Bombardment on Gaza City; Can Israel, Palestine Go Before ICC for War Crimes?
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.</s>COSTELLO: All right, these are pictures just taken by CNN of Gaza. You can see huge plumes of smoke over the area, so the bombardment continues. This bombardment comes minutes after we learned that Palestinian leaders of the West Bank are offering a 24-hour truce. According to the official Palestinian news agency, Hamas and Islamic jihad factions agree, though there's still no word from Israel. It is worth noting these leaders are in the West Bank and not in Gaza. Now, as I said, this news comes on the heels of Israel's biggest bombardment yet. Much of Gaza City is still shrouded in smoke and the dust of what had been buildings. Israelis pounded 70 Hamas targets, including a radio station, with some strikes appear to be horrible accidents. Neither Israel nor Hamas will accept the blame for an explosion at a refugee camp that left at least eight children dead. Karl Penhaul spoke with some of those witnesses, including children whose guardians granted us permission to interview them. Karl now joins us from Gaza. Good morning.</s>KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. And let me bring you up to date on what is going on now. Since last night, in fact, the Israelis have been pushing an offensive on all parts of Gaza, as some of the fiercest air strikes that we have seen in the course of this three-week confrontation. And just behind me, in fact, you may still be able to make out some of the smoke there on the eastern horizon of Gaza, some of the largest explosions we've seen at any point during this three-week-old confrontation. It appears Israelis have been dropping 2,000-pound bombs from the air. We've seen at least four of those huge bombs go up from there. Difficult from here to tell what the target may be. It could be some of those tunnel complexes that Israel and its military is so keen to destroy. But, of course, this war is much more than air strikes, about munitions, about troops on the ground. Most of the casualties so far have been civilians. Yesterday, as you say, no different -- again, children in the firing line, children seeing things that they shouldn't have to see.</s>PENHAUL (voice-over): You'll never get to meet little Mohammed. But his friend next door wants to tell you a bit about him. "Top of the class at math, Barcelona football star Lionel Messi was his hero. He would always say Messi was an amazing player. He loved football, he worshipped Messi," she says. Orla (ph) is 12 years old. "Glass sprayed on me so loud, so terrifying I can't even describe it," she says. Mohammed was just yards from his front door. Witnesses say he and the other kids were playing toy guns. They call it doom-doom (ph). The plastic pistol now broken, the children all dead. Annas (ph) reels off their names.</s>PENAHUL: It's a sight he should never have seen. "I saw a boy cut up right there. Over there a man, he looked dead. And I saw a boy who was dead, too," he says. Just 8 years old, he mans up and describes the explosion. A bloody handmark in a doorway, a lucky escape for them, but not for their grandfather. They say he died buying them holiday candy. "I saw Grandpa. His head was cut, his arms and legs were cut, he was all cut up," they say. Witnesses young and old say they heard a drone and then the sound of a missile fired onto their street. While we were there, we saw a militant rocket launched about a mile away. The warring factions blame each other. We've heard their excuses before. But there's no excuse for this. Or this. (on camera): Just look at the hole this shrapnel blasted in this car door. Imagine the damage that that would do to a child's body. (voice-over): As I sit on the pavement with Annas (ph), the ambulance arrived with young Mohammed's body. "I want to go and see my cousin," he says.</s>PENHAUL: Sorry, we may not have met Mohammed, but it's already time to say good-bye.</s>PENHAUL (on camera): Carol, I've stepped out of the way of our camera so that you can see that shot in eastern Gaza. That is what is called the Tufa neighborhood. It has been the scene of fierce fighting between Hamas commandos and the Israeli military. And what we're seeing now is the aftermath of renewed bomb strikes on that area, a series of 2,000-pound bombs slamming into targets across there and that pall of smoke now rising hundreds of feet into the air. Those are, by far, the largest explosions and the most concentrated set of explosions on a single target that we have seen in the course of this three-week confrontation. It is not clear from our vantage point right now what kind of target that may be. It could well be that it is one of the tunnel complexes that the Israeli military said it is going after. Possibly, too, an indication that there could have been Hamas fighters on the ground, but certainly from that type of bunker-busting bombs they're using, probably something very deep underground. I can once again hear fighter jets overhead. It could be that they're coming in for more strikes there. We will keep you informed if they are, Carol.</s>COSTELLO: All right, Karl Penhaul, you stay safe. Thanks so much. The carnage has prompted U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to call not only for a halt in the violence in the Middle East but for those responsible on both sides to be brought to justice. His comments come just days after the U.N. human rights chief said war crimes may have been committed.</s>BAN KI-MON, U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL: The fighting has claimed well over 1,000 Palestinian lives, most of them civilians, hundreds of them children. Hamas rocket fire has claimed the lives of three Israeli civilians. There must be accountability, and justice, for crimes committed by all sides.