IV. Background

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated places on earth, with more than 1.4 million Palestinians living in a 360-square-kilometer area. Almost 80 percent of Palestinians there are from families that originally lived in what is now the state of Israel. Gaza is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Israel to the north and east, and Egypt to the south. After the 1948 war, Gaza came under Egyptian control until Israel captured it during the 1967 war, along with the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Israel established a military administration to govern Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Under the Oslo Accords reached between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization during the 1990s,[52]Gaza was one of the first areas turned over to limited Palestinian control.[53] A newly created Palestinian Authority administered 60 percent of Gaza while the other 40 percent remained under direct Israeli control. The latter included IDF military bases, Israeli settlements (built in Gaza in contravention of international humanitarian law),[54] and Israeli-only roads for military and settlers. In Gaza, 17 settlements housed some 7,500 settlers.[55] During the second intifada (uprising), which erupted in 2000, the number of Israeli troops stationed in Gaza was around 3,000.[56]

In April 2004, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proposed a "disengagement plan" to withdraw Israel's military personnel and settlers from the Gaza Strip. The government eventually adopted the plan and implemented it in August and September 2005.

After the withdrawal, Israel announced the repeal of its military orders governing Gaza and claimed that the disengagement had ended its occupation and thus relieved it of all responsibility for the welfare of Gaza's citizens.[57]Israel, however, continues to be bound by the relevant provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention because it retains effective control over Gaza's borders, coastline, and airspace and thus its economy. After the election of a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority in March 2006, Israel placed Gaza under virtual siege, repeatedly closing the several crossing points between Gaza and Israel for people and goods. It suspended the transfer of tax monies it collects on behalf of the PA, which account for about 50 percent of the PA's monthly budget. As a result, poverty and unemployment levels have soared, the Palestinian government has been unable to pay the salaries of most civil servants, and public services have been slashed.[58]

Renewed military conflict in Gaza compounded the crisis after Palestinian armed groups kidnapped Israeli soldier Corp. Gilad Shalit on June 25, 2006. In a stated bid to free Shalit and suppress increased rocket attacks from inside northern Gaza, Israel bombed Gaza's sole electrical power plant, which had provided 45 percent of Gaza's electricity, conducted a number of military incursions into Gaza, and engaged in wide-scale artillery shelling into northern Gaza. According to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, between June 25, 2006 and the end of March, 425 Palestinians were killed during clashes with Israeli forces in Gaza, over half of whom were civilians (including 85 children),[59] and 279 Palestinian homes were demolished, in most cases because the IDF alleged that weapons or munitions were on the premises.[60]

Increased clashes and lawlessness involving political factions, armed clans, and Palestinian security services affiliated with the rival Fatah and Hamas organizations have further endangered civilians and heightened Palestinians' sense of insecurity. In 2006, such clashes killed 146 people, compared with 19 in 2005. According to the United Nations, from the beginning of 2007 until February 13, 137 people including 13 children were killed in internal fighting.UNOCHA reported on May 21 that 150 Palestinians had been killed in factional violence and over 750 injured since the beginning of 2007.[61]

Israel's firing of artillery shells into and near heavily populated areas of northern Gaza, examined in this report, has been just one of the factors imperiling Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and gravely affecting their living conditions, livelihoods and access to basic services.

Palestinian Armed Attacks from Gaza

The major Palestinian political factions in the Gaza Strip are Fatah (a reverse acronym for harakat al-tahrir al-watani al-filastini, Palestinian National Liberation Movement), Hamas (harakat al-muqawama al-islamiyya, Islamic Resistance Movement), Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).[62] The most important of these in terms of political influence are Fatah and Hamas.

Fatah historically dominated Palestinian political institutions, such as the Palestine Liberation Organization, and until the elections of early 2006, the Palestinian Authority. Fatah continues to control most official Palestinian security and intelligence services. Following the outbreak of the second intifada, local groups of armed activists affiliated with Fatah organized themselves as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and carried out armed activities. Fatah militants opposed to what they saw as the PA's and Fatah's conciliatory approach to Israel also played a leading role in establishing a coalition with other armed militants under the name of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC).[63]

Hamas emerged as a political and social movement from among Palestinian adherents of the Muslim Brotherhood organization in December 1987, with the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada. In 1991, Hamas established its military wing, the `Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, named after Sheikh `Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a Syrian who worked among displaced and landless Palestinian peasants in what is now northern Israel and whose death in a clash with British troops in 1935 helped spark the 1936-39 Palestinian revolt. In January 2006 elections, Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council and formed a government on March 30.

