Western Beit Lahiya

Human Rights Watch investigated several places where Israeli forces destroyed civilian property in an area in western Beit Lahiya comprising  residential buildings, some industrial establishments, and open areas used for agriculture, roughly 4 kilometers north of downtown Gaza City.

Israeli forces heavily bombarded the area and drove across the 1949 armistice line into northwestern Gaza early in the ground offensive, according to residents living just north of the Sudaniyya road, about five  kilometers south of the border.[175] Residents reported hearing or seeing exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters, and some had seen fighters in the elevated, built-up area along a road that connects the Sudaniyya road with the al-Atatra neighborhood around one kilometer to the north.  However, much of the destruction occurred in the lower-lying, relatively open areas to the west where, residents said, no armed groups were present.  IDF tanks and armored bulldozers advanced into these lower areas over a period of several days, followed by infantry units. 

Witnesses who remained in the area until January 13 or 14 reported that it was virtually deserted apart from the presence of IDF armored vehicles, troops and aircraft, and that many homes were still standing.  When these witnesses returned after the war, they found numerous homes had been destroyed.  As is discussed below, while some buildings were destroyed during a period when residents left the area and before they returned after Israel withdrew its forces, the nature and extent of the destruction in these areas are not consistent with attacks against individual military objects or with damage sustained during fighting.

Human Rights Watch documented the destruction of 38 residential buildings in these areas; we did not establish the total number of people displaced, but 11 of these structures had housed 106 people before the war.  When Human Rights Watch conducted our research in April, a tent camp had been set up in the middle of the area; the camp manager said it housed 65 families whose homes had been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable during the war.[176] The families said they were unable to rebuild their homes due to Israel’s restrictions on imports of construction materials.

Badr flour mill

At the northwest corner of an intersection with Sudaniyya road, which runs east-west, lies the Badr Flour Mill, a five-story wheat-processing facility, surrounded to the south and east by other factories and the homes of some of the partners in the mill.[177] A wall encloses the grounds of the mill. Ahmad Hassan Abd Rabbo, 65, a guard at the factory, said he was present when the IDF shelled the factory early in the morning on January 10.

Around 4 a.m. Saturday I was here sheltering in the guard house and I could hear the helicopter hovering very close for about an hour. It fired on the mill, there was a lot of other shelling too, but I couldn’t specify what hit the mill. The attacks that night went on for two and a half hours. After that the mill was burning and the firefighters came to put it out.[178]

Abd Rabbo pointed out that the factory was badly damaged whereas smaller factories (for canned goods and for diapers) immediately to the west of it were not attacked.  He could not explain why the IDF targeted the flour mill. He said he had not seen any fighters on the property prior to the attacks. 

Fadiyya Hammad al-Rumailat, 66, lives in a residence by the beach, about 75 meters west of the mill.  She told Human Rights Watch that the civil defense took her and her daughter with them when they left after fighting the fire at the mill.  “Then the next day [January 11] I came back to feed my goats, left again, and I tried to come back the following day but I couldn’t because there were many tanks here and a lot of shooting.  Later I saw from the tracks that a tank came and destroyed a truck and a diesel tanker here.”[179]  Fadiyya al-Rumailat corroborated Abd Rabbo’s statement that the IDF had shelled the area with white phosphorus, saying that some burning pieces had landed in her yard and that she had covered them with sand.

Hamdan Hamada, a 52-year-old partner in the mill, told Human Rights Watch that he had left the area on January 4, but showed researchers damage and large amounts of shrapnel, and a hand-written note stating that a de-mining team had defused an unexploded aerial bomb, apparently written by the team’s interpreter.  The UN Mine Action Team in Gaza City later confirmed to Human Rights Watch that the front half of a 500-pound Mk82 aerial bomb had been identified on an upper floor in a narrow walkway between burnt-out machinery and an outside wall on January 25 and defused on February 11, 2009.[180] The Hamada family later provided Human Rights Watch with video showing the bomb as well as damage to the mill.[181] Hamada also showed Human Rights Watch scores of 40 mm shell casings marked HEDP (high-explosive dual purpose) that he said were found at the factory.[182]  He said that after receiving a call about the attacks and learning that the factory was on fire, “[w]e called the civil defense, and they tried to call the ICRC for liaison with the IDF to come and put out the fire, but they couldn’t get here until 10 a.m.”[183] 

The UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict examined the mill and concluded that the mill “was hit by an air strike” at 3 or 4 a.m. on January 9, after the mill was also “hit several times” by missiles fired from a helicopter.[184]

The IDF stated that it had conducted an operational debriefing into the incident and rejected the Fact Finding Mission’s conclusion that the mill was attacked from the air.[185]  The IDF claimed that although the flour mill was a “‘strategic high point’ in the area, due to its height and clear line of sight,” the IDF “decided not to preemptively attack the flour mill, in order to prevent damage to civilian infrastructure as much as possible.”[186] During a ground operation on January 9, however, “IDF troops came under intense fire from different Hamas positions in the vicinity of the flour mill. The IDF forces fired back towards the sources of fire and threatening locations. As the IDF returned fire, the upper floor of the flour mill was hit by tank shells.”[187] The IDF probe relied in part on aerial “[p]hotographs of the mill following the incident,” which it stated “do not show structural damage consistent with an air attack.”

On February 1, the Guardian reported that the UN had earlier found and defused an aerial bomb at the mill.[188]  At a meeting on February 4, 2010, lawyers with the Military Advocate General’s office told Human Rights Watch that they were aware of reports that an aerial bomb had struck the mill during the attack, and said it was possible that the operational debriefing might be reopened to take this evidence into consideration.[189]

The IDF supported its conclusion that the attack on the mill was justified by stating that “200 meters south of the flour mill an IDF squad was ambushed by five Hamas operatives in a booby-trapped house; 500 meters east of the flour mill another squad engaged enemy forces in a house that was also used for weapons storage; and adjacent to the flour mill, two booby-trapped houses exploded.” The presence of Hamas fighters 500 or 200 meters away from the flour mill, or the placement of booby-traps in nearby houses, would not in themselves justify attacks directed against the mill. Human Rights Watch did not identify “exploded” houses adjacent to the mill during a visit to the area, but did observe significant damage to an apartment building and a private home in the mill’s vicinity.  The apartment building was damaged, apparently by tank fire, and the private building had been partly demolished by a tracked vehicle.

Human Rights Watch found no evidence that Palestinian armed groups were present in or near the flour mill.  According to one witness, two members of Hamas were killed by Israeli shells or missiles in an area roughly 250 to 300 meters east of the flour mill in attacks on January 4 and January 7.  Hashem al-Asali, 23, told Human Rights Watch that a drone attack killed his brother, Suhail, 24, at around 7:20 a.m. on January 4.[190]  Hashem said he returned to the area with a group of around 15 other residents on January 7, after Israel announced a three-hour lull in the fighting, when a shell struck and killed his other brother Jihad al-Asali, 22, also a Hamas member.

The mill was the second largest of Gaza’s five flour mills, Hamada said, capable of processing 200 tons of wheat per day.  The IDF attacks had destroyed specialized semolina milling machines, installed by a team of Turkish engineers, as well as other machinery, and rendered the mill inoperable.  “We need engineers,” he said. “The most important thing now is a green light from the Israelis to get experts in here.”  Hamada gave Human Rights Watch a copy of a damage estimate stating that machinery losses alone amounted to $1,495,000.

Juma’a Family Houses

Further to the east along Sudaniyya road from the Badr flour mill, members of the extended Juma’a family lived in nine residential buildings on one block facing a small road leading north.[191]   Of the nine residential buildings on the Juma’a family’s block, each of which housed up to four families, seven were completely destroyed and two partly destroyed by Israeli forces in January, leaving at least 71 people homeless.[192]  Between some of the houses was a small olive grove that had been razed by IDF bulldozers.  Residents said that some of the trees were 40-years old.[193] 

Residents from the block and surrounding areas said the destruction occurred between January 14 and 18, after the IDF had taken control of the area. When members of the extended Juma’a family returned on January 18, they found that most of their homes had been completely destroyed.

