IDF sack officers over attack that killed 7 World Central Kitchen aid workers
Israel claims military chiefs thought Hamas fighters had hijacked humanitarian convoy
MORE families will be left grieving unless Israel’s military carries out “systemic change”, aid group World Central Kitchen warned.
It followed the sacking of two Israel Defense Forces officers after an investigation found grave errors led to the deaths of seven aid workers, including three Britons, in Gaza.
Military veterans John Chapman, 57, James Henderson, 33 and James Kirby, 47, were killed in the attack, which sparked global outrage.
One World Central Kitchen car was destroyed by a drone strike on Monday night after it left Deir alBalah warehouse, where a team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian aid.
Two more vehicles were targeted after drone operators saw survivors scrambling into them, the IDF probe concluded.
It claimed drone controllers could not see the World Central Kitchen logo on the top of the vehicles because it was dark. They targeted the convoy after allegedly seeing an armed man on the roof of one.
Yoav Har-Even, head of the IDF Fact Finding and Assessment Mechanism, said this fuelled the belief the cars had been seized by Hamas fighters.
WCK founder Jose Andres claimed the military knew of his aid workers’ movements and targeted them “systematically, car by car”. The charity said the Israeli investigation and the sackings were an important step, but systemic change was needed to prevent “more apologies and more grieving families”.
A statement said: “The IDF has acknowledged its responsibility and its fatal errors in the deadly attack on our convoy in Gaza.
“However, it is also clear from their preliminary investigation that the IDF has deployed deadly force without regard to its own protocols, chain of command and rules of engagement.
“The IDF has acknowledged that our teams followed all proper communications procedures. The IDF’s own video fails to show any cause to fire on our personnel convoy, which carried no weapons and posed no threat.
“Without systemic change, there will be more military failures, more apologies and more grieving families.”
WCK added: “The root cause of the unjustified rocket fire on our convoy is the severe lack of food in Gaza.
“Israel needs to dramatically increase the volume of food and medicine travelling by land if it is serious about supporting humanitarian aid.”
Mr Har-Even said of the drone attacks: “The state of mind at that time was that the humanitarian mission had ended and that they were tracking Hamas vehicles with...at least one suspected gunman, that they misidentified to be inside one of the three cars.
“They struck that car and then they identified people running out of the car and entering a second car, which is when they decided to strike the second car.
“Then two people left the second car and entered the third car, which is when they struck the third car.”
Israel sacked a colonel who authorised the deadly drone strikes and a major for claiming a Hamas terrorist was in the vehicles.
The military team was also relying on grainy drone footage to make their assessments.
Three other officers were reprimanded, the most senior of them being the head of the IDF Southern Command.
The military’s advocate general will now decide whether the officers or anyone else involved should receive further punishment or be prosecuted. Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, who chairs Parliament’s foreign affairs select committee, said it was “devastating” that it had taken six months and the deaths of Western aid workers for Israel to change course over the supply of international humanitarian aid. Ms Kearns rejected claims the air strikes were a mistake, saying the cars were clearly marked and their locations shared with the Israeli military.
Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron was said yesterday to be resisting calls to suspend arms sales to Israel.
It comes despite warnings from senior lawyers that Britain would be in breach of both international and domestic law if exports continued.
Treasury minister Gareth Davies said the UK had “one of the most robust systems of arms exports controls in the world”.
He said responsibilities were “enshrined” in the Export Control Act of 2002.
Yesterday, Jewish people joined demonstrators calling for an end to the Gaza bombardment during an Al-Quds Day rally in London.
The march was organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission in support of Palestinians.