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Appendix II. Case Study: Palestinian Rockets Attacks from and IDF Shelling of the Nada Apartments Complex

The IDF resumed artillery shelling in the Gaza Strip on June 29, 2006, following a suspension declared after the June 9 Gaza beach explosion. In late July, in response to repeated Palestinian rocket attacks launched nearby, Israel fired artillery shells over the course of several days that hit Beit Hanoun’s Nada Apartments. The strikes killed four Palestinian civilians, including two children, wounded 14, seriously damaged some apartments, and forced hundreds of families to flee.

Human Rights Watch’s investigation into the shelling of the Nada Apartments confirmed that armed groups frequently used an open area of approximately one square kilometer, the southern boundary of which lies across a main road from the buildings, to fire rockets towards Israel. Israeli artillery shelled the open area regularly without hitting or damaging the apartments. Residents said that on the previous evening, July 23, militants had attempted to fire rockets from close to the road that runs between the complex and the open area—approximately 100 meters from the apartment complex—before the residents made them leave. The IDF initially said that the shelling was in error, but subsequently claimed that 15 rockets were fired from the complex over the course of the month of July. Residents said that there were no rockets fired from the surrounding area the day of the first attack, and that none were fired at any time from the premises of the complex.²⁷⁸

Altogether, Israeli 155mm artillery hit the apartment complex five different times on July 24 and again on the morning of July 26 and in the evening of July 28. Communications by Palestinian authorities to their Israeli counterparts that the shelling was killing and injuring civilians did not, at least not quickly, bring it to a halt.

The deaths and injuries resulting from Israel’s artillery shelling of the Nada Apartments highlight actions by the Palestinian armed groups as well as the IDF that violate international humanitarian law and put civilians at grave risk. Palestinian armed groups, which had long been launching rockets from the empty area about one kilometer square in size across from the apartment complex, apparently in late July began setting up launchers closer to the apartment buildings. The IDF then fired 155mm shells over the course of several days very near to the apartments, including direct hits on the apartments. Area denial could be a legitimate purpose for shelling the empty area from which the rockets were routinely launched. But there was no basis for the IDF to conclude that the complex itself was a valid military target. Even if Palestinian armed groups had launched rockets from the immediate proximity of the apartments, which residents consistently denied had been the case, repeated shelling of the apartments and their immediate vicinity, which persisted despite real-time warnings that civilians were being killed, represents a violation of the prohibition against indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks. The failure of Palestinian officials to act upon IDF warnings that they planned to shell the vicinity of the apartments, described below, showed a disregard for civilian safety on their part, but in no way justified the IDF decision to shell and continue to shell the apartments, a well-known heavily populated area. An independent investigation into this incident is needed to assess what happened, consider the legal culpability of any of the participants, and develop measures that both sides can undertake to reduce civilian harm in the event of renewed hostilities.

The Nada Apartments Complex

The Nada Apartments complex, built in 1996 and 1997 and managed by the Palestinian Ministry of Housing, consists of 25 four-story buildings grouped in blocks of between three and six adjoining buildings. The complex sits on a rise of land about a kilometer from Gaza’s northern border, on the western edge of Beit Hanoun, along a bypass road linking Gaza City with the Erez Crossing into Israel. Buildings 1 through 20 lie directly adjacent to the bypass road at a point where the road runs along an east-west axis.

The complex is composed mostly of residential units and a few offices. On the third floor of Building 15, for instance, are the offices of the Palestinian Authority’s District Coordination Office for northern Gaza, the Palestinian security branch responsible for liaison with Israeli military authorities.²⁷⁹ Many heads of households of the Nada Apartments work for the Palestinian Authority, including its security services, or are pensioners.

The IDF, in its responses to Human Rights Watch’s questions about these incidents, persistently referred to the apartments as the “Officers’ residence” and even “the officers’ barracks,”²⁸⁰ although the IDF knows that this complex of apartments is inhabited by several hundred families. While some residents were members of Palestinian security services, it was a transparently civilian area.

To the north of the complex, across the bypass road, is a large uneven area of open land approximately one square kilometer in size. According to residents and local Palestinian security officials, Palestinian armed groups at the time were firing rockets from this area on average several times a week. The IDF frequently responded by firing on these open areas with 155mm artillery shells from the Karni and Nahal Oz area in Israel, just across the eastern border of the Gaza Strip, approximately nine kilometers away. The trajectory of firing from these locations in Israel means that to hit the open area, artillery shells fly over the Nada Apartments complex. The IDF maintains an unmanned surveillance balloon in the area that was clearly visible from the Nada Apartments and elsewhere in the area of Beit Hanoun and Erez at the time of incidents in question.

