(Jerusalem) - A bomb detonated by unknown perpetrators near West Jerusalem's Central Bus Station on March 23, 2011, which killed one person and injured three dozen others, is an indefensible attack on civilians, Human Rights Watch said today.
"Bombing civilians is a despicable crime that should be promptly investigated and prosecuted," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
The bombing occurred amid escalating artillery attacks between Palestinian armed groups in Gaza and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Since mid-March, Palestinian armed groups have stepped up unlawful rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli population centers. Deliberate attacks on civilians are serious violations of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said.
On March 22, Israeli forces fired mortar rounds with a high blast radius to attack Palestinian mortar positions near a residential area in Gaza, killing four civilians, including three children. Under the circumstances, as explained below, such an attack appeared to be indiscriminate, in violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said.
No one has taken responsibility for the Jerusalem bombing. The Popular Resistance Committees and Islamic Jihad, two Palestinian groups with armed wings in Gaza, praised the attack as a "response" to Israeli "crimes."
The bomb, which exploded at around 3 p.m. in a phone booth near a Jerusalem bus stop, killed a 59-year-old woman and wounded 38 other people, two of them seriously, according to Israeli media reports. Some of the victims were as young as 15, the news reports said. The Israeli news website Ynet quoted an Israeli security official who said the bomb weighed one to two kilograms and included steel pellets as shrapnel to maximize injury.
It is unclear whether the bombing was related to the increasing hostilities between Palestinian armed groups in Gaza and Israeli forces. Hamas took responsibility for firing dozens of mortar rounds on March 19, some of which damaged homes in an Israeli kibbutz near the Gaza perimeter fence. Hamas said the attack was in response to an Israeli attack on March 14 that killed two fighters with Hamas's al-Qassam Brigades. Hamas claimed the attack was directed at military targets but did not explain why it apparently only damaged civilian areas.
On March 23, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for firing two Soviet-designed "Grad" rockets that struck the Israeli city of Beer Sheba, wounding one man, and another that hit near the city of Ashdod, south of Tel Aviv. Human Rights Watch spoke to Beer Sheba residents who described hiding in bomb-proof shelters during the attacks.
Israeli attacks in Gaza since March 19 have killed six Palestinian civilians and wounded others. In addition, Israeli forces on March 22 killed four fighters with Islamic Jihad's al-Quds Brigades, and on March 19 wounded three fighters with the al-Qassam Brigades and two civilians, according to Palestinian media reports.
Israeli mortar fire killed the four civilians at about 3 p.m. on March 22 in a crowded residential area in the Shaja'iya neighborhood east of Gaza City, about 1.3 kilometers from the Israeli perimeter fence. The New York Times quoted residents who said that Palestinian fighters had fired four mortar shells toward Israel from a citrus grove behind houses in Shaja'iya. Under the laws of war applicable during hostilities in Gaza, a warring party must take all feasible precautions to protect the civilian population under their control against the effects of attack and avoid deploying in or near densely populated areas. The Palestinian fighters violated this legal requirement. Human Rights Watch has not been able to determine the target of the Palestinian mortar attack.
Israeli mortar rounds struck the area a few minutes after the Palestinian mortar fire, residents told Human Rights Watch. The New York Times and a local nongovernmental group, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, identified four or five Israeli mortar strikes: two or three that struck a street or houses, and two that struck 40 to 50 meters away, in an area behind a house. One mortar round killed 11-year-old Mohammed Jalal al-Helou, and a 17-year-old neighbor, Mohammed Saber Harrara, while they were playing soccer with other children, residents said. Eight of the other children were wounded, according to media reports. Another mortar round that struck nearby killed Yasser Hamed al-Helou, in his 50s, and his grandson Yasser Ahed al-Helou, 15.
Aida al-Helou, Yasser Hamed al-Helou's daughter, told Human Rights Watch that she was inside the family home during the mortar attacks. "We stepped outside after the explosions and saw the wounded and pieces of the boys who were killed in front of the house," she said. Two children from the extended al-Helou family who had been wounded were transferred the following day from intensive care in Gaza's al-Shifa hospital to a hospital in Jerusalem, she said.
Human Rights Watch viewed video and photographs of the scene taken immediately after the Israeli mortar strikes and of shrapnel from the scene and later visited the area in the Shaja'iya neighborhood, which consists of houses, many adjoining one another, interspersed with small groves and open areas near the Eastern Line, a road that roughly parallels Gaza's boundary with Israel.
The laws of war require an attacker to take all feasible precautions, including with respect to the methods and means of warfare, to avoid civilian casualties and to verify that targets are military objectives. The expected civilian loss must not be disproportionate to the anticipated direct military advantage.
The Israeli military should cease attacks using artillery where the degree of targeting accuracy and the shells' casualty radius do not allow for attacks that can discriminate between civilians and combatants under the circumstances in which the attack takes place, Human Rights Watch said. Indiscriminate attacks are a serious violation of the laws of war
The Israeli daily Haaretz cited an Israeli army commander who said his forces fired "Keshet" mortars, a vehicle-mounted weapon that fires 120 millimeter mortar rounds. While the Keshet is considered more accurate than regular mortars, it fires 120-millimeter rounds, which have a blast radius of between 60 and 75 meters, depending on the type of explosive warhead used, according to a US military manual.
In January 2009, Keshet mortar fire killed 32 civilians in Gaza, including 11 members of a single family in the Jabalya refugee camp, according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem. An Israeli government report published in July 2010 stated that the military advocate general recommended "more stringent definitions in military orders to govern the use of mortars in populated areas" and that the military chief of staff had ordered "staff work to draft the required orders." The Israeli army temporarily stopped using the Keshet mortar system in January 2011, after a mortar round fired at a Palestinian rocket-launching squad went off-target and killed an Israeli soldier, Israeli media reports said.
In a statement on March 23, an IDF spokesman acknowledged the mortar attack and expressed regret for the loss of civilian life. He said the attack was in response to three mortar rounds fired by Palestinian armed groups in the area, but blamed Hamas for firing mortars "from among the civilian population."
"The Palestinian armed group that conducted the initial mortar attack violated the laws of war by placing civilians at a grave risk of a counterattack," Whitson said. "But Israel does not have carte blanche to return fire without regard to the civilians likely to be harmed."
Violations by one party to a conflict never justify violations by the other party, Human Rights Watch said.
Israeli forces killed two other Palestinian civilians at 9:30 p.m. on March 19, when two 16-year-olds, Imad Farajallah and Qasem Abu Ittawi, were about 400 meters from the Gaza perimeter fence in an area southeast of Gaza City, media reports said. Al Mezan, a Palestinian rights group, said that the two teenagers were not armed.
Israel has declared a 300-meter "no-go" zone near the perimeter fence, but the United Nations and human rights groups have documented shootings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces at distances of more than a kilometer from the fence. The designation by Israel of a "no-go zone" on the Gaza side of the boundary with Israel does not permit otherwise unlawful shootings under the laws of war or international human rights law, Human Rights Watch said.
The shooting of civilians who are not participating in the hostilities, whether or not they are in the declared "no-go zone," is at least a failure by Israeli forces to take all feasible precautions to identify a military target, but would be a deliberate attack on civilians if Israeli forces targeted known civilians.
