Israeli military chiefs were warned

Military chiefs were warned that change of safety margin for gunners risked killing the innocent

11.13.2006 -- Israeli military commanders drastically reduced the 'safety' margins that separate artillery targets from the built-up civilian areas of Gaza earlier this year, despite being warned that the new policy risked increasing Palestinian civilian deaths and injuries, The Observer can reveal.

The warning, delivered in Israel's high court by six human rights groups, came after the Israeli Defence Force reduced the so-called 'safety range' in Gaza from a 300-metre separation from built-up areas to just 100 metres - within the kill radius of its 155mm high-explosive shells, generally regarded as being between 50 and 150 metres.

Disclosure of the new shelling policy, which went largely unnoted at the time, has emerged in international outcry over the latest artillery incident by Israeli gunners shelling Gaza - the killing of 19 members of an extended family in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. It was the highest Palestinian civilian toll in a single incident since the current conflict erupted in September 2000. The deaths were caused when what witnesses described as a volley of tank shells hit a built-up civilian area.

The revelation follows reports that the shelling of Gaza has continued despite the recent recognition by senior Israeli military officers, including the head of the IDF's Southern Command, that indirect artillery fire (ie, firing without seeing the target) was largely pointless in countering Palestinian rocket fire.

According to Human Rights Watch, since September 2005 Israel has fired about 15,000 rounds at Gaza while Palestinian militants have fired around 1,700 back. The latest disclosures come as an Arab-backed motion condemning Israel's Gaza offensive was being circulated for debate at the UN Security Council and amid widening demonstrations in capitals of the Middle East.

As more details of the Beit Hanoun incident have emerged, including Israel's admission that the shells that killed the family were in response to the firing of Qassam rockets, probably from a car driven into the area by militants the previous day, they have raised more questions than they have answered.

The IDF has claimed a fault in the artillery radar system's co-ordinates for the missiles changed the margin of error from 25 to 200m, but that still does not explain why it waited until the following day to return fire to a general area - a policy that the Israeli peace group B'Tselem describes as a 'war crime'.

As well as provoking international concern, the Beit Hanoun killings have pushed into the open deep misgivings within the Israeli military itself over its use of artillery - and the capabilities of Israeli gunners - both in Gaza, and in the recent war in Lebanon, as an effective response to missile fire.

As a point of comparison, between June 2004 and July 2006, 14 civilians (six of them minors) were killed by Qassam gunfire fired by Palestinians into Israeli territory and at settlements in the Gaza Strip. In the four weeks from 26 June-24 July this year, however, IDF actions in the Gaza Strip to end the Qassam rocket fire caused the death of 126 Palestinians, 63 of whom did not participate in the hostilities. Twenty-nine of these were minors. According to the UN, since the end of June 450 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.

Among those who have been loudly critical of the Israeli tactics in Gaza following Beit Hanoun is Lt Col Ron Ben Yishai, defence correspondent of the newspaper Yediot Aharonot. 'Artillery is a weapon system designed to "cover" territory and not hit specific targets, particularly when it is used as "preventative fire" at territories rather than a specified target,' he wrote last week.

'These facts are well known to IDF officials, particularly after the recent Lebanon war when about 130,000 artillery shells were fired. Now it is clear that the effectiveness of this weapon against Hizbollah fighters was marginal, while the economic cost was astronomical and reached millions of dollars.