Prelude to IDF Artillery Shelling of the Nada Apartments

In the days prior to the Israeli strikes on the Nada Apartments complex, residents said, Palestinian armed groups launching rockets from the empty area had moved closer to the apartment complex, and at one point fired or attempted to fire rockets from near a large unused water storage tank in the open area about 100 meters north of the bypass road and the apartments. Nada residents told Human Rights Watch that over the course of those same days, Israeli shells landed in the open area north of the apartments in locations progressively closer to the complex. ²⁸¹

Nijat Raw`a, 28, who lives with her husband and children in Building 6, said, “The shelling had moved closer to the buildings over the last several days, and then right on the [bypass] road itself.”<sup>282</sup> `Adil Muhammad Abu Rashid, who lives in Building 20, said, “One month ago, there was daily [IDF] shelling behind the towers, into the open area, the sand. Then, sometimes they began to hit the asphalt of the road, but this time was the first they hit the front of the towers.”²⁸³

Other residents, as well as representatives of international humanitarian agencies that monitor armed clashes in Gaza, told Human Rights Watch that Israeli artillery shells had on at least one earlier occasion struck one of the buildings in the Nada complex.²⁸⁴ Prior to the attacks on the week of July 24, however, Israeli officials had maintained that those shellings were in error and expressed regret. “One shell, even every two weeks, might be a mistake,” said a Palestinian who monitors north Gaza for an independent human rights organization. “But what happened on July 24 was very different.”²⁸⁵

Hassan al-Wali, who lives with his family in Building 3 and heads the Nada Residents Association, told Human Rights Watch that at around 11 p.m. on July 23, approximately 14 hours before the IDF first launched artillery strikes on the apartments, he received complaints from residents that a group of armed Palestinians from elsewhere in Gaza were setting up one or more launchers from along the bypass road, just to the north of Buildings 7 and 8. “I went to them, and said they can’t. They left. But fifteen minutes later I got a call from the DCO saying that they had received a message from the IDF saying rockets had been fired from the area”—al-Wali said he understood this to mean the open area, not the apartment grounds—“and that [the IDF] would strike close to our buildings so people should stay inside.” Al-Wali said that about 10 minutes later, around 11:45 p.m., an Israeli artillery shell struck the house of Asad Akil, which is about 50 meters south of Building 6 but not part of the Nada Apartments. The shell did not explode, he said, but badly damaged the house and injured three persons.²⁸⁶

After receiving the call from the DCO, al-Wali called together the representatives of the separate buildings. Muhammad Hijazi, 20, the representative of Building 8, said that al-Wali told them, based on the IDF warning, to “be aware” that shelling would intensify. “Al-Wali told us, don’t go outside the buildings,” and “better not to sleep” so as to be ready to evacuate the apartments, Hijazi recalled. Immediately after this meeting, Hijazi said, the Israeli artillery shell struck the house of Asad Akil, and “we heard artillery hit the road.”Hijazi said there had been warnings of Israeli shelling in the past, but of a more general nature. “This was different,” he said. “We understood that the surroundings and the front area would be targeted.”²⁸⁷ Al-Wali said that the IDF continued to shell the open area across from the Nada Apartments through the night at the rate of a shell every four or five minutes.²⁸⁸

Early Afternoon of July 24, 2006

On Monday, July 24, 2006, Israel launched five separate artillery strikes which hit the Nada Apartments complex over a roughly 10-hour period, killing four Palestinian civilians, two of them children, and wounding about a dozen others. The part of the complex that took the brunt of the shelling that day consisted of six connected buildings, numbered 10 to 15, each of which contained 16 family-sized apartments along the bypass road. There are about 500 residents in Buildings 10 to 15.

