White phosphorus and chicken coops

Accurate casualty counts have been notoriously hard to pin down. The report lists several estimates for Palestinian deaths, ranging from 1,166 (the Israeli figure) to 1,444 (the Gazan government's estimate). NGOs place the death toll somewhere in the middle.

On the Israeli side, 4 people were killed in Israel (3 civilians and one soldier), and 9 Israeli soldiers were killed inside Gaza. Four of those deaths were caused by friendly fire.

Illegal attacks

Around p. 11, the report starts to focus on specific Israeli military actions. Goldstone is concerned with the legality of those actions under international law.

Israel attacked six police stations, according to Goldstone, four of them in the "first minutes" of the war in December 2008. Roughly 240 police officers were killed by the IDF, representing roughly 15% of total Palestinian casualties.

Israel justified the attacks by arguing that many Gaza police officers are also members of armed groups affiliated with Hamas. They might not have been combatants at the moment they were killed, in other words, but they could easily become combatants. The report acknowledges that many of the officers killed were Hamas supporters, but concludes that Israel's attacks were still illegal.

The Mission finds that, while a great number of the Gaza policemen were recruited among Hamas supporters or members of Palestinian armed groups, the Gaza police were a civilian law-enforcement agency. The Mission also concludes that the policemen killed on 27 December 2008 cannot be said to have been taking a direct part in hostilities and thus did not lose their civilian immunity from direct attack as civilians on this ground. (p. 12)

Other military actions were more clearly illegal, according to the report. It describes an attack on the Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City: The IDF used white phosphorus shells, which caused fires that burned for an entire day. Goldstone says the IDF gave the hospital no advance warning of an attack, and found no evidence that Hamas fighters were using the hospitals to launch attacks.

The report concludes that Israel was generally "reckless" in its use of white phosphorus weapons. It also acknowledges allegations that Israel used depleted uranium weapons, but those charges were not investigated.

The IDF also bombed a temporary shelter at the al-Fakhura junction, where nearly 1,400 people were sheltered. The report acknowledged that a small number of legitimate military targets were camped at the shelter, but concluded that the IDF should not have attacked.

In drawing its legal conclusions on the attack against al-Fakhura junction, the Mission recognizes that for all armies proportionality decisions, weighing the military advantage to be gained against the risk of killing civilians, will present very genuine dilemmas in certain cases. The Mission does not consider this to be such a case. (p. 14)

The report acknowledges that Hamas fighters "were present in urban areas" during the war.

The Mission found no evidence, however, to suggest that Palestinian armed groups either directed civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or that they forced civilians to remain within the vicinity of the attacks. (p. 12)

The report does document several instances of Israeli soldiers using Palestinian civilians as human shields.

An economic catastrophe

The mission goes on to examine Israel's decision to target Gaza's infrastructure. Israeli jets destroyed Gaza's one working flour mill, for example; Goldstone concludes that it "may constitute a war crime," because the attack denies food to Gaza's civilian population. Goldstone draws the same puzzled conclusion about Israel's decision to target chicken coops.

The chicken farms of Mr. Sameh Sawafeary in the Zeitoun neighbourhood south of Gaza City reportedly supplied over 10 per cent of the Gaza egg market. Armoured bulldozers of the Israeli forces systematically flattened the chicken coops, killing all 31,000 chickens inside, and destroyed the plant and material necessary for the business. The Mission concludes that this was a deliberate act of wanton destruction not justified by any military necessity and draws the same legal conclusions as in the case of the destruction of the flour mill. (p. 18)

Perhaps even more egregious was Israel's decision to destroy a raw sewage lagoon at the Gaza Waste Water Treatment Plant, which unleashed more than 200,000 cubic meters of raw sewage onto nearby farmland (p. 18).

The report finds that Israel launched several missiles at different points along the lagoon, and concludes that it is "unlikely" to be a mistake. In other words: Israel deliberately targeted the sewage lagoon, a target which has zero military significance.

Goldstone describes the targeting of infrastructure as a deliberate choice by the Israeli government.

In the framing of Israeli military objectives with regard to the Gaza operations, the concept of Hamas' "supporting infrastructure" is particularly worrying as it appears to transform civilians and civilian objects into legitimate targets. (p. 21)

Psychological damage in Israel

Moving towards the end of the executive summary now. The report shifts gears to focus on Hamas rocket attacks against Israel. More than 8,000 rockets were fired in the months leading up to the war; the rockets eventually reached as far as Ashdod, 40km north of the Gaza Strip. The rockets caused few casualties, but the report says they damaged the local economy and caused widespread psychological trauma for residents.

Data gathered by an Israeli organization in October 2007 found that 28.4% of adults and 72-94% of children in Sderot suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. 1596 people were reportedly treated for stress-related injuries during the military operations in Gaza while over 500 people were treated following the end of the operations.

[...] These acts would constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity. (p. 32)

Goldstone says the damage would be far worse were it not for a $460 million early warning system installed by the Israeli government. The report worries, though, that the early warning system does not protect Palestinian Israeli villages, which can be hit by Palestinian rockets (which are fired indiscriminately, with little attempt to acquire targets).