Islamic Jihad began in 1982, also in Gaza, and like Hamas emerged out of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood organization. Its military wing is the Saraya al-Quds (Jerusalem Brigades), and it calls its homemade rockets "al-Quds." The PFLP, a leftist and secular organization that emerged after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, has carried out armed attacks against Israelis, including civilians, but as an organization has not been prominent in conducting rocket attacks.

During the height of the current intifada, Palestinian armed groups launched attacks against Israeli military targets and civilians both inside the OccupiedPalestinianTerritories and inside Israel. Suicide bombing attacks inside Israel claimed the lives of hundreds of Israeli civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law, which forbids intentionally targeting civilians under any circumstances.[64] Few of the suicide bombers infiltrated Israel from Gaza, most likely due in large part to the strict closures that Israel imposed on the Strip. Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, however, developed crude homemade rockets that could reach populated areas in Israel.

The Qassam Brigades initiated the manufacture of such rockets in late 2001, naming them "Qassams," and carrying out the first rocket attack against Israel on March 5, 2002.[65] "Qassams" has since become a generic term for the locally made rockets.

Since 2002, Palestinian armed groups, notably those affiliated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and the Popular Resistance Committees, have fired rockets into Israeli communities just beyond the Gaza border. The Palestinian groups also attacked settlements and IDF posts. The rockets inflicted their first Israeli fatalities in 2004 and have killed 10 Israelis civilians through June 1, 2007. They also killed two Palestinian workers and one Chinese worker on a Jewish settlement in June 2005, and at least two Palestinian civilians when the rockets failed to cross the border into Israel.[66]

The IDF has sometimes responded to lethal Palestinian rocket attacks with large-scale ground operations. The most extensive, the 17-day-long "Days of Penitence" operation launched on September 30, 2004, followed a September 29 rocket attack that killed two Israeli children in the town of Sderot. The IDF conducted raids led by tanks and other armored vehicles into Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya, and the Jabalya refugee camp, asserting that Hamas had launched rockets from these areas. The raids encountered considerable resistance from Palestinian armed groups. According to an UNRWA field assessment issued shortly afterwards, there were 107 Palestinians confirmed killed; beyond noting that one-quarter of the Palestinian fatalities were under the age of 18 the report did not indicate how many were combatants or civilians;[67] three Israeli settlers and two Israeli soldiers were also killed. In addition, Israeli forces demolished at least 91 Palestinian homes.[68] When Human Rights Watch asked about the destruction in October 2004, Israeli Gen. Israel Ziv indicated that the attack was necessary to punish Jabalya residents for their support of the armed groups; he did not articulate a military purpose for the attack.[69]

From February 2006, following its victory in January 2006 legislative elections, until June 9, 2006, Hamas held to a self-declared "calming period." During this period, the Qassam Brigades did not carry out rocket attacks, although Islamic Jihad and the PRC continued to do so.

The exchanges of rockets and artillery that this report documents have been one element in the deadly cycles of violence over the past six years. Between September 30, 2000, when the current intifada erupted, and May 3, 2006, 2,346 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, of whom 850 were combatants. Between September 2000 and September 2005, when the IDF and settlers completed their withdrawal, Palestinian armed groups in Gaza killed 39 Israeli civilians and 87 soldiers.[70]Rockets fired from Gaza into Israel were responsible for 10 deaths from June 2004 through May 2007. In addition, in June 2005, Islamic Jihad fired a rocket into Ganei Tal, a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, killing one Chinese and two Palestinian workers and wounding five others.[71] After the Israeli military withdrawal, Palestinian armed groups were able to fire rockets from closer to the Israeli border, areas that had been off limits to them previously due to the presence of Israeli settlements guarded by the IDF and armed settlers.