The first attack occurred between 1:15 and 1:20 p.m. and comprised at least two artillery shells fired a few minutes apart. The first of these landed just alongside Building 10, at the point where the small entry road into the complex connects with the bypass road. Then a second shell struck inside the complex, on the curb close to the entrance to Building 10. `Adil Muhammad Abu Rashid, a third floor resident of Building 20, has a balcony facing northeast, in the direction of Buildings 10 to 15. “By chance, I stood on the balcony at 1 or 1:30 p.m.,” he said. “There were about 30 people out and about in front of the towers 10 to 15, in the parking lot, when one shell struck the curb in front of Building 10. This one came about five minutes after a previous one had hit the bypass road.”²⁸⁹

Shrapnel from this second blast killed 31-year-old Sadiq Nasr, a resident, as he stood in front of a small shop about 20 meters on the other side of the entrance way, and his nephew, Salah Nasr, 16, who was standing about one meter away from the shell’s impact point. The blast also gravely wounded Sa`di Ahmad Na`im, a 30-year-old paramedic who had come out from a small government clinic on the Nada grounds after the first shell struck to see if medical help was needed, and 16-year-old Muhammad Sharafi, a resident of Building 10. Na`im, the paramedic, died a short while later from his wounds; doctors from Balsam Hospital, where Na`im was taken, said that shrapnel ripped through his lower torso from the front and exited from his lower back.²⁹⁰

Sharafi told Human Rights Watch that he had run down from his second-floor apartment, which faces the open area, after the first explosion.²⁹¹ He lost parts of two fingers on his left hand and suffered serious shrapnel wounds just above his right knee. His face was scarred and swollen when Human Rights Watch spoke with him in Kamal `Udwan Hospital on July 26. Doctors in the Balsam Hospital, a small facility next to the Nada complex, said that eight persons were brought there with wounds from this blast.²⁹² Shrapnel from the second blast badly damaged the façades of Buildings 10 and 11. Palestinian police responsible for collecting exploded and unexploded Israeli shells told Human Rights Watch that all of the shelling of the area around the Nada Apartments complex consisted of 155mm artillery shells.²⁹³

As noted, several residents said that Palestinians had fired or attempted to fire rockets the previous day and evening, but none that Monday.

Afternoon and Evening of July 24, 2006

At around 3 p.m., an IDF artillery shell struck about five meters in front of the entrance to Building 12. The blast killed Khitam Taya, 11 years old, and seriously injured her 12-year-old sister Nuha, as they approached the entrance to visit an aunt who lived there. Subhi Abu Shabab, 44, a resident in Building 14, had sent his family away at around 2 p.m., after the strike against Building 10, but he stayed behind and was standing outside his building with a friend. He told Human Rights Watch that he heard the distinctive sound of an incoming artillery shell, followed by the blast. “There was lots of smoke and my friend and I hit the ground,” he said. “When the smoke cleared I saw the girl. Her brains had come out of her head. We didn’t call an ambulance, we just put her in someone’s car and they took her to the hospital.”²⁹⁴ Abu Shabab, along with other witnesses, said that there had been no signs of Palestinian military activity in the vicinity that day.

Several hours later, around 6 or 6:30 p.m., an Israeli artillery shell hit the roof of Building 20, the westernmost Nada building along the bypass road, according to several residents. “All of a sudden, our tower was hit, a shell struck the roof. No one was injured,” resident `Adil Muhammad Abu Rashid told Human Rights Watch.²⁹⁵

The entrance of Building 12 of the Nada Apartments shows fragmentation marks from an Israeli artillery shell explosion. The strike in front of the building on the afternoon of July 24, 2006, killed 11-year-old Khitam Taya and seriously injured her 12-year-old sister, Nuha. © 2006 Joe Stork/Human Rights Watch

Saria Sa`adna, 35, a resident of a top floor apartment in Building 13, told Human Rights Watch that later that evening, an Israeli artillery shell struck just in front of her building but did not explode.<sup>296</sup> She thought it was about three hours after the shelling that killed Khitam al-Taya, that is, about 6 p.m., but an international humanitarian monitor who also tracked the day’s events told Human Rights Watch that it was later. A bomb disposal unit came quickly to remove it, according to Sa`adna and a Palestinian security official.²⁹⁷

The last IDF shelling incident of July 24 at the Nada Apartments occurred between 11 p.m. and midnight. A shell struck and gutted the front room of a third-floor apartment in Building 14. One resident of the building told Human Rights Watch that he heard what he thought was a rocket fired from the roof 15 minutes earlier.²⁹⁸ Human Rights Watch examined the roof of the adjoining Buildings 13-15 on July 26 and again on July 31, and found no burn marks or other indications that a rocket had been fired from there. Many Nada residents freely acknowledged (and in many cases complained about) Palestinians firing rockets from the nearby open areas, sometimes close to the apartments, but all except for this person insisted that no rockets had ever been fired from the grounds of the complex or the roofs of the buildings.

