Rights group petitions UN special rapporteur on Israeli killings in Rafah

The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights Tuesday submitted a letter of allegation to the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on “extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions” concerning the Israeli killing of five men and one child during recent Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, according to a press release published Wednesday. An Israeli air strike struck a house in the Rafah refugee camp on Thursday while the victims were having their end of fast (iftar) meal. Among the six killed was Malek Khalid Sha’ath, the two-year-old son of one of those killed in the strike. “The airstrike was carried out in a residential block of the Rafah refugee camp, near a mosque and other civilian structures,” said the statement. While Israel claimed the air strike came in retaliation against an earlier attack in southern Israel where eight people were killed, “however, no information as to the origin, affiliation, or even identity of the attackers was known at the time,” said the release. It said that to date Israel has presented no evidence that the attackers were linked to the Popular Resistance Committee (PRC), which Israel claimed was behind the attack even though it has denied responsibility, or had any connection to Gaza whatsoever. “Indeed, at present there is no independently confirmed information at all about the attackers’ identity or even nationality,” it said. “Regardless of the character of the attacks in Israel, the airstrike in Rafah amounts to a grave breach of international law, on several grounds,” charged Al-Mezan. “The attack was in the first instance indiscriminate, as it made no distinction between political and military members of the PRC, and was carried out with no regard at all for the life of the two-year-old boy present in the house or the lives and safety of other civilians who could have been in the house and the surrounding neighborhood.” Al-Mezan said “the attack was indisputably an extrajudicial execution. There was no pretense of judicial process surrounding the killing, which did not take place in a situation of armed combat characterized by imminent military necessity, the only legal circumstance under which the state may take the life of a human being without respecting the right to due process.” It said the attack in Rafah is a “prima facie case of extrajudicial killing and therefore falls under the mandate of the Special Rapporteur,” requesting that the rapporteur’s office “undertake an investigation into the Rafah incident and intercede with appropriate states and international bodies to ensure that justice is pursued in this case and that such attacks are not allowed to reoccur.” The Israeli military has killed 592 Palestinians in extrajudicial assassinations in the Gaza Strip from September 2000 to date, said Al-Mezan. Of those, 407 were directly targeted and 185 were passersby, including 109 children. “These acts must be investigated and those responsible for violating international law must be held responsible for their conduct,” it said.