When Human Rights Watch visited the block in April, tread marks consistent with bulldozers were still visible, and ramp-shaped piles of sand and debris with tread marks on them surrounded many of the destroyed buildings on the block.  Human Rights Watch did not observe any exploded or unexploded anti-tank mines but, according to resident Ala’a Juma’a, “the IDF left three anti-tank mines on the top two floors of the big house [formerly occupied by Muhammad, Osama, Hani and Nasser Juma’a and their families]. I was here the first day after the war and a mine went off at 10 p.m. that day, another one at 11:30 p.m. and a third one at 2 a.m.”

According to Hassan Ahmad Juma’a, some destruction of agricultural land was the result of IDF shelling with white phosphorus.  “That is what burned all the trees on that block of houses – they used lots and lots of white phosphorus here.”[194] Human Rights Watch observed numerous burn marks on buildings but residents said Hamas authorities had already collected shells and shrapnel from the area, possibly in an effort to collect and re-use explosive or other materials in its own weapons.

Mahmoud al-Ajrami, a former assistant secretary of foreign affairs with the Palestinian Authority, lived in an ornate, three-story home roughly 450 meters north of the Juma’a family block.  His experiences during the war led him to pass by the Juma’a block on January 13 as he fled the area.

Al-Ajrami said his own home came under small-arms fire from Israeli troops to the north east, and from Israeli helicopter cannons fired on January 6 and 7.  The IDF intensified its attacks on the area near al-Ajrami’s home early in the morning on January 8, he said, and his wife and daughter suffered shrapnel injuries on January 9 and 10.  “There were tanks to the northeast, the north, the northwest, and to the west along the coast,” al-Ajrami said. His daughter left to the south after she was wounded, but he and his wife stayed behind.

On January 11, at around 1 a.m., al-Ajrami said, IDF troops wearing flashlights on their helmets blew up a gate in the perimeter wall around his property and stormed his home.  Al-Ajrami said the soldiers put plastic handcuffs on him and blindfolded him, took him outside, led him up to the second floor of his neighbor’s home, and ordered him to walk, causing him to fall off his neighbor’s balcony.  He broke several ribs from the fall, he said. Israeli troops then forced him and a neighbor to walk to an area near the former Israeli settlement of Dugit, about 1.5 kilometers to the north. His wife was not allowed to accompany them. “They kept me outside in a military position with the walls created from earth by bulldozers.  I could see that there were lots of tanks and APCs from under my blindfold,” al-Ajrami said.  He was interrogated three times, then released on January 13 or 14 and ordered to walk south. 

I walked for one and a half hours, very slowly, until I came back to my house. I stumbled into Israeli soldiers twice on the way.  They were extremely surprised to see me.  No one else was around but soldiers.  I got back and saw my car [an SUV] was flattened, and the gates were destroyed.  They had killed my dog.  My wife had gone, but she told me later that they had attacked our house at around 8:30 or 9 a.m. on the 11th, just after they demolished our cousin’s house with bulldozers [which was catty-corner across the street]. 

Human Rights Watch inspected al-Ajrami’s ornate, three-story home, which he said he had occupied for seven years.  The structure was severely damaged by small arms fire and tank shells. Al-Ajrami showed researchers multiple 20 millimeter shells marked “HEDP” (high explosive dual purpose), likely fired from attack helicopters, the tail-fins of a 120 mm mortar, and other munitions that he said he had collected from inside the house.[195]   Al-Ajrami also found small, hand-written notes, in Hebrew, addressed to the “202nd Unit,” which Israeli soldiers had left behind.  The notes seem to have accompanied food or other gifts sent by Israelis to the troops in Gaza.[196]

In the afternoon of the day he was released, January 13 or 14, al-Ajrami walked southeast to the Kamal Adwan neighborhood.  On his way he passed by the block of nine houses owned by members of the Juma’a family (see below) which were then standing.  The entire area was empty of residents at this point, al-Ajrami said.   By the time the war ended, four or five days later, most of the Juma’a family’s houses were completely destroyed.

