|
Timeline of Events
Sources:
CAMERA
Wikipedia
Tablet Mag
2008
December 19: Hamas declares the tahdia to be officially over. During the six-month truce, 223 rockets and 139 mortar shells were fired into Israel from Gaza.
December 24: Hamas launches "Operation Oil Stain" in which it claims that a total of 87 shells--including 54 mortar shells, 31 homemade projectiles which Hamas calls "Qassam", and two Soviet-made Grad missiles--were fired at Israeli targets on the Gaza border
December 27: Operation Cast Lead begins as the Israeli air force begins attack against Hamas headquarters, smuggling tunnels, rocket factories and other targets. Hundreds of Palestinians, mostly Hamas fighters, are killed. Hamas fires scores of rockets and mortars are fired into Israel.
Over 3,200 rockets and mortar shells were fired on Israel from Gaza during 2008.
2009
Jan. 1, 2009: Israel bombs the home of Hamas terror leader Nizar Rayyan, killing him and members of his family.
Jan. 3, 2009: Israel ground troops enter Gaza.
January 3: According to the IDF, a strike on a mosque in Beit Lahiya, which was reported in January by news agencies and allegedly killed at least 10 people, never happened.
January 6: IDF jets drop bombs--intended for a weapons storage facility--on a home,killing 22. The IDF reports that its jets first fired warning shots at the roof of the house, but acknowledges that the standard warning phone call was made to the building that actually contained the weapons, instead of the home that was bombed.
January 6: John Ging, the head of the U.N. relief operation in Gaza, accuses Israel of targeting a U.N. school sheltering hundreds of innocent refugees, claiming they “massacred” 40 people. Three weeks later, Patrick Martin, a reporter for Canada’s Globe and Mail, gets into Gaza and reports that in fact no one inside the school had been killed, though some were injured and at least 24 people in neighboring buildings died. Israel claimed it had been firing at enemy Hamas operatives, drawing fierce protests from U.N. officials, who insisted they were sheltering civilians.
January 7: Human Rights Watch reports that the IDF shot and killed two of the girls of the Abd Rabbo family (aged 2 and 7), wounding the third girl (aged 4) and their grandmother. Pro-Israel NGOs note discrepancies in the accounts.
January 8: The United Nations Security Council passes resolution 1860, which, among other things, calls for "an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza" and condemns "all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism."
January 9: Both Hamas and Israel reject the UN resolution. Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marouk claims that Hamas "was not consulted on this resolution, our vision and the interests of our people were not taken into consideration." Abu Marouk adds that "this resolution does not concern us unless someone comes to enforce it on the ground. When it is enforced on the ground, whatever party which tries to enforce it will have to deal with...(Hamas)." Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says "the IDF will continue operations in order to defend Israeli citizens and will carry out the missions with which it has been assigned in the operation. This morning's rocket fire against residents of the south only proves that the UN Security Council Resolution 1860 is not practical and will not be honored in actual fact by the Palestinian murder organizations."
January 11: Future member of the Goldstone Commission, professor Christine Chinkin signs an editorial published in the Sunday Times calling the operation in Gaza "an act of aggression" and claims that the "invasion and bombardment of Gaza amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s 1.5m inhabitants contrary to international humanitarian and human rights law." She adds "the blockade of humanitarian relief, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and preventing access to basic necessities such as food and fuel, are prima facie war crimes".
January 12: The UN Human Right Council adopts Resolution S-9/1, calling to "dispatch an urgent, independent international fact-finding mission, to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression, and calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully cooperate with the mission."
January 15: The IDF drops three shells on the Al Quds Hospital, a Red Crescent facility, during heavy fighting in Tel Hawwa. The Associated Press reports that 400 patients were trapped inside after the pharmacy building caught fire--likely from a white phosphorous shell that landed near a diesel tank. The IDF say the shelling was prompted by Hamas’ use of medical facilities in Gaza City and elsewhere as cover for firing at IDF forces. In a case reported by Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the facilities were used for detaining members of Fatah and other opposition groups. Israel also complains of multiple cases of Hamas militants using ambulances as escape or transport vehicles, but the Al Quds Hospital incident remains officially under investigation.