Access to the roofs is not restricted, although residents said that it would be hard for someone to make it to the roof and move around unheard from the apartments directly below, and equally difficult to escape the scene quickly. The roofs themselves are crowded with satellite television dishes, water tanks, and stairway bulkheads.

Events of Wednesday, July 26, 2006

IDF artillery shelling of the empty area across from the apartment complex continued the next day, July 25. The area around the Nada Apartments buildings along the bypass road “looked like a war zone,” said Hassan al-Wali, the head of the Residents’ Association. When Human Rights Watch visited the complex on July 26, remaining families were loading small trucks with belongings. They said that scores of families had taken shelter in several UNRWA schools in nearby Jabalya Refugee Camp.²⁹⁹ A Palestinian security official said the next day that no more than a hundred persons remained in the apartments, and that many of those who stayed did so to prevent looting.

Al-Wali said that at about 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday, July 26, IDF shelling of the open area increased to a rate of about one shell every three or four minutes.³⁰⁰ At around 6:15 a.m., the IDF fired a volley of shells that again struck the apartment complex and the immediate vicinity. One shell cleared the buildings and hit the bypass road, breaking the windows in Muhammad Nassar’s top-floor apartment in Building 15. Within minutes another shell landed on the roof of Building 15. The shell plunged through the roof and the ceiling into his kitchen as he stood in the doorway, Nassar said. A piece of shrapnel caused a superficial wound to his forehead. His wife, who was in the bedroom, was not hurt.Nassar told Human Rights Watch that no rockets had been fired from around the building at any time, andthat being on the top floor he would have been able to hear the distinctive whizzing sound of a homemade rocket if one had been fired from the roof.³⁰¹

Hasan al-Wali, a resident of Building 3 and head of the Nada Residents Association, stands on the roof of Building 15 of the Nada Apartments. An Israeli artillery shell struck the roof on the morning of July 26, 2006. © 2006 Joe Stork/Human Rights Watch

That same evening, at around 9 p.m., according to several residents who had fled the apartments but maintained regular telephone contact with those who stayed behind, several militants attempted to set up rocket launchers in the parking area between Buildings 9 and 10 in the now largely deserted complex.³⁰² Remaining residents prevented them from doing so and chased them away. Al-Wali said that the men were not from the Nada Apartments or from nearby. He said he knew to which faction they belonged, but he declined to name it. He said that “the general stance of the factions is to maintain distance” from the apartments, but sometimes “individual groups” would fire from close by. “When we complain to the factions, things quiet down,” he said. On Thursday, July 27, the day after this incident, he said, representatives of the faction in question “came to apologize” and “said they would not endanger the building any more.”³⁰³ A Palestinian security official told Human Rights Watch that confrontations between northern Gaza residents and militants were frequent.³⁰⁴

Events of Friday, July 28, 2006

According to several doctors at the Balsam Hospital, on the evening of Friday, July 28, at around 8 p.m., an IDF artillery shell landed about 10 meters from the entrance. The hospital sits just to the west of the Nada Apartments complex, along the bypass road and across from the open area. “We had been sitting in front and had just come in to perform the sunset prayer,” one said. “While we were praying, the shell landed. The ground shook and there was the sound of shattered glass. Directly afterwards other shells fell. We couldn’t tell where the other shells landed but the shelling seemed to last about forty minutes, and shrapnel came inside the reception area.”³⁰⁵ They said they were familiar with Israeli shelling of the open area, and that shrapnel had sometimes landed in front of the hospital, but that the hospital had not been damaged in this manner before. They said that there had been no warning.

The doctors said that three persons were wounded in the shelling. Two had been moved to other facilities. The third, Na`im Abu Anzain, 58, was still recuperating in the Balsam Hospital when a Human Rights Watch researcher visited on July 31. Abu Anzain has a small shop on the street level of Building 19 of the Nada Apartments, below the residences and facing the bypass road and open area. He told Human Rights Watch that two shells landed about 50 meters from his shop. “A small girl had just come to buy something,” he said. “When the shell hit I pushed her inside the shop and covered her. Afterwards I made it to the hospital and collapsed at the gate.”³⁰⁶ Doctors removed shrapnel measuring about four centimeters by two centimeters that seriously injured Abu Anzain’s shoulder. Abu Anzain said that the IDF shelling had never come so close to his shop before.