Al-Ajrami said he did not see evidence that Palestinian fighters were present near his home prior to his forced eviction or in any of the areas he passed through while fleeing the area.

There was no fighting [by Palestinians] here. Before the war, the resistance used to fire rockets [at Israel] from groves by the sea, and in open areas to the northwest, but during the war the resistance was around 250 meters to the east, along the [north-south] road.  I witnessed exchanges of fire to the east, not here.  But the IDF mostly used F-16s in that area. The infantry didn’t enter that area, the APC’s [armored personnel carriers] were closer to me.   Really the IDF [ground forces] only entered the [open] areas where it was impossible [for the Palestinian armed groups] to fight.

Human Rights Watch found no evidence (such as bullet holes in neighboring buildings) to contradict his claim that no Palestinian fighters were present on or near his property. 

Several residents of the Juma’a block corroborated al-Ajrami’s statement that Palestinian armed groups were active to the east but not in the immediate area or to the west during the war.  Ala’a Juma’a, 34, told Human Rights Watch, “The resistance was fighting to the northeast and the IDF came in from the northwest. The resistance stepped back whenever the IDF advanced.”[197]  According to Hassan Ahmad Juma’a, 60, an imam who left the area on January 4, “The fighters were to the east of here, around the mosque,” approximately 400 meters to the east.[198]

According to Imad al-Abid Juma’a, whose home was damaged, some members of the Juma’a family fought with armed groups.  Khaled Ibrahim Juma’a, a fighter, had been killed in fighting against the IDF in 2000.  The second-floor apartment of a three-story house that was destroyed – the largest house on the block – belonged to Osama Juma’a, a 30-year-old  member of Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades, who lived there with his wife and five children.   Imad Juma’a told Human Rights Watch:

Osama was killed in the morning of January 10, near the mosque, in a drone attack.  We buried him at noon.  Then two other martyrs, Ahmad and Omar [Juma’a], were killed in the afternoon, around 100 meters east of the mosque, as they were withdrawing, also by drones.  Ahmad Juma’a lived with his parents on the second floor of a house a few houses down from Osama.[199]

The website of the al-Qassam Brigades states that Ahmad Ibrahim Juma’a, 24, was killed on January 10.[200]  Human Rights Watch could not locate the names of Osama and Omar Juma’a on the al-Qassam Brigades website or the websites of other armed groups.  According to B’Tselem, “Osamah Muhammad Ahmad Jum’ah,” 32, was a combatant and member of Hamas killed on January 10 in the Beit Lahiya area. 

Another resident, Yahya Zakariyya Zumailat, 18, stayed in the area until around January 14, one day after al-Ajrami left.  During the conflict, Zumailat was sheltering in his uncle’s home, about 75 meters south of al-Ajrami’s property.  According to Zumailat, as of January 3, IDF tanks were stationed “around the Horse Club, about 200 meters to the northeast of here.” Later, the tanks made incursions to the south but returned back to this base area.

We heard the sounds of shells and machine guns. Sometimes I went upstairs in my uncle’s house and snipers shot at us. The tanks and bulldozers would pass by to the south, and then go back north. They did the same thing every day. The bulldozers flattened some houses to the south, and also destroyed groves to the northwest. Early in the morning, around 3 a.m., they’d go south, and by 8 a.m. they’d go back. Then it would be quiet, except if they saw something they’d start to shoot. After around 5 p.m. there would be a period of intensive fire. They were there for 10 days.[201]

Zumailat said there were no fighters in his area and that he did not witness exchanges of fire, although he could not see the areas to the south where the tanks went before they returned. 

