Gaza: Armed Palestinian Groups Commit Grave Crimes

[barb162]

Gaza: Armed Palestinian Groups Commit Grave Crimes
Fighters Execute Captives, Attack Hospital, Put Journalists at Serious Risk

(New York, June 13, 2007) – During recent fighting in the Gaza Strip, armed Palestinian groups have committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, in some cases amounting to war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today.
snip
“These attacks by both Hamas and Fatah constitute brutal assaults on the most fundamental humanitarian principles,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director for Human Rights Watch. “The murder of civilians not engaged in hostilities and the willful killing of captives are war crimes, pure and simple.”

On Sunday, Hamas military forces captured 28-year-old Muhammad Swairki, a cook for President Mahmoud Abbas’s presidential guard, and executed him by throwing him to his death, with his hands and legs tied, from a 15-story apartment building in Gaza City. Later that night, Fatah military forces shot and captured Muhammad al-Ra’fati, a Hamas supporter and mosque preacher, and threw him from a Gaza City high-rise apartment building. On Monday, Hamas military forces attacked the home in Beit Lahiya of Jamal Abu al-Jadiyan, a senior Fatah official, captured him, and executed him on the street with multiple gunshots. On Tuesday, there were reports of additional killings of individuals not involved in hostilities.

In addition, Fatah and Hamas forces engaged in battles in and around two Gaza Strip hospitals on Monday. After Hamas fighters killed Fatah intelligence officer Yasir Bakar, Fatah gunmen began firing mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, drawing Hamas fire from inside the building, killing one Hamas and one Fatah fighter. At a hospital in Beit Hanun, three family members with ties to Fatah, `Id al-Masri and his sons, Farij and Ibrahim, were killed, and others wounded. Hospital officials reported that the three were being treated for injuries sustained earlier. One was reportedly shot at close range.

snip
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2007/06/13/isrlpa16156.htm

[MADem]

1. Not surprising at all. Anyone here remember Robert Stethem?

He was a Navy Petty Officer, a Diver, on a TWA flight out of Athens 22 years ago. He was executed (after being tortured) in Beirut with a bullet to the head by a couple of Hizb'Allah goons and tossed on the tarmac.

This sort of "representational killing" while reprehensible, isn't new or uncommon in the region. I'm betting that the attitude is that there are 'no civilians' in the Hamas vs. Fatah battlefront, in the view of the perpetrators of these murders.

It's a bit different than the standard beheadings that have lately been popular with Western victims primarily in Iraq (because we find that especially gruesome, you see), but this particular method has no doubt been chosen because it is a REAL attention getter. Messing up the body with a long fall makes it tough to do the ritual washing prior to burial, certainly; and letting the families, friends and military cohorts know that the guy was alive on the way down, well, that's terra-icing on the cake.

It's a "We mean business" statement, and, while horrific, is probably viewed as more of a War SOP tactic than as a war crime over that way.

It's like hostage taking--culturally reprehensible in the USA, it's seen as a 'par for the course' strategy over that way, and one with a very long history, too.

It's all a matter of perspective. One person's "take no prisoners, with us or agin' us" attitude is another person's war crime (for the record, I'm with the "war crime" crew, but I am simply noting that there is, even if we might not like it, a cultural divide on this issue).

At any rate, the gloves are really off now. This is an unfortunate mess. I don't see how they'll be able to stop this absent abject surrender from one faction, likely FATAH unless they can do some serious retaliatory damage, as Hamas seems to have the upper hand right now, or fight to the end....