IDF Warnings and Liaison with Palestinian Security Forces

According to Lt. Col. Walid Ghanim, head of Regional Security Coordination for Gaza, he and the DCO staff are in daily contact with IDF counterparts.³⁰⁷ Ghanim said that in the past the IDF called to protest Palestinian rocket attacks, but that they stopped doing so after Hamas took over the government of the Palestinian Authority in late March 2006.

Lieutenant Colonel Ghanim told Human Rights Watch that the DCO office was responsible for coordination on security matters with Israel and did not have law enforcement functions, but “if we see preparations for a rocket attack we prevent them ourselves or we ask for help from other security forces. We don’t stand still.”³⁰⁸ A DCO colleague showed Human Rights Watch a log of archive entries for the January to February 2006 period indicating more than 20 dates when such disruptions of attacks and confiscations of weapons had occurred.

Ghanim said that Palestinian security forces were frequently unable to stop armed groups from launching rockets. He said, “We can’t prevent them from firing from the open spaces [adjacent to the Nada Apartments complex],” but insisted that none have been launched from the grounds of the apartments. “So many residents here are from the National Security or the DCO or police and other [security] services, and they all know the danger of firing from buildings.”³⁰⁹

Concerning the IDF shelling of the apartments, one DCO officer, Adib Lubani, told Human Rights Watch that he took a call from an Israeli counterpart by the name of Samir Kayuf the evening of July 23, prior to the July 24 shelling.³¹⁰ Lubani said that Kayuf told him to warn residents “not to gather outside” because Israel would be shelling the vicinity of the building. “We responded strongly that this was a heavily civilian-populated area, and it was not reasonable to attack [near the apartments] in response to rockets from the open area,” Lubani said. “They promised to check [with their superiors] but insisted that they had orders to strike.”³¹¹

DCO officials said that they conveyed the warning to the residents’ association. The head of the association, Hassan al-Wali, said that he called a higher-level security official to confirm the Israeli message and then informed the representatives of the different buildings. “When I get such messages, I pass it to the others,” he said. “I make sure to give the whole message because otherwise I would endanger people. But I try to give it in a way that does not cause panic.”³¹² Subhi Abu Shabab, a third-floor resident of Building 14, said that he had heard “from people” that Israel would shell the vicinity of the buildings.³¹³ Other residents said they had no warning of any kind.

Lieutenant Colonel Ghanim said that when the first shells struck the perimeter of Building 10 on July 24, killing Sadiq Nasr and Salah Nasr and mortally wounding Sa`di Na`im, he immediately placed a call to his Israeli counterpart to protest and that an Israeli officer named Zaidan called him back. “I told him we understood the message [of the shelling] so they should stop targeting civilians,” Ghanim said. “He said he would deliver our message to his superiors.”³¹⁴ Ghanim and Lt. Col. Munir Salha said that in previous instances when an IDF artillery shell had struck near the apartments, the Israeli officer would express regret and apologize. “This time they had a harsh tone. They did not express regret,” the Palestinian officers said.

Ghanim said that after the 3 p.m. artillery shell landed in front of Building 12, killing 11-year-old Khitam al-Taya, he protested to the IDF “once again, strongly.” He said Zaidan phoned back about half an hour later to say that the residents should leave the building, that those who remained did so at their own risk, and that “we should take his warning seriously.” Ghanim said he replied that endangering civilians was “not a reasonable response to some rockets from the open area.”³¹⁵

Human Rights Watch asked Ghanim if Palestinian security services had a policy for when their Israeli counterparts threatened to attack civilian-populated areas and urged that civilians be evacuated. “We respond that we will not evacuate people from their houses and you are fully responsible,” he said. “We pass on the IDF message to our leaders, and they may leak the information. Officially we can’t tell people to leave.” He added, “Policies of population transfer have a big meaning for Palestinians. They [the IDF] want to create bigger buffer zones—this part of Beit Hanoun, that part of Jabalya. Do they want us to evacuate Gaza and the West Bank?”³¹⁶

Parties to a conflict have a duty under IHL to take all feasible precautions to protect the civilian population under their control against the effects of attacks.³¹⁷ Such precautions include the distribution of information and warnings and the withdrawal of the civilian population to safe places.³¹⁸ At the same time, attacks intended to cause a civilian population to move from its homes would violate IHL prohibitions against attacks directed at the civilian population and acts or threats of violence whose primary purpose is to spread terror among the population.³¹⁹