He said that on around January 14, a bulldozer demolished part of the northern wall of his uncle’s house. “Maybe they destroyed it because they wanted to take a look inside,” he speculated. 

We looked out from the window and they saw us, and they left. Then we left.   Me, my parents, my grandfather, and my younger brothers walked to my girlfriend’s house in the Nasser area [in Gaza City]. An Apache [helicopter] was firing behind us as we were walking. The road was destroyed so we walked beside it. When we left, I saw the houses of the Juma’a family. They were still OK. There was a shed next to a mosque that had been pushed into the middle of the street, to cut it off.

Zumailat said that the area was depopulated by this point and that the only ongoing military activity he witnessed came from the IDF.  “There was no fighting.  The first time we saw any [Gazan] people was in the al-Karama neighborhood, two kilometers south of here,” he said.   Zumailat said that his brother, Muhammad, 12, and his sister, Hadil, 15, returned to the area the next day during the three-hour “lull” in fighting to get the family’s kerosene stove.  On approximately January 15, three days before the end of the war, he said they told him that the Juma’a houses were still standing.

Abd al-Karim Abu Nahim, 40, told Human Rights Watch that he stayed with his mother and brother in their home until January 17, one day before the end of the war.  Abu Nahim, who is unemployed, lives on the ground floor of a multi-story concrete residential building facing the same east-west road that forms the northern border of the Juma’a family block. 

On the last two days of the war, Friday and Saturday, the IDF had reached Sudaniyya Street [the main east-west road in the area, one block south of his house], and the tanks were down there and the troops were up here on foot, breaking into houses. They had been firing at this building.  Our upstairs neighbors told us the Israelis shot at their window because they saw something move.  So my mother raised a white flag and went out but they shot at her and she was wounded in one hand. This was Saturday at 11 a.m., on the last day. At 4 p.m. they broke into my house. There were scores of soldiers.  They detained me and my brother.[202]

Abu Nahim said there was no fighting in his immediate area, and that most of the destruction occurred during the final week of the war.  “They reached here by around the second week of the ground war, and they stayed here during the third week.  We couldn’t look out, but we could hear the bulldozers.”  After being detained, Abu Nahim said, the soldiers took him and his brother to a prison inside Israel, where they were interrogated. Within a week, by around January 24, he said, they were released through the Erez crossing back into Gaza and returned to the Siyafa area. 

Al-‘Amudi Street

Two blocks to the east of the Juma’a block is the intersection between Sudaniyya road and the north-south road leading to al-Atatra, al-‘Amudi Road.  Two blocks to the north of the intersection, residents of the area pointed out to Human Rights Watch the remains of 15 homes that had been destroyed along the eastern side of the road.  Residents of that block said three homes were destroyed; and on the third block, a further two homes were destroyed on the east side of al-‘Amudi Road, as well as a plumber’s shop, a BMW spare-parts shop, and a home on the west side.[203]

Interviews with a number of residents confirmed that Palestinian fighters were present in the area during the conflict. Ra’id abd el-Rahman, 33, showed Human Rights Watch damage to one of the interior cinderblock walls of his home, which he speculated had been caused by fighters using a sledgehammer to clear an opening to escape out the side of the house.  “They couldn’t make it through, so they went to the next room and took off the door,” he said.[204]  Osama Ziyad as-Sultan, 33, and Fawziya Muhammad as-Sultan, 51, lived in a two-story building that was destroyed.[205]  Osama said that he learned from members of armed groups that the IDF completely occupied the neighborhood by January 15, and that at that time the al-Sultan’s home was still standing.  His own experience seemed to confirm that it was destroyed late in the war, since “the house was still on fire” when he returned on January 19, he said.

It is possible that IDF armored vehicles destroyed some of the makeshift homes next to al-Amudi street when they first entered the area by driving next to the street rather than on it, in an attempt to avoid anti-tank mines or bombs that might have been placed on the road.  The presence of fighters in the area may also account for some of the destruction.  However, these considerations do not appear to account for the IDF’s complete destruction of 23 homes and two shops on both sides of the road for three blocks, and of multiple dunams of citrus and olive groves in the area, particularly in cases where the destruction occurred after IDF armor and ground troops had already occupied the area. 

