All this evening, I've been checking out UK and Israeli versions of today's incident at Jabalya in which 30 Palestinians died after a hit by Israeli fire close to a UN-run school.
Israeli tank shells killed at least 40 Palestinians today at a UN school where civilians had taken shelter, medical officials said, in carnage likely to boost international calls for a halt to Israel's Gaza offensive.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said she was looking into information on the incident at al-Fakhora school in Jabalya refugee camp.
People cut down by shrapnel lay in pools of blood on the street. Witnesses said two Israeli tanks shells exploded outside the school, killing at least 40 civilians - Palestinians who had taken refuge there and residents of nearby buildings.
But all the key Israeli news media English websites since the early evening have been telling a very different story. And it's one in which the strike took place because Hamas were firing mortars from the school at the Israeli troops. In other words, a clear multiple war crime of using a neutral NGO site--a girls' school-- and treating the Palestinian civilians as human shields. And a situation in which Israeli forces are justified in firing back in self defence according to international law.
An IDF spokesman said that troops had fired mortar rounds at the school, after militants barricaded inside shot mortar shells at the Israeli forces.
"Initial checks ... show that from inside the school mortars were fired at Israeli forces," a spokesman said. "In response, the forces fired a number of mortar rounds into the area."
The army said that the bodies of numerous Hamas militants were found inside the school following the attack.
The attack brought the Palestinian death toll to nearly 600 in Israel's 11-day offensive on the Hamas-ruled coastal territory.
Two tank shells exploded outside the Gaza school, spraying shrapnel on people inside and outside the building, where hundreds of Palestinians had sought refuge from fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants. In addition to the dead, several dozen people were wounded, the officials said.
Medical officials said all the dead were either people sheltering in the school or local residents.
An inquiry into the incident revealed that the IDF soldiers acted according to procedures and fired back at gunmen firing mortar shells from the school. The investigation also revealed that Hamas launching cells were operating within the school. The shells landed outside the school yard.
IDF and intelligence sources said that Hamas was attempting to hide the circumstances of the incident. Members of the organization were also killed in the strike.
The army released a video showing the terrorists firing mortar shells from the school yard, and the cabinet is considering using the video in a possible complaint filed with the UN.
The cabinet will meet again Wednesday to discuss the continuation of the military operation in the Strip.
Sources in the IDF said earlier that several Hamas gunmen were inside the UNWRA school, including Imad and Hassan Abu-Askar. The army also said that a rocket launching cell had been firing rockets at Israel from the school.
John Ging, director of operations in Gaza for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said that three artillery shells landed at the perimeter of the school where 350 people were taking shelter. "Of course it was entirely inevitable if artillery shells landed in that area there would be a high number of casualties," he said.
Asked whether there were Hamas militants in the area at the time of the attack, Ging said it was the scene of clashes "so there's an intense military and militant activity in that area." He said UN staff vetted Palestinians seeking shelter at their facilities to make sure militants were not taking advantage of them. "So far we've not had violations by militants of our facilities," he said.
This last statement seems rather far-fetched since Reuters last May reported that the headteacher of a UN school was openly feted by Islamic Jihad as having used his expertise to develop and run a rocket making operation--and that the UNRWA officials had required the school not to discuss information about his involvement:
Qiq's body was wrapped in an Islamic Jihad flag at his funeral, pictorial posters in his honour still bedeck his family home this week, and a handwritten notice posted on the metal gate at the entrance to the school declared that Qiq, "the chief leader of the engineering unit", would now find "paradise".
That poster was removed soon after Reuters visited the Rafah Prep Boys School, run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees. Staff there said on Monday that UNRWA officials had told them not to discuss Qiq's activities.
No one from the United Nations attended the funeral or has paid their respects to the family, relatives said, adding that Qiq's widow and five children had heard nothing about a pension.
Spokesman Christopher Gunness said UNRWA, which spelled its teacher's surname al-Geeg, was looking into the matter.
"We have a zero-tolerance policy towards politics and militant activities in our schools. Obviously, we are not the thought police and we cannot police people's minds," he said.
He added that staff were also regularly instructed not to engage in political or militant activities of any kind.
The Israeli army said its April 30 attack at Rafah, close to the Egyptian border, hit a workshop used for making rockets and other improvised weaponry. An Israeli intelligence source told Reuters that Qiq was involved in developing rockets and mortars.
Yet Qiq, a physics graduate with eight years' experience of teaching at UNRWA schools, was also described by colleagues as a rising star in education. Relatives said he was promoted to run the school last year, with the title of deputy headmaster.
It’s absolutely horrifying. The people of Gaza are terrorized. They’re traumatized. And they are trapped.
On the humanitarian front, a million people across the Strip are without electricity, because we’ve been unable to get fuel in, though we did get some fuel in today to the main power plant that’s been shut down since Sunday. At least a quarter of a million people, probably more, are without running water. Our food distribution centers have, all but two of them, managed to keep going, and all but five of our eighteen health clinics have opened.
But when I hear Israeli politicians—excuse me—say that there is no humanitarian crisis, there are plenty of supplies in Gaza, Israel’s obligations as an occupying power do not end when they dump a handful of trucks on the edges of the fence that they’ve built around Gaza. We have to have a humanitarian strategic breathing space around certain facilities so that we can get goods in at the sufficient quantities, namely the Nahal Oz crossing point for industrial-level fuel. And if we can’t gstet that in, then these one million people without electricity will continue to be without electricity. And we need to get in grain, wheat grain, at the main conveyor belt at the Karni crossing, an industrial-sized crossing. Without that, our food stocks will run out in the next forty-eight hours, and people, particularly those cut-off communities around the fighting in northern Gaza, face the serious threat of hunger.
There is a humanitarian crisis, and it ill-behooves Israeli politicians simply to say there is no shortage of anything in Gaza. There is a shortage of wheat, and there is a shortage of fuel, and that means that people are facing a humanitarian crisis.
It's well worth reading the rest of the debate in which he comments, because it's so clear, that although he ritually condemns the Palestinian rocket firing, he keeps returning to the theme that it's entirely Israel's fault and that even though he condemns the rockets, Israel's response is disproportionate because so many fewer Israelis have been killed than Palestinians. This echoes the fallacy that proportionality of military response to attacks in international law is to be equated with securing equal numbers of casualties. He effectively acts as an advocate for the Hamas regime without ever mentioning the name of Hamas. Like Ging, his language when he condemns Israel is vivid and packed with hyperbole. He avoids explicitly naming or condemning any group of Palestinians but rather condemns "rocket attacks" as if they were self-starting and unattributable events.
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