IDF Explanations

Following the IDF shelling of the Nada Apartments on July 24, which killed four civilians, an IDF spokeswoman told journalists that it was part of an IDF response to more than 50 rockets having been fired into Israel from the Beit Lahiya region in the preceding few weeks. “The launching of rockets has continued, so I guess you could say we decided to step things up.”³²⁰ Referring to the deaths in the Nada Apartments, the spokeswoman attributed them to “shells that misfired.”³²¹ An Israeli press report cited the IDF as saying that “one of its missiles had likely gone off track and fallen near the ‘officers dwelling’” in the city, and added that “the terror organizations are responsible for the casualties, as the IDF had given previous warnings that it would target Qassam launching sites.”³²²

In its first inquiry to the IDF about the Nada incidents, on July 31, Human Rights Watch asked if it may have been a mistake. The IDF response of August 6, however, and subsequent response on October 12, made no mention of any error or mistake in the shelling of the Nada Apartments.

The IDF’s response to Human Rights Watch about these incidents said that, as a general matter, it “maintain[s] the utmost effort to avoid harm to populated areas” and “is meticulous in its observation of international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction and proportionality…. Moreover, the IDF does not attack legitimate military targets when such an attack is likely to cause disproportionate incidental damage to civilians.”³²³

In its August 6 response, the IDF wrote: “The area in your query has been a launching site for Qassam rockets into Israel. In July alone, over 15 Qassam rockets were launched from the Officers’ residence in the complex, and from its surroundings, dozens of rockets are launched on a daily basis.”

In that same response, the IDF wrote that it “communicates to the citizens in the Gaza Strip to avoid staying in areas where rocket launching and terrorist activity are taking place” and “communicates these warnings by scattering leaflets in the air, relaying messages through the Palestinian media and making repeated requests through the DCOs.”³²⁴

In its October 12 response, the IDF wrote:

On the 24/07/06, up until the hours stated in your query, 6 Qassam rockets were fired towards Israel. Some of the rockets were fired from the Officers’ residence and the surrounding area. In retaliation, the IDF fired artillery towards the launching zones and around the officers’ barracks. Since January 2006 over 42 Qassam rockets have been fired from the Officers’ residence and the area surrounding it. The IDF deeply regrets any injury to Palestinian civilians, but it is the terrorist organizations who take advantage of Palestinian citizens and fire from populated areas. The IDF repeats its warning to the Palestinian population to avoid areas from which rockets are fired and to condemn terror groups who operate from within their area of residence.³²⁵

As noted, Nada residents, as well as Palestinian officials, consistently denied that armed groups had launched any rockets from the premises of the apartments at any time prior to the IDF shelling on the week of July 24. Human Rights Watch was unable to find any evidence that rockets had been launched from the premises prior to the IDF shelling. Any regular use of a residential area to launch rockets would make that area a legitimate military objective, but the attacking force would remain obliged to take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians. The IDF’s use of 155mm artillery for such an attack would violate the prohibition against attacks that are indiscriminate or disproportionate. This remains the case even if the civilian population did not respond to warnings that the area may be attacked. The fact that residents were not able to remove the armed groups operating in the area, moreover, does not make the residents legitimate targets.

The IDF’s use of the term “the Officers’ residence” misleadingly suggests that the apartments constituted a military objective. This nomenclature is apparently based on the presence of the small DCO office in Building 15, and/or because families of PA officials, including members of various PA security services, were among the residents of the complex. The officer in charge of the northern DCO office, Lt. Col. Munir Salha, said, “It seems that the Israelis are treating our presence here as if we are a military installation, but we are not…. We are a liaison office, located in the middle of a civilian complex, not a military target.”³²⁶ Human Rights Watch asked the IDF to explain its use of the term “Officers’ residence” with regard to the Nada Apartments. In its October 12 response the IDF did not provide an explanation, but merely stated that “the intention was to refer to the Officers’ residence and the surrounding areas (within a radius of a kilometer and a half).” The IDF did not indicate how many or what proportion of these rockets it believed had been fired from the apartment complex itself or its immediate vicinity. Nor did the IDF respond directly to the question of whether Palestinians had fired any rockets from the complex or immediate vicinity, rather than the kilometer-square adjoining empty area, on the days that IDF artillery repeatedly struck the apartment complex.