IDF Rocket Kill 11 Palestinians: Eight Civilians Including Two Children and Three Medical Personnel

Gaza youth wounded in IDF missile strike treated by doctors (photo: Reuters)

Israel’s ‘pinpoint accuracy’ targeted assassination policy struck again yesterday as the IDF fired on a vehicle supposedly carrying militants intent on a rocket attack. After the first missile missed its target, the pilot launched a second missile. According to the IDF, after launch, civilians entered the vicinity of the vehicle. Instead of directing the missile away from the target, the pilot decided to let it fly. The result? Eleven dead of whom eight are civilians; among them two children and three medical personnel attempting to treat those injured by the first missile strike (this account from Ynetnews):

IDF sources explained that the first rocket fired from an Israeli military aircraft apparently hit next to the targeted car, and therefore it was decided to aim another missile to ensure that the cell members, which the IDF has been pursuing for a long time, would in fact be hit. The second missile hit the cell members in the car, but also hit nearby civilians.

A senior officer explained that after the second missile was fired, at a certain point civilians were identified near the car, but if they had decided to veer the missile off course, it could have killed even more innocent victims.

[IDF Head of Operations Directorate, Brigadier General Gadi] Eisencott gave details of the preliminary investigation into the incident. “This afternoon an Islamic Jihad cell got into a car very near the launch site, with the intention of firing long-range Grad missiles at Israel.”

“The vehicle was located and munitions were fired at it. Simultaneously, nearby civilians ran towards the car and were hit by a second missile that was fired. When the second missile was fired, no civilians were identified at the target location. As in earlier incidents in which civilians not involved in terrorism were hit, we express deep regret over the incident. With that, we are fulfilling our duties as an army to provide security for the citizens of the State of Israel that live in the Gaza perimeter. That is what we were doing and that is what we will continue to do.”

What the good general neglects to mention or does not comprehend is the fact that killing innocent Palestinians civilians does not “provide security for the citizens of the State of Israel.” It sows hatred among Palestinians and guarantees that there will also be Israeli widows and widowers joining in the suffering of the survivors of these Palestinian victims.

I also found the explanation for not sending the second missile off course to be quite interesting. Doing this “could have killed even more victims.” Even more than the eleven already killed? Or might it be possible that the pilot made a swift mental judgment deciding that a sure kill of three militants was worth the ‘collateral damage’ of possibly killing innocent civilians? I’m sure that calculation never entered the pilot’s mind, aren’t you?

Haaretz’s description of the incident differs in a few telling details and provides quite a lot of reasonable doubt regarding the IDF account:

The incident began shortly after noon, when IAF planes fired a brace of missiles at a van containing four or five Islamic Jihad operatives. According to the IDF, the van also contained GRAD Katyusha rockets; this was confirmed by television footage from the scene of the strike, in which the rockets were visible. The Jihad operatives were apparently en route to launch the rockets at Israel.

The missiles landed near the van, causing only minor damage, and the Jihad operatives quickly abandoned it, apparently unharmed. Some of them then went to a nearby house, while others, aided by the numerous bystanders who had gathered at the site, surrounded the van and apparently tried to extract the Katyushas.

At this point, a second brace of missiles was fired. These missiles, which landed on the sidewalk nearby, killed nine people [current death toll is actually eleven] and wounded more than 20, some of them seriously…

Palestinian eyewitnesses told Haaretz that the second brace of missiles was fired three to four minutes after the first – a gap long enough to enable many civilians to gather at the site. However, a senior IAF officer said that only a minute elapsed between the two missile strikes. According to the officer, a lookout discerned civilians gathering at the site only seven seconds before the second brace hit, and that was not enough time to abort or divert the launch. Had the missiles been diverted at that point, he said, the number of civilian casualties might have been even larger.

Nevertheless, the IDF declined to present any evidence to support its version on Tuesday, even though it has films of the aerial assault in its possession. Moreover, if only a minute elapsed between the launches, it is hard to see how the medical crew would have had time to arrive at the scene.

The last paragraph is of course the most compelling part of the passage and indicates that the IDF report must be taken with a very large grain of salt till it’s willing to provide any hard evidence to prove its account. If three to four minutes elapsed between the first strike and the second, then civilians clearly would’ve had enough time to congregate at the scene and would’ve been clearly visible to both the IDF spotter and pilot indicating that they would’ve deliberately fired on a group that they must’ve known included innocent civilians. Bloodthirsty, if true.

Eisencott’s closing words in the Ynetnews are quite telling and typically deluded:

“Terror will continue for many years. There is no miracle solution that will beat it, but with a series of operations of various types, it can be minimized,” Eisencott said.

I’d change one of his sentences above to: “There is no solution that will beat it.” And certainly botched operations like this one will guarantee that rather than ‘minimizing’ terror, the IDF will exacerbate it.

I’ll close with my regular rant on these horrible occasions: IDF counter terror operations will NOT solve the problem of Palestinian terror. Walls won’t do it. Artillery fire won’t do it. Targeted assassinations won’t do it. The ONLY thing that will is Israel’s government biting the bullet and sitting down with Mahmoud Abbas for final status talks at which both sides make serious compromises in their maximalist positions. The bottom line for Israel is that it must retreat to 1967 borders (with small revisions) and recognize an independent, viable Palestinian state. For the Palestinians, they will have to give up on a literal right of return to Israel proper and they will have to recognize Israel and renounce terror. No amount of military might or terror from either side will substitute for this politically-negotiated outcome.