The al-Sultans’ former neighbor was Latifa Atta Khalil al-Ankah, about 65. According to al-Ankah, the IDF destroyed the three-story building where she lived with her husband and an unmarried son and daughter, and another son and his family. IDF bulldozers also destroyed three of the family’s six greenhouses, and a quarter-acre grove of fruit trees. She recalled that on a Wednesday, either January 7 or January 14, Israeli soldiers forcibly entered her house and told her to evacuate.  “I told him to leave me alone in my house. He said, ‘You have no house.’  I took an alley to the east. My house and the grove were still all right when I left. The al-Sultan’s house was still standing too.”[206]  Al-Ankah said that no Palestinian fighters were present in the area at the time.  Her son, Bassam al-Ankah, 30, showed Human Rights Watch fragments of shrapnel he said he found in the house. He said that three tanks shells hit the second floor.

Slightly north of the intersection with Sudaniyya street lives Atallah Rihan, a 67-year-old writer, who said bulldozers destroyed an outbuilding containing his office and library as well as nearly three dunams (0.3 hectares) of citrus trees to the south of his house.  According to Rihan, “The resistance was active here only on the first two days of the aerial offensive [December 27 and 28].”  Nonetheless, Rihan said, “The shelling was continuous from artillery and the navy. It was a mess. The tanks were maybe 500 meters to the northwest.”  Although the Israeli military had previously dropped fliers stating that the area was a closed military zone, “and broke into the radio transmissions saying that everyone to the north of Sudaniyya road should go,” Rihan said he stayed until intensive shelling on approximately January 11 made him fear for his life.   He believed, though he was not certain, that IDF ground troops had reached his area two days before that point.  “When we left the [olive and citrus] trees were still all here,” Rihan said. “There wasn’t major destruction yet, either on the street or to the east, where we walked.  When we came back all my trees and the olive trees belonging to the as-Sultan family were gone.”[207]

Hadija Hassan Saqir, 55, owned a three-story building immediately north of Rihan’s home.  Before the war, she said, 15 people lived in the building, including her and her husband, as well as her two grown sons and their families.  When Human Rights Watch visited the area, the support pillars and several walls of Saqir’s building were still standing, but it had suffered extensive damage on all floors, rendering the building only partly habitable.  “We spent the first three days of the ground incursion here,” Saqir said, “and then they hit the house with a tank shell from the north.”[208]  The building appeared to have been hit multiple times by shells entering the sides of the building from the north, east and south, consistent with tank shells fired at a relatively flat trajectory, but the family had cleared away the damage to the extent that it was not possible to confirm what munitions had been used.  “Some people told me that until the last three days of the war the house wasn’t destroyed,” Saqir said. “A woman who was looking for a missing person that day said the doors of my house were open and she went inside to look. At that point it was just the one tank shell.”  Saqir pointed out three dunams (0.3 hectares) of land on the eastern side of the house, where only compacted dirt, small mounds and some tread marks were visible; she said this had been a small citrus tree grove.

Many of the former residents of these destroyed homes now live in a tent camp that Hamas authorities have set up in a nearby vacant lot. Sa’id Rumailat, an unemployed 34-year-old, was living in the camp and said there was no running water, no electricity, and only canned food to eat.  Rumailat showed Human Rights Watch a heap of wood and corrugated metal lying beside al-‘Amudi street that he said used to be his home where he lived with his wife and four children.  On approximately January 6, he saw people coming south along the road from al-Atatra, carrying white flags. “They were on foot, there were no cars because the F16s had bombed and cut off the road.  They said, ‘Why are you staying here? People are being killed.’”[209] Rumailat and his family left that day, with his home intact.  “When we came back, my house had been pushed into the middle of the street.  Inside my house we found a steel pipe with regular cuts in one side of it, from the bulldozer treads.”