Israel committed "war crimes" in 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict: Amnesty

Amnesty International said Wednesday there is "strong evidence" that Israel committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity and the Palestinians on "Black Friday," the deadliest attack of last summer's Gaza war.

In a report presented at a news conference in Jerusalem under the title "Black Friday: Carnage in Rafah during 2014 Israel/Gaza conflict," Amnesty accused Israel of "systematic and apparently deliberate" air and ground attacks following the capture of an Israeli soldier, Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, in Rafah.

The bombardment killed 135 Palestinian civilians in Rafah, including 75 children.

The report was compiled jointly by Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture, a research project based at Goldsmiths' University of London.

The investigators employed advanced techniques, including analysis of smoke plumes and shadows, and a method that merges data from multiple sources -- such as satellite images, witness accounts and field research -- to create a digital reconstruction of the event.

"There is strong evidence that Israeli forces committed war crimes in their relentless and massive bombardment of residential areas of Rafah in order to foil the capture of Lieutenant Goldin, displaying a shocking disregard for civilian lives," Philip Luther, director of Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa Program, said.

Goldin possibly died when he was captured on August 1, 2014, and a rabbinical court declared him dead on August 2. However, the pounding continued until August 4, Amnesty said.

The Israeli military, believing Golding might be alive, invoked a controversial procedure known as the Hannibal Directive, which "led to the ordering of unlawful attacks on civilians," the report said.

Under the Hannibal Directive, Israeli forces can respond to the capture of a soldier with intense firepower regardless of the risks to his life or to civilians in the vicinity. The directive was reportedly designed to deny militant groups the leverage they could obtain over Israel in negotiations for the release of a captured soldier

After Goldin was captured, Israeli forces appear to have "thrown out the rule book, employing a 'gloves off' policy with devastating consequences for civilians," said Luther.

In one of the deadliest incidents, two one-ton bombs, the largest type of bomb in Israel's air force arsenal, were dropped on a single-storey building in al-Tannur in eastern Rafah, the researchers said.

"The ferocity of the attack on Rafah shows the extreme measures Israeli forces were prepared to take to prevent the capture alive of one soldier," he said, adding that "entire districts of Rafah, including heavily populated residential areas, were bombarded without distinction between civilians and military targets."

Jonathan Ger director-general of Amnesty International Israel said that thus far, Israeli authorities have failed to conduct a credible investigation into violations of international law in Rafah and elsewhere.

"The few military inquiries into the actions of Israeli forces in Rafah have led to no indictments," he said.

Israel dismissed the report as "fundamentally flawed" and biased. A spokesman with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Amnesty of building a "false narrative" that disregards prior hostilities by Hamas against Israeli civilians.

"It seems that Amnesty forgot that there was an ongoing conflict during which the Israel Defense Force was operating to stop rocket fire and neutralize cross-border assault tunnels," said the spokesman.

"The methodology that the report is based upon is also fundamentally flawed, and brings into serious question Amnesty's professional standards," he said, adding that the report also "evidences that Amnesty has a flawed understanding of international law."

The Israel-Gaza conflict lasted 51 days between July and August 2014, costing the lives of 2,251 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians (299 women and 551 children.) On the Israeli side, six civilians and 67 soldiers were killed.

In June, an investigation commission appointed by the United Nation Human Rights Council released its report, accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza. The commission also accused Gaza militant groups of perpetrating war crimes in smaller scales against Israeli communities across the Gaza border. Endit