The bloodshed in the Gaza conflict continues with both Israeli and Palestinian civilians paying the highest costs.

Recent investigation by Amnesty International has found that Israeli and Hamas forces have used internationally acquired arms in their attacks. Amnesty has called the nature of their attacks indiscriminate towards civilians and possibly deliberate.

Both sides have been quick to deny findings of the report, claiming usage of munitions has been within legal bounds of international law. The breech, according to Amnesty, is in the misuse of usual combat weapons in densely populated civilian areas.

The most recent controversy centers on Israeli forces striking Gaza civilians with white phosphorous rounds. Conventionally used as a smokescreen on the battlefield, each detonated shell has the capacity to cover more than the area of a football field. But civilians of Gaza have suffered extensive injuries from the corrosive substance burning through their skin, muscle, and even bone.

Donatella Rovera, the head of an Amnesty fact-finding mission to southern Israel and Gaza, has called both Israel’s phosphorous attacks and the rocket attacks by Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups “war crimes” and “serious violations of international humanitarian law”. However, neither side is willing to recognize its actions as human rights offenses.

Amnesty is now urging for the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, and for all states to suspend arms transfers there until it can be assured that foreign-supplied armaments will no longer be used in committing human rights violations.

To read Amnesty International’s full report, download it here.

LEARN MORE

Read the Nobel Women’s Initiative Statement on the Attacks on Gaza.

Israel-Hamas arms embargo urged, BBC News, 23 February 2009.

Gaza case studies: Weapons use, BBC News, 23 February 2009.

TAKE ACTION

Support groups working on the ground: See Global Fund for Women for a list.

Sign a petition to the UN Security Council demanding action to end the violence: Visit avaaz.org to sign on.