stollar says, is an understanding that in a war against militia, unlike a war against a conventional army, there is no decisive victory.

An Israeli tank moves along the border with the Gaza Strip during Operation Protective Edge.Credit: Getty Images

"You are never going to get a chance to climb a hill, stick the flag in and say we won," he says. "So in order to achieve some kind of victory . . . if they shoot a rocket at us, we retaliate . . . with 100 and if they attack us and attack our towns, we destroy their cities . . . we leave after us an immense level of destruction."

Then there's the Hannibal Directive, that requires troops to do "whatever is necessary" to prevent a fellow soldier from being abducted, even if it entails killing the soldier or killing many Palestinian civilians.

The grandmother of Israeli soldier Jordan Bensimon cries over his coffin in Ashkelon, Israel, during Operation Protective Edge.Credit: Getty Images

Mr Stollar points to the situation in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on August 1 last year, when it was feared a soldier had been kidnapped by Hamas operatives (it was later revealed that he had been killed in action).

"Immediately an immense amount of fire was fired in the area ... officers told us once you implement the Hannibal Directive you just throw away the safety precautions" regarding sensitive locations like schools and hospitals and attack with huge force.

A Palestinian boy in a car drives past destroyed buildings in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, in August 2014.Credit: Reuters

"The bottom line is that once they believed this soldier in Rafah ... was abducted they fired thousands of artillery shells and caused the death of ... anywhere between 40 to 150 civilians on that day," Mr Stollar says.

"The tragedy here is that once you implement doctrines that entail such use of force ... then the killing of civilians is inevitable - you cannot expect not to kill civilians when you are bombarding with cannons a neighbourhood of more than 100,000 people."

A Palestinian child walks past a mural of children using an Israeli army watch tower as a swing, said to have been painted by British street artist Banksy, on the remains of a house destroyed during Operation Protective Edge in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.Credit: AFP

Grim toll of a war

United Nations figures indicate that at least 2102 Palestinians were killed - at least 1470 of those were civilians, including more than 500 children. At least 19,000 homes were completely destroyed, 400,000 people were displaced and 100,000 have been left homeless.

The explosion of an Israeli strike rises over Gaza City in July 2014.Credit: AP

Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers died as well as six civilians, and militants from Gaza fired more than 3360 rockets into civilian areas inside Israel.

The IDF says it struck nearly 4762 terror targets during the 50-day conflict, most of them rocket-launching sites, nearly 1000 of them command and control centres as well as weapons storage and manufacturing facilities, terror training compounds and other sites.

Palestinian Olympian Nader al-Masri and his father beside the rubble of their home in Beit Hanoun in Auust 2014.Credit: New York Times

The IDF also said that thorough investigations were carried out following the operation, and soldiers and commanders were given the opportunity to present any complaint, with exceptional incidents referred to the Military Advocate General for further inquiry.

For many soldiers who provided testimony, it was the clear disregard for established rules of engagement that prompted them to speak out.

"You are permitted to shoot any person you see," one soldier from the IDF's armoured division told Breaking the Silence of his official briefing from military commanders. "The rules of engagement during Operation Protective Edge were pretty vague."

A first sergeant serving in an infantry division in the northern Gaza Strip described firing "ridiculous amounts" of ammunition that resulted in the complete devastation of a residential area.

"The level of destruction looked insane to me," he said. "Houses with crumbled balconies, animals everywhere, lots of dead chickens and lots of other dead animals. I knew there used to be a street there once, but there was no trace of it left to see."

Still more raised problems with Israel's "precautionary measures" designed to warn civilians of an impending attack - via phone calls, leaflet drops or the controversial "knock on the roof", where a small warning missile is fired to alert householders to an imminent, larger attack.

"The problem with all these things is that there's always the possibility that there's some old man who can't get out, who has difficulty evacuating," a soldier from one of the IDF's mechanised infantry divisions said.

One of the more senior officers to provide testimony to Breaking the Silence spoke of his deep concern regarding Israel's decision to classify so many civilian houses as hostile locations.

"According to intelligence reports and military communications, you're talking about a situation in which all the houses are classified as some type of hostile location. Are all the houses really hostile locations? I don't know," a major serving in an infantry unit in Gaza's north said.

"I do know that the practical result was flattened areas where houses had once stood."

The IDF's guiding military principle of "minimum risk to our forces, even at the cost of harming innocent civilians", led to massive harm to the population and the civilian infrastructure, Breaking the Silence found.

The lenient open-fire policy was accompanied by "aggression and at times even racism", with some soldiers describing statements by senior commanders calling for brutal and unethical conduct.

Legal principles

Michael Sfard, one of Israel's most high-profile human rights lawyers and the legal representative of Breaking the Silence, says the common thread in the testimonies was that the soldiers were told that there were no civilians in the areas in which they were operating.

