Ramallah: Human Rights and Democracy Media Center- SHAMS, emphasized that targeting the shelters and schools, that host displaced Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, is an insistence by the Israeli occupation to pursue the crimes and mass genocide against Palestinians and intentional targeting of the schools, hospitals, and shelters. Things are not limited to the targeting only, but also, extended to the degree where the occupation leaders claim that these facilities represent leadership and camps for the national resistance groups. Promoting such claims is to justify attacking the shelters and gathering places of Palestinians. Massacres committed against Palestinians are under the mentioned allegation where civilians whose houses are demolished and have gathered in these places. The Israelis followed them to kill the maximum possible number of persons. Shelling Al Nasser Islamic School and Hassan Salama School in Al Nasser area, on Sunday 5/8/2024, comes within this policy of intentional targeting of civilians in the shelters. In the same regard, the occupation recently targeted several shelters including Hamama School in Shaikh Radwan Quarter (close to Al Nasser Quarter), and another school in Al Nussairat Refugee Camp, which indicates that there is a pre-determined policy to target civilians in the shelters. 172 shelters have been shelled (though they are fully occupied by displaced Palestinians), since October 7, 2023, including 152 governmental schools or UNRWA Schools.
SHAMS Center asserted that targeting the shelters comes within the policy of displacing Palestinians and ethnic cleansing that the occupation has practiced since the first day of the aggression. The occupation is targeting civilians intentionally to displace them and force them to leave their locations in a voluntary evacuation. Palestinians are left with no choice where they either leave or be killed by the Israeli war machine. The behavior of the Israeli occupation reveals the ideology of terrorism, genocide, and denial of others’ right to exist that is rooted deeply in Zionism Thought and dedicated to achieving the Talmud and Zionist dream of establishing a pure Jewish State on this land.
SHAMS Center confirmed that targeting the schools and shelters recalls the Israeli crimes and massacres in Qana in the year 1996. The mentioned massacre was committed in South Lebanon and resulted in the killing of 106 civilians and wounding hundreds while they were in a shelter that is a UN building and the UN flag was raised on its top. Additionally, it recalls the massacre of Baher Al Baqar School in Egypt in the year 1970, which resulted in the killing of more than 30 children. History repeats itself and the occupation is still committing the same crimes while the victims are always civilians.
The Center affirmed that targeting schools and shelters represents a profound violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. In particular, it violates the Geneva Fourth Convention (dated 12/8/1949), which affirms special protection for civilians under war and armed conflicts and demands neutralizing them from hostile attacks and military conflicts. Article 15 of the given Convention stresses the protection of: “civilian persons who take no part in hostilities, and who, while they reside in the zones, perform no work of a military character”. Article 49 of the same Convention states: “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive. Forcible displacement of civilians is among the acts that lead to ethnic cleansing crime”. The Occupation violated the Rome Statute, which represents the bylaws of the International Criminal Court, where displacement of civilians is considered a war crime. Article 7 of the Statute states: “For the purpose of this Statute, “crime against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack: d. Deportation or forcible transfer of population”. Article 8 of the Statute states that it is a war crime to: “Transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory”.
SHAMS Center called on the United Nations Secretary-General, the Chairman of the General Assembly, the UN Security Council, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, the International Commission of the Red Cross, and governmental/ non-governmental organizations to urgently intervene and fulfill their legal, humanitarian, and ethical obligations. SHAMS Center urged these bodies to compel the occupation to halt the war crimes of genocide targeting displaced civilians in the Gaza Strip and to ensure that shelters, displacement centers, and schools are protected and kept away from conflict zones and military operations.