Over 1,000 Palestinians, some 400 of them children, were killed in the 22-day Israeli attack, but the manner in which some of them lost their lives or were wounded has attracted much attention. One weapon employed by the Israeli Army stuck to human skin and burned right through to the bone, causing death or leaving survivors with painful wounds slow to heal. In one horrific case, children virtually melted in front of their mother. In another, smoke came out of a wound, even hours after the event. The cause of these shocking deaths and injuries was Israel’s use of shells containing white phosphorus.
At first, Israel denied using phosphorous at all, but could lie no longer under the weight of eyewitness accounts by the UN, Amnesty International, the ICRC and Human Rights Watch. Foreign journalists, who not surprisingly were allowed into Gaza by Israel only in the offensive’s waning days — obviously so as not to see first-hand Israel’s repeated human rights violations — say that once in Gaza, they had found evidence of white phosphorous use in crowded residential areas. When it could no longer hide the truth, Israel then insisted its use of the phosphorus shells was not illegal. Supposedly, white phosphorus is legal for making smokescreens in open battleground to allow troops to move undetected. But the international convention on the use of incendiary weapons says it should not be used where there is a possibility of hitting civilians. Of course, in such a highly densely populated city as Gaza, it would have been all but impossible for civilians not to have been affected. So while the Israeli military may have been using supposedly legal weapons, it was using the weapons in an illegal manner and with a clear purpose, the purpose being to “educate” Hamas “by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population” on the lines suggested by one of America’s leading pro-Israeli columnists.
The onslaught in Gaza was not just about white phosphorous. According to every rule established by the Nuremberg Trials, Israel is guilty of war crimes. Through its atrocities committed upon civilians, its slaughtering of the weak, innocent and defenseless, for brutality, barbarity and senseless cruelty, Israel broke every international law in the book that preserves and respects human lives and rights.
However, going by the way international rules are applied or not applied to Israel, the Jewish state need not fear much. This is not only because Israel is not a signatory to the treaty that created the International Court of Justice in The Hague. It has the support of the world’s only superpower. It has also history’s blank check. The West has a bad conscience because of the Holocaust. This has allowed Israel to act in any manner it wants to the people under its occupation and more often it acts as a nation without a conscience.
Of course any country that is a signatory to the Geneva Convention can try and prosecute individuals who took part in a Gaza-like operation as culpable of war crimes, but as previous cases concerning Israel show, its leaders have never been taken to task in any international inquiry regarding its military action. It is lack of such individual responsibility and accountability that encourages Israeli leaders and soldiers to believe they are above the law. Without a trial, justice and peace will not prevail. The Israeli perpetrators of Gaza must be tried and brought to justice. This is essential if we are to avoid a repeat of Gaza which itself was a repeat of Jenin that in its turn flowed from Sabra and Shattila. This is also essential to avoid the impression that there are war crimes and war crimes — one taking the persons involved to Nuremberg, The Hague or to the gallows in northern Iraq and the other to presidential palaces and glittering international gatherings.
