Will Israel be held accountable for war crimes?

 Like tens of thousands of Gazans, Aymen al-Djaroucha had to flee his home with his family last month during the 11 days of fighting between the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups, mainly Hamas, which controls the blockaded enclave.

Birds sing outside the window of his office as the father of three explains what it feels like to leave the place where you’ve spent the last 12 years – without any of your belongings.

“You have all your memories there, it’s where our children grew up, where we spent time with each other and shared happy moments and difficult moments. All my life was there.”

But, he had to leave. The Israeli military phoned the apartment block’s caretaker on May 14 to warn families to evacuate. They bombed it less than an hour later, destroying several flats and causing a fire that ripped through the building.

He has since been back to assess the scale of the damage and to “try to return to my normal life”, he says.

“The flats above the eighth floor were badly destroyed by the fire and it was very hard for the civil defence to extinguish it. We have a lot of repairs to do inside and on the stairwell and a lot of cleaning.”

‘Get back to normal’

It was one of several high-rise buildings in Gaza City targeted by Israeli air strikes, including the al-Jalaa building that housed several media organisations, such as Al Jazeera and The Associated Press bureaus.

The skyline of the metropolis – home to almost 600,000 people – has been significantly altered since May 10 when hostilities escalated.

Along with at least 2,000 housing units destroyed and more than 15,000 other units damaged, Gaza’s already run-down infrastructure was also badly hit.

The United Nations reported that six hospitals, nine healthcare centres and a water desalination plant were damaged during the fighting.

Al-Djaroucha, who works as the project coordinator in Gaza for Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF), says their burns and trauma clinic was damaged by an air strike.

“Not only the whole waiting area was affected but also one of the main sterilisation rooms, which we use to prepare materials and to sterilise the tools which we use in all our outpatient departments. So it’s vital that we are able to get back to normal as quickly as possible.”

Roads leading to Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in the Gaza Strip, were also damaged, along with the only COVID-19 testing laboratory in the enclave.

Israel’s military claims it was only targeting buildings with links to Hamas and other armed groups. However, Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Human Rights Centre based in Gaza, refutes this.

“It wasn’t Hamas targeted; it wasn’t PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] targeted; it wasn’t Islamic Jihad targeted. I believe it was civilians targeted,” he says.

“From the first hour of the first day [of the recent escalation], civilians were the targets of these most high-tech airplanes – F16 and F35 – with rockets designed for military targets and you see these things targeting precisely. Tens of children and women killed. Nothing can justify that,” he adds. 

Yael Stein, research director at B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, believes that Israel’s bombardment of civilian structures within Gaza violates international law.

Israel does not accept the ICC’s jurisdiction, Stein says the court can work without Israel’s acceptance.

The number of Palestinians killed last month in Gaza stands at 256, including 66 children. In Israel, 13 people were killed, including two children.

The Palestinian Human Rights Centre’s Sourani, who has lived through the previous three wars, says he has never experienced anything like this latest period of violence. “I’m honestly telling you that for 11 days I never thought dawn would come and I would see the sun rise again.”

Every family in Gaza has been affected: many loved ones lost, livelihoods destroyed and homes reduced to rubble, Sourani says.

“What did the al-Hadidi family do [to deserve this]?” he asks, referring to the family that lost 10 members in an Israeli air strike – only the father and baby boy survived.

Accountability, he says as the call to prayer echoes in the background, “means that this will not be repeated once again”.