More details told of Israeli war acts

JERUSALEM - An increasingly disturbing picture of the Israeli army's conduct in the Gaza war emerged yesterday, as new witness accounts from Israeli troops described wanton vandalism to Palestinian homes, humiliation of civilians, and loose rules of engagement that resulted in unnecessary civilian deaths.

The revelations of soldier conduct over the last two days have set off soul-searching and alarm in a country where the military is widely revered. They also have echoed Palestinian allegations that Israel's assault did not distinguish between civilians and combatants, at a time when some international human-rights groups contend Israel violated the laws of war.

Israel launched the 22-day offensive Dec. 27 in what it said was an effort to end years of Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which surveyed casualties, says 1,417 people were killed, including 926 civilians.

Israel has disputed the findings, saying most of the dead were legitimate targets. Thirteen Israelis also died in the fighting.

The Israeli government has insisted it did all it could to prevent civilian casualties. On Thursday, the army ordered a criminal inquiry into its own soldiers' reports that some troops killed civilians, including children, by hastily opening fire, confident that the relaxed rules of engagement would protect them.

The inquiry was based on postwar testimony from a gathering of soldiers involved in the offensive, published in a military institute's newsletter and leaked to two Israeli newspapers.

The Haaretz daily published additional details yesterday, and the transcript of the session was obtained by the Associated Press.

According to one account, an elderly woman was shot dead while walking on a road. The soldier who described the incident, identified only as Aviv, said it was not clear whether she was a threat.

"From the description of this story, I simply felt it was murder in cold blood," Aviv said, according to the transcript.

In one instance, Aviv said, members of his unit were sent to take over a house by bursting in, going up floor by floor, and shooting anyone they saw.

"I call this murder," he said. "From above they said it was permissible, because anyone who remained in the sector and inside Gaza City was in effect condemned, a terrorist, because they hadn't fled."

In the end, he said, he managed to change the order so residents would be given five minutes to leave their homes, drawing protests from other soldiers. "Anyone who's in there is a terrorist, that's a known fact," he quoted another soldier as saying.

The army said it had no additional comment beyond Thursday's announcement of the inquiry.

Another soldier, Ram, described what appeared to be a rift between secular and religious soldiers. "What I do remember in particular at the beginning is the feeling of an almost religious mission," he said. He described a "huge gap" between background material provided by the army's education corps, and religious material distributed by the army's rabbinate.

Earlier this year, the military "severely reprimanded" an officer for distributing a religious booklet urging soldiers to show no mercy to their enemies. The army said that the booklet was based on the writings of an ultranationalist rabbi and that the chief military rabbi had not approved it.