</s>COSTELLO: Joining me now, Bill Van Esveld, a senior research for Human Rights Watch. In a CNN.com piece, he writes how such charges have not been pursued in the past, saying, quote, "Dismal as Israel's record is in prosecuting war crimes, Hamas has prosecuted no one. West Bank Palestinian leaders intimated they may seek action in the International Criminal Court, which has indiscriminate rocket attacks from Gaza as well as unlawful Israeli air strikes." Bill, welcome and thank you so much for being here.</s>BILL VAN ESVELD, SENIOR RESEARCHER, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: Thanks for having me.</s>COSTELLO: We have seen few war crimes tried in the Hague. Why would this conflict or any other conflict be different?</s>VAN ESVELD: Well, there's a number of factors, one is that this is the third major escalation in Gaza and southern Israel since 2008-09 alone in which hundreds and hundreds of Palestinian civilians have been killed and there have also been Israeli civilians killed by rocket strikes. What's different about this is that the Palestinians now have an open door to go to the International Criminal Court. They did not before. They tried in 2009, after the end of what the Israeli military called Operation Cast Lead. But, at that point, Palestine was not recognized as a state, or rather the court said they couldn't figure out whether Palestine was a state or not so they couldn't accept jurisdiction over it. That problem from the Palestinian perspective has been resolved. The United Nations said Palestine was a non-member observer state in 2012 so that door is now open to them and we're strongly encouraging them to go not just for justice for Palestinian victims but for victims an all sides.</s>COSTELLO: Can the Hague or the U.N. adequately investigate alleged war crimes during an active conflict?</s>VAN ESVELD: Well, investigating war crimes is obviously very difficult at the best of times and even more so when the conflict is ongoing, but I can give you some examples of cases that we have already investigated for Human Rights Watch and that the U.N. has a human rights team on the ground already that's also been looking into some cases. So, for example, you can check out the kind of weapons that have been used in an air strike by the Israeli side. You can talk to witnesses. You can try and double check everything you hear, cross-checking against any militants that have been claimed to have been killed by one of the armed groups, or rather that they claim as martyrs. So you can check whether there was a military target that the Israelis could have been attacking. You can check what kind of munition was used. For example, there was a strike on the Gaza Beach just outside a hotel that was full of journalists and we identified the weapon used as a spike missile, which actually has a camera in the nose of the missile, and that missile can see what it's being shot at and be steered on the way to the target. And yet the target in this case was young boys who'd been playing on the beach. Similarly, you can investigate the rocket attacks on the other side. So it is possible, difficult but possible.</s>COSTELLO: I know the U.N. is actively investigating the shelling of a U.N. school that served as a shelter, 13 died there, many more were wounded. Why is it so difficult in that case to determine who's to blame?</s>VAN ESVELD: Well, in that case, you know, it's a question partly of identifying the weapons used. The Israeli military released a drone video of a mortar hitting the courtyard of the school, but there was damage to other parts of the school as well. We have preliminary information about several types of weapons used there, but we can't be sure yet if they were found in the school or if they might have been brought in from air strikes outside the school, and then taken inside. So you've just got to look at all the evidence, talk to as many witnesses independently as you can, as soon after the attack as you can, check out the physical evidence, check out what both sides are saying. You've just got to look at a huge amount of evidence and it's not easy.</s>COSTELLO: If Hamas is to blame for the deaths of its own civilians and some people claim Hamas is causing the deaths of civilians on purpose, could it, too, be brought to justice?</s>VAN ESVELD: Yes, it certainly could be. Members of Palestinian armed groups who are responsible for deliberately launching rockets at Israeli cities, which are full of civilians, you know, civilians cannot be attacked by either side, by the Israelis or the Palestinians. So yes, absolutely. But I would just say that there's a lot of, I think, misleading or not helpful discussion about human shielding on the Hamas side. And there's a very specific legal definition for human shielding, and that's forcing a civilian to be right next to your military target when you're shooting a rocket or something like that. We haven't seen that kind of forcing or coercion happen yet, although we are investigating it. So that's just to say that it's not necessarily illegal to fight in an urban environment and I say that because, this is often used as an excuse for Israeli air strikes that are described as tragic mistakes, but really the blame is all on Hamas and that's not correct. Each side is responsible for what it's doing and just because your enemy is violating the laws of war, doesn't allow you to.</s>COSTELLO: Bill Van Esveld with Human Rights Watch, thanks so much. I appreciate it.</s>VAN ESVELD: Thank you.</s>COSTELL: I'll be right back.