Israeli soldiers describe wanton killings in Gaza (News Feature)

By Ofira Koopmans Mar 20, 2009, 15:05 GMT

Tel Aviv - 'You see a human being on a road, walking on a path. He doesn't have to be with a weapon on him. You don't have to identify him with something. You can just shoot. In our case it was an elderly woman on whom I didn't recognize a weapon.'

This was part of the detailed testimony of five Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers at a symposium last month, a transcript of which was published Friday in the Ha'aretz daily.

The soldiers spoke of lax rules of engagement that allowed for the killing of Palestinian civilians during Israel's 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Excerpts of two of the soldiers' testimonies published on Thursday caused uproar in the Israeli media and among legislators.

The testimonies paint a picture of soldiers given free hand to open almost unrestricted fire within defined areas of fighting, on the assumption that anyone still present, despite warnings by the Israeli military to evacuate, was likely a Palestinian militant.

'One of our officers, a platoon commander, saw someone walking on a certain road, an elderly woman. ... Whether she was a suspect, not a suspect, I don't know. In the end he ordered people onto the roof to take her down with shells,' a squad leader told the symposium.

'From the description of this story, I just felt it was murder in cold blood,' said the soldier, identified only as Aviv, according to the transcript in Ha'aretz.

Another soldier, Zvi, also not his real name, interrupted, arguing the woman could have been carrying a hidden bomb. 'That woman, she wasn't supposed to be there. Because there were warnings and there were airstrikes.'

But the squad leader said that on the one hand troops were told that anyone remaining in the area, despite calls to leave, was a suspect and a target, 'on the other hand, they (Palestinian civilians) didn't really have anywhere to escape to.'

He said he argued with his commander about the permissive rules of engagement when taking over homes.

Under these rules, soldiers taking over a building should first burst in with an armoured vehicle, then open fire all around and hurl grenades floor after floor to ensure it is clear.

'I call it murder. ... We were supposed to climb each floor and shoot each person that we see.' The orders were somewhat changed: Warnings would be issued over loudspeakers that anyone inside had five minutes to evacuate or else would be shot. But when the squad leaders explained the change in the rules to his soldiers, he encountered resistance.

'A soldier comes to me and says 'why?'. What's not clear? We don't want to kill innocent civilians. He goes, 'What, anyone who's still there is a terrorist.''

Another squad member then added: 'We should kill everyone there. Everyone there is a terrorist.'

He said some soldiers also wrote 'death to the Arabs' on the walls of a house and spat on family pictures.

A second soldier, identified as Ram, described how a sniper shot dead a woman and her two children from the roof of a house.

'The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay, and he should hold his fire.'

'I don't think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to ... I don't know how to describe it .... The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers,' he said.

Gilad, a third soldier, said his platoon commander had explained from the outset the aim was to protect Israeli soldiers' lives by using 'massive fire power.' He said this was a lesson learned from Israel's 2006 second Lebanon war.

'The losses of the IDF were indeed small in this operation, but at the expense of a lot of Palestinian civilian deaths,' he said.

The soldiers spoke at a February 23 symposium at the Yitzhak Rabin paramilitary seminary of the Oranim Academic College in northern Israel, little more than one month after the offensive.

The seminary's director, Danny Zamir, a known left-wing activist, said he was 'shocked' by the soldiers' testimonies and submitted transcripts to the Israeli military, which announced Thursday it had ordered a probe by the Military Police's Criminal Investigation Division.

But nine Israeli human rights groups, including B'Tselem, demanded a government investigation. International and Palestinian human rights groups have already demanded an independent investigation by the United Nations into the allegations of war crimes committed in Gaza.

More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed and some 5,000 injured during the Israeli air and ground offence, launched December 27 in a bid to curb rocket the near daily rocket and mortar attacks on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) on Thursday published a list of 1,417 Palestinians killed in the offensive, giving names, ages, dates of death and other specifics. The organization says that 926 of those killed, almost two-thirds, were civilians.

Thirteen Israelis were killed during ground fighting, some by Palestinian rockets and some by so-called friendly fire.