An Israeli human rights group said on Monday the military violated medical ethics codes during its Gaza offensive, the latest accusation against the conduct in combat of Israel's military.
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR) described alleged incidents which "reveal that not only did the [military] not evacuate besieged and wounded families, it also prevented Palestinian [medical] teams from reaching the wounded".
PHR's report followed accusations by other human rights groups and Palestinians that Israel's actions during the 22-day offensive in the Palestinian coastal enclave, controlled by the Islamist Hamas group, warranted war crimes investigations.
The Israeli military said the high court had dismissed a petition PHR lodged on January 19, a day after the offensive ended, and that the allegations were still being investigated.
PHR quoted figures issued by the World Health Organisation which showed 16 Palestinian medical personnel were killed by Israeli fire during the offensive and that 25 were wounded while performing their duties.
Zvi Bentwich, a PHR board member, said this was "a reflection of what we consider unclear orders from above to the soldier on the field". He said the Israeli military was "almost indiscriminately shooting at such teams".
PHR said Israeli forces attacked 34 medical care facilities, including eight hospitals during the assault that Israel waged with the declared aim of halting cross-border rocket fire.
The Israeli military said its forces were instructed to "act with the utmost caution in order not to cause harm to medical vehicles and medical facilities".
"Accordingly, there were various instances where [Israeli] forces refrained from operating in an area due to the presence of medical vehicles or teams," the spokesman's office said.
Evacuation delay
PHR report said there were cases in which the military did not allow the evacuation of injured civilians for days, while leaving others without food or water for "considerable periods".
The military said Hamas fighters had "methodically made use of medical vehicles, facilities and uniforms in order to conceal and camouflage terrorist activity, and in general used ambulances to carry terror activists and weapons." Bentwich said his group had not encountered a single instance during the Gaza offensive of Hamas and other fighters using medical vehicles to transfer weapons.
"Basically it reflected a general approach to medical institutions, incriminating them without actually testing that or putting that into more careful scrutiny," said Bentwich.
Last week, Gaza war veterans gave their accounts in the Israeli media of the killing of civilians and alleged that there was deep contempt for Palestinians among the ranks.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak responded to those accusations by repeating Israel's description of its forces as the most moral in the world. The military said its judge advocate-general had ordered an investigation of the alleged incidents.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) has put the Palestinian death toll during the war at 1,434 - 960 civilians, 235 fighters and 239 police officers. Israeli officials have disputed the figures. Thirteen Israelis were killed.
Boy as human shield
Israeli soldiers used an 11-year-old Palestinian boy as a human shield during the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, UN human rights experts said Monday.
The “Israeli Defence” force ordered the boy to walk in front of soldiers being fired on in the Gaza neighborhood of Tel Al Hawa and enter buildings before them, said the UN secretary general's envoy for protecting children in armed conflict.
The boy also was told to open the bags of Palestinians - presumably to protect the soldiers from possible explosives - before being released at the entrance to a hospital, Radhika Coomaraswamy said.
She said the January 15 incident, after Israeli tanks had rolled into the neighbourhood and during "intense operations", was a violation of Israeli and international law.
It was included in a 43-page report published Monday, and was just one of many verified human rights atrocities during the three-week war between Israel and Hamas that ended January 18, she said.
Coomaraswamy accused Israeli soldiers of shooting Palestinian children, bulldozing a home with a woman and child still inside, and shelling a building they had ordered civilians into a day earlier.
"Violations were reported on a daily basis, too numerous to list," said Coomaraswamy, who visited Gaza and Israel for five days in February.
Coomaraswamy said there also have been allegations that Hamas used human shields or fired from heavily populated areas, and that UN officials are investigating.
Israel criticised the report as "unable or perhaps unwilling" to address Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza or the threat of terrorism, citing Saturday's failed attempt to explode a car bomb in a Haifa mall parking lot as the most recent manifestation.
"The report claims to examine Israel's actions while it willfully ignores and downplays the terrorist and other threats we face," Ambassador Aharon Leshno Yaar told the 47-nation Human Rights Council.
Leshno Yaar said terrorists use women and children as human shields when they launch attacks from schools, homes, hospitals and mosques. He did not address the report's specific allegation about the boy, but an army spokesman rejected the claim.
"We are an army to which morals and high ethical standards are paramount," said Capt. Elie Isaacson.
Coomaraswamy said her list of Israeli violations constituted "just a few examples of the hundreds of incidents that have been documented and verified" by UN officials who were in the territory.
She was the only one of the nine UN experts who compiled the report that was allowed into Gaza following the war.