January 17: The Israeli cabinet votes in favor of implimenting a unilateral 10-day ceasefire, conditioned on an end to Hamas hostilities. Hamas insists it will continue fighting.
January 18: After firing a barrage of rockets into Israel, Hamas announces a ceasefire, conditioned on a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza within one week. Several more rockets are fired from Gaza after the announcement.
January 18: Operation Cast Lead is officially over.
January 21: Lorenzo Cremonesi reports in Corriere della Sera from Gaza, one of the first independent journalists to go at the end of the combat. He reports that Arab civilians complained to him that Hamas combatants had used them as human shields.
February 11: Special Rapporteur Richard Falk recommends the creation of "an expert inquiry from the perspective of the role of
the Human Rights Council into allegations of war crimes associated with Israeli military operations in Gaza from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009."
April 2009: IDF issues probe, asserting that Hamas senior leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh, took over a ward of the Shifa Hospital, the Gaza Strip's largest, in order to set up a command center for the duration of the campaign.
April 3: U.N. Human Rights Council South announces that African judge Richard Goldstone chosen to lead a United Nations investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Israeli forces. According to Goldstone, his mandate has been expanded to include Palestinian militants in Gaza.
April 20: Human Rights Watch publishes a report entitled "Under Cover of War: Hamas, Political Violence in Gaza", claiming that since December there have been "arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, maimings by shooting, and extrajudicial executions by alleged members of Hamas security forces" with at least 32 people killed. Fatah officials in Ramallah report Hamas executed at least 19 party members and more than 35 Palestinians.
April 22: An IDF investigation publishes report that seven Palestinian medical personnel have been killed by the IDF, of which five were Hamas operatives (including a nephew of the Health Minister in Gaza) and two were civilians.
May 20: Goldstone says the Commission will enter Gaza through Egypt if Israel--claiming the Commission is biased--does not allow the Commission in.
May 24: The Israeli 'Orient Research Group' claimed that 78 of the 89 killed during the first IAF strike were terror operatives, many of them belonging to the al-Qassam Brigades.
June: Human Rights Watch issues a report entitled "Precisely Wrong."
July: The Israeli Government publishes report that some of the reported cases of attacks on medical personnel were based on false information--in one such case the supposedly killed driver of the ambulance was allegedly interviewed on a Hamas website a few days after the incident.
July: The Israeli government releases a report that stated that the IDF uses white phosphorous in exploding munitions and smoke projectiles. According to the report the use of exploding munitions were used by Israeli ground and naval forces. The report defends the use of white phosphorous stating that they were only fired on unpopulated areas for marking and signaling and not as an anti-personnel weapon.
July: Report by human rights NGO 'Breaking the Silence' comes out.
July 2: Amnesty International publishes report, "Operation Cast Lead: 22 Days Of Death And Destruction."
July 6: Private Israeli witnesses and representatives testify in front of the Goldstone Commission, describing several years of living under the threat of rocket attacks.
August: Geneva-based NGO "UN Watch" submits a petition to the UN, calling for the disqualification of Goldstone Commission member professor Christine Chinkin over prior statements she made that bring her impartiality in question. UN Watch further notes that in a May 2009 meeting with Geneva NGOs, professor Chinkin denied that her impartiality was compromised, saying that her statement only addressed jus ad bellum, and not jus in bello; UN Watch contends that the statement not only determined that "Israel’s actions amount to aggression, not self-defence," but additionally charged that they were "contrary to international humanitarian and human rights law," and constituted "prima facie war crimes."
August 13: Human Rights Watch publishes report "White Flag Deaths: Killings of Palestinian Civilians during Operation Cast Lead"
September: In an update to the May 24 Israeli 'Orient Research Group' report, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs claims that among the total of 343 members of the Palestinian security forces who were killed, 286 have been identified as terror organization members.
September 15: The initial 574 page report by the Goldstone Commission is released, titled "Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict". It concludes that the IDF and Palestinian armed forces committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.
September 24: Israeli Government issues critique of several aspects of the report.
September 25: The final 452 page report comes out.
|
Facts 
