Gaza offensive: Israeli military says no war crimes committed

Investigation declares Israeli soldiers' confessions exaggerated stories of civilian casualties in Gaza


The Israeli military has concluded that no war crimes were committed during its recent offensive in the Gaza Strip, dismissing as "hearsay" the testimonies of soldiers who allegedly admitted intentionally killing Palestinian civilians.

Closing an investigation into wrongful shootings, the Israeli army declared soldiers' confessions relating to two incidents were "purposely exaggerated" and not supported by facts.

One case involved the killing of an elderly woman by a rooftop sniper, and another involved a sniper fatally shooting a mother and two children who had entered a no-go zone.

After talking to soldiers who made the claims, Israeli military investigators concluded that the two incidents never took place and that the young men who made the allegations had embellished the stories during a seminar at a military preparatory school.

The military police found that "crucial components of their descriptions were based on hearsay and not supported by specific personal knowledge", the army said in a statement.

The army's chief prosecutor accused the soldiers of harming Israel's international image. "It will be difficult to evaluate the damage done to the image and morals of the Israel Defence Forces and its soldiers ... in Israel and the world," Brigadier General Avichai Mendelblit said.

Human rights groups accused the military of carrying out a biased and hasty inquiry that ignored key evidence and urged an independent body be formed to investigate Israeli army activity in Gaza.

The soldiers' accounts set off soul-searching in a country where the military is widely revered and where most civilians are conscripted aged 18. They also echoed Palestinian allegations that Israel's assault did not distinguish between civilians and combatants, and fuelled assertions by some international rights groups that Israel violated the rules of war.

Israel used unprecedented force during the three-week operation, launched against Gaza's Hamas rulers last December to halt eight years of rocket attacks on Israeli border towns. After a week of aerial bombardments, the military launched a two-week ground offensive.

More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including more than 900 civilians, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which published a list of names of the dead. Israel has said the toll was lower, and the "vast majority" of the dead were militants. But it did not publish a list to support the assertion.

In a joint statement, nine Israeli rights groups said the decision to close the investigation without bringing charges "only strengthens the need for the attorney general to allow for an independent nonpartisan investigative body to be established in order to look into all Israeli army activity" in Gaza.

Defense minister, Ehud Barak, said the investigation showed that Israel possesses "the most moral army in the world".

The closure of the investigation came as fighting again escalated on the Gaza-Israel border. Today Israeli forces killed two Palestinian militants and wounded three, a Gaza health official said, in one of the worst flare-ups since Israel's ended its offensive in the territory more than two months ago. An Israeli soldier was slightly wounded in the fighting, the military said.