"This produced rules of engagement that to say they were lax would be an understatement," Mr Sfard told Fairfax Media.

It also allowed the IDF to act without taking precautionary measures to protect civilians as it is obliged to do under international law, he said.

International law also states that the presence of combatants in civilian areas does not change the status of those areas - they are still civilian areas, as are the homes of Hamas operatives or activists unless there is actual military activity occurring there, Mr Sfard stressed.

One testifier, a sergeant first class from the Combat Intelligence Collection Corps who operated in the north of Gaza, described a debriefing in which an officer listed the "accomplishments" of the operation.

"They spoke about numbers: 2000 dead and 11,000 wounded, half a million refugees, decades' worth of destruction. Harm to lots of senior Hamas members and to their homes, to their families. These were stated as accomplishments so that no one would doubt that what we did during this period was meaningful."

Another soldier, whose rank and unit were marked "not for publication", told Breaking the Silence that it was not obligatory to ensure civilians had left a house before it was targeted.

"It's not obligatory. Say the target was [Hamas'] deputy battalion commander in Shuja'iyya [a district of Gaza City], an attack would be launched if the number of civilians wasn't too high. By too high, I mean a two-digit number."

Then there is the issue of whether Israel is capable of conducting a thorough, independent investigation into its own military - a key step for any country trying to avoid prosecution by the International Criminal Court, a body to which Palestine acceded in January.

Mr Sfard says the military justice system, as it stands, cannot conduct such an investigation: "The army cannot investigate superior commanders and it definitely doesn't even have the jurisdiction to investigate the civilian political leaders.

"Israel does have a mechanism for such investigations and a very good one - the National Committee of Inquiry, as well as Governmental Commission of Inquiry - but in order for those to be launched you need political will.

"This is not about a certain soldier who did the wrong thing ... this is about a system and a chain of command."

'Where does the buck stop?'

One of several military analysts contacted by Fairfax Media described the IDF's actions in Gaza as "completely disproportionate".

"To use artillery against a densely populated urban area just doesn't make sense," the senior analyst, who asked not to be identified, said. "Even if the area wasn't populated it is against the rules of war to destroy civilian homes, and it is unnecessary, especially with today's technology where you have weapons systems that are incredibly accurate and can be fired from a great distance."

The IDF is facing significant questions over its chain of command, the analyst said: "I have seen numerous alleged atrocities in Gaza and taking them one by one, you think 'how was this allowed to happen', but if you take them over the last decade, you have to ask the question 'where does the buck stop?'."

Every army in a developed country has very strict rules of engagement, he says, that are drummed into soldiers from the moment they join and are public documents, under the scrutiny of that country's citizens.

"Everybody from the senior air formation commander down to the most junior private is expected to know these rules by heart ... but Israel has always refused to release its rules of engagement."

Fairfax Media put a series of questions to the IDF, asking for detail on its rules of engagement in Operation Protective Edge and whether those rules were different from its other operations.

We also sought detail on its military doctrines that call for heavy fire in civilian areas, the selection of targets and whether soldiers were told there were no civilians in the areas in which they were operating.

The IDF did not address those specific questions. Instead, it said in an emailed response: "The IDF is committed to properly investigating all credible claims raised via media, NGOs, and official complaints concerning IDF conduct during operation Protective Edge, in as serious a manner as possible.

"Today, as in the past, the organisation 'Breaking the Silence' has been asked to provide any evidence or testimony related to IDF activities prior to publication, in order for genuine investigations to be carried out.

"Unfortunately, as in the past, 'Breaking the Silence' has refused to provide the IDF with any proof of their claims."

Breaking the Silence denied that it refused to share material with the IDF, saying it requested a meeting on March 23 to share the soldiers' testimonies. It released the letter it sent to the IDF's Chief of Staff, General Gadi Eizenkot, seeking the meeting.

Not everyone agrees the IDF went too far.

An analysis of the IDF's practices in the Gaza Strip by Michael Schmitt, a professor of international law at the US Naval War College, and John Merriam, a US Army Judge Advocate serving as the associate director of the Stockton Center at the US Naval War College, found the IDF's actions aligned with those of the US military.

"Even when they differ, the Israeli approach remains within the ambit of generally acceptable State practice," they wrote on April 24 in the online security journal Just Security.

"While there are certainly Israeli legal positions that may be contentious, we found that their approach to targeting is consistent with the law and, in many cases, worthy of emulation."

The Breaking the Silence report follows the release last week of a United Nations investigation into attacks on UN schools where civilians had taken shelter during the Gaza war.

Ordered by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the inquiry found the IDF was responsible for the seven strikes, in which 44 Palestinians died and 227 were injured.