Gaza: The high civilian death toll in Gaza has raised questions over the quality of training of Israeli gunners and their rules of engagement in heavily populated areas.
The questions were given new urgency after a UN-run school was hit by five artillery shells on Wednesday, killing 16 civilians and injuring 100, mostly women and children, and the deaths of 17 others in a market, as the Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF) Operation Protective Edge against Hamas entered its 24th day. The IDF has repeatedly cited targeting errors, and blamed Hamas for operating in civilian areas.
However, Andrew Exum, a former US army officer who has studied Israel’s campaigns, said the IDF had a long history of mistakes causing many civilian casualties.
“Errant artillery and air strikes have unfortunately been something of a theme in Israel’s conflicts in both southern Lebanon and Gaza over the past two decades. There are good strategic reasons to avoid using air power and artillery in these conflicts: they tend to be pretty indiscriminate in their effects and make it difficult for the population under fire to figure out what they’re supposed to do to be safe,” said Exum, who was a defence department special adviser on the Middle East.
“In 2006 and 2008, it was pretty clear the IDF’s combined armed skills — their ability to integrate artillery and air power into ground campaigns — had atrophied since the withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. But I don’t know whether the issue remains poor training, a lack of forward observers talking to the artillery batteries and aircraft, or commanders who just don’t think avoiding civilian casualties is a priority.”
“When a stray shell killed 23 Palestinian civilians, including nine children, in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza in November 2006, it was found it was caused by a faulty programming card in a counter-battery radar system, called Shilem, designed to track an enemy projectile’s trajectory back to its point of origin and direct artillery fire back at that spot. The inquiry also found that the artillery crew had not recalibrated their weapons overnight and did not have spotters monitoring whether their fire was accurate, so 12 to 15 artillery shells were fired before it was realised they were hitting an apartment complex. It is not clear what changes the IDF made to its targeting methods as a result.”
Retired brigadier general Shlomo Brom insisted there was no inherent problem in IDF training, saying: “The Israeli artillery corps has gone through the same development the Israeli air force has gone through, and most of the ammunition it launches, including shells launched by guns, is accurate guided ammunition, and there is no problem with the training of the crews.
“If there are problems of targeting it is probably the product of gaps in intelligence ... and collateral damage that is caused by Hamas’ use of the cover of the civilian population,” said Brom, now a senior research associate at the Institute for National Security Studies, in Tel Aviv.
However, observers say the IDF is still using unguided, indirect fire with high-explosive shells, which they argue is inappropriate for a densely populated area like Gaza. The biggest artillery weapon being used is a 155mm howitzer.
THE GUARDIAN
