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Amnesty accuses IDF of war crimes Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/429150.htmlhttp://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/429150.html
Last update - 02:13 19/05/2004
Amnesty accuses IDF of war crimes
By Arnon Regular and Nathan Guttman
Amnesty International yesterday accused Israel of war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Convention in its destruction of Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the past three years of fighting.
The report's release coincided with an Israel Defense Forces operation in Rafah, on the Israeli-Egyptian border, where Israel was poised to knock down more houses to widen the Philadelphi buffer zone in the army's battle against weapons smuggling.
Amnesty said that Israel has demolished more than 3,000 homes during the current conflict, most of them in Gaza.
Israel also destroyed 10 percent of Gaza's agricultural land and uprooted more than 226,000 trees there in 2002 and 2003, it added.
The report said that demolition and destruction are "grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are war crimes" and urged Israel to halt the practices immediately. Amnesty also charged that the house demolitions are linked to Israeli intentions to take over West Bank and Gaza land.
The report was released hours after the annual U.S. State Department report, released Monday in Washington, which criticized the IDF's record in the territories as poor and noted that relations between troops and international activists had deteriorated in the past year.
The Amnesty report's main points are similar to those in last year's report: It accuses Israel of excessive use of force, leading to "numerous deaths"; of strict closures and arbitrary arrests of Palestinians, of hindering Palestinian medical personnel, and of detaining pedestrians and drivers at checkpoints.
"In the vast majority of cases, it's wanton destruction," said Amnesty's Donatella Rovera, a co-author of the report. "It's unnecessary, disproportionate, unjustified and deliberate."
In response, the Foreign Ministry said that the army only demolished buildings used by militants to fire on troops or hide smuggling tunnels. It blamed militants for using civilian homes as cover for their attacks.
"When terrorists fire from within civilian structures or activate roadside charges from trees and fields, military necessity dictates the demolition of these locations," it said. "Under international law, these structures are considered legitimate military targets. Therefore, in the midst of combat, when dictated by operational necessity, Israeli security forces may lawfully destroy structures used by terrorists."
Amnesty countered that the destruction of property in the territories is disproportionate to Israel's security needs.
Along with calling on Israel to stop demolitions, the 65-page report also said that Palestinian authorities should take "all possible measures" to stop attacks against Israelis and to keep militants from initiating armed confrontations in civilian areas.
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