Israel Admits Troops May Have Used White Phosphorus Shells

By Tana Ganeva

After weeks of denying that they had used white phosphorus in heavily-populated areas of Gaza, the IDF has admitted that Israeli forces may have used the napalm-like chemical in violation of both international law and the Israeli military’s own policy. The Guardian reports:

According to senior IDF officers, quoted today in the Ha’aretz newspaper, the Israeli military made use of two different types of phosphorus munitions.  The first, they insisted, was contained in 155mm artillery shells, and contained "almost no phosphorus" except for a trace to ignite the smoke screen. The second munitions, at the centre of the inquiry by Col Alkalai, are standard phosphorus shells – both 88mm and 120mm – fired from mortars.

About 200 of these shells were fired during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, and of these – say the IDF – 180 were fired on Hamas fighters and rocket launch crews in northern Gaza. Alkalai is investigating the circumstances in which the remaining 20 shells were fired, amid compelling evidence on the ground that phosphorus munitions were involved in the attack on a UN warehouse and a UN school.

The use of phosphorus as an incendiary weapon as it now appears to have been used against Hamas fighters – as opposed to a smoke screen – is covered by the Convention of Certain Conventional Weapons to which Israel in not a signatory.

However, Israel also is obliged under the Geneva Conventions and customary international humanitarian law to give due care to protecting the civilian population when deciding on appropriate military targeting and response to hostile fire, particularly in heavily built up areas with a strict prohibition on the use of indiscriminate force.

Amnesty International, which issued a statement yesterday accusing Israel of war crimes, reports on the effects of white phosphorus on the human body:

The team … visited the Shifa hospital, Gaza’s main hospital, where they spoke to medical staff about the challenges of dealing with phosphorus burns and other injuries. The head of the burns unit told the team that at first, they had not known that they were dealing with injuries caused by white phosphorus. He described unusual orange burns which would become deeper with an offensive odour. After several hours smoke would start coming from the wound.

"We had a child of three years with a head injury. After three hours we changed the dressing and saw smoke coming out of the wound. We opened the wound and brought out this wedge. We had not seen it before. Later on, some colleagues, doctors from Egypt and Norway, were able to enter Gaza and told us that this was white phosphorus," said the doctor

"We noticed various things about this: the burn does not heal; the phosphorus may remain inside the body and goes on burning there, and the general condition of the patient deteriorates – normally with 10-15 percent burns you would expect a cure, now many such patients die."

Other strange injuries were caused by unusual weapons (possibly including Deep Inert metal Explosive – DIME weapons) which doctors did not know how to deal with. "We had eight amputations on one day – normally, the patients should all have lived, but they all died. We don’t understand it," one doctor told the team.

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