Geneva – Ma’an – The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that the Israeli army continues to use its tanks to deliberately run over Palestinian civilians alive and crush their bodies, in addition to using civilians as human shields during its ground operations in the Gaza Strip, as part of the crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip that has been ongoing since the 7th. Since last October.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement that its field team documented a complex crime against a civilian family consisting of an elderly mother and four of her children, including three girls and a granddaughter who is no more than a year and a half old, by storming their home and shooting and throwing bombs directly at them inside their home in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood east of Gaza City, and taking them out of it on the evening of Thursday, June 27, then detaining them while they were injured inside and near Israeli tanks for more than three hours, in a dangerous combat zone and using them a
s human shields, and then running over the mother, “Safiya Hassan Musa al-Jamal”, 65 years old, and killing her, after she was hit by the tracks of an Israeli tank while she was still alive in front of her son.
The elderly woman’s son, Muhannad Al-Jamal, 28, told the Euro-Med team: “We live in Al-Nazzaz Street in Shuja’iyya, east of Gaza. At around 10:00 on Thursday morning, we were surprised to hear the sound of shelling and explosions. We tried to get out but couldn’t. We were surrounded. We entered the house, went up to the first floor, and sat in a room in the middle of the house. We noticed Israeli tanks advancing towards the area. Then the shelling intensified. I noticed a large number of tanks that turned and positioned themselves on our neighbors’ land adjacent to our house. They began to bulldoze and destroy it. Then they raised the Israeli flag on the land. My mother, my three sisters, and my little niece were inside the room. We were careful not to make a sound. After the afternoon or before sunse
t, the tank began firing shells at my brother’s apartment on the ground floor of our house. I gathered my family members and we sat in one of the rooms. We waited for our fate and repeated the Shahada.”
‘After sunset, we heard gunfire in the street, followed by the sound of explosions. It turned out that the soldiers had stormed the house after blowing up a wall and climbed up to us. When they found us in the room, they started shooting randomly at the walls of the room and threw one bomb after another, until they threw five bombs while shooting at us in the room. They were shouting in Hebrew and we did not know what they were saying. I was hit by shrapnel in my back and my sister was hit by shrapnel. My sisters were shouting, ‘We are civilians.’ My mother was hit by a large shrapnel in her chest. Then the soldiers came one after the other, shouting, ‘Be quiet.’ Then they dragged me and forced me to take off my clothes and made me stand against the wall. Then a female soldier came in to my mother and sisters
, and the soldiers were pointing their weapons at me for half an hour. They asked me to carry my mother on my back and lower her down. Then another soldier told me to lower her on a stretcher, so I carried her with another soldier. We got out of the hole that the army had blown up and went out to the nearby land and they put us in the tank, where… The stretcher was brought in with it in front of me, then I went out and they took me back to the house and took my passport, then they lowered me and put handcuffs on my hands, and my sisters were at the door of the tank, and the soldiers asked them to wait, then a soldier came at about 9:45 pm, removed the handcuffs, put handcuffs on my hands and a blindfold on me, and made me stand on a sand dune, and he was shining a laser at me. I felt that they were going to execute me, then he started the tank, and ordered me to get in it, and the soldiers entered the tank, it was a second tank other than the one that had my mother in it, and the tank moved back and forth in
the area, then they lowered me in an area that looked like stairs and I did not know where I was and he asked me to move under their direction. This continued for about 15 minutes amidst offensive insults, then one of the soldiers came and pulled me by my neck and I moved 50 meters and they put me in another tank again, it moved in the place then they lowered me and put me in a tank that had the stretcher that we had carried my mother in and the tank moved, I thought that they were going to take us to a place to treat my mother, then He took me down, and they took my mother down while she was injured and put her on the ground. I knew after a few minutes that we were at the end of Al-Nazzaz Street, Mashtaha roundabout. I asked where I was, and he said an ambulance would come to take your mother. My mother was lying on the ground. There were two tanks on the right and left surrounding the roundabout, and the third was the one I was in. After the soldiers got on the tank they had taken me down from, it started m
oving backwards and ran over my mother.
‘I saw the scene and felt like I lost my mind and started crying and screaming. The tank on the right approached me and wanted to run over me, so I ran away and thought I would be killed, but the two tanks headed towards another street. The tank on the left was going to run over my mother again, but that didn’t happen. Then the tanks turned and pointed their cannons at me, so I got scared and took cover and hid. I started screaming and I could only hear the sound of bullets. I noticed that dogs were approaching my mother’s body, wanting to devour her flesh, so I pushed them away from her. It was around 1:00 AM on Friday. The soldier in the tank knew where he had lowered her and was able to avoid them, but he deliberately ran over her. I couldn’t bear the situation with the gunfire and I couldn’t carry my mother after the tank ran over her. Despite my shock at what happened, I could barely cover my mother and ran away from the place, thinking that if there was an ‘ambul
ance’ as he said, he wouldn’t have run over her,’ Al-Jamal continued. ‘I went looking for my sisters, whose fate I don’t know, and I kept walking, crying, and hearing the sounds of gunfire in the streets. I kept walking until I found someone on a balcony who gave me a bottle of water and told me a safe way to walk until I reached the stairs area where my friends were. I tried to contact anyone to reach my sisters, and later I found out that they were in the Baptist Hospital for treating injuries, and they asked me about my mother, so I told them.’
His sister added to the Euro-Med team: ‘When the soldiers stormed our house and started shooting and throwing bombs, we told them that my mother was injured and dying. We saw her wound was big and a female soldier came to give her first aid. We kept watching them as they tried to treat her and I saw my mother close to death… After they detained us downstairs for a while, they told us to leave, after they had taken my brother and told us to go to Salah al-Din Stre
et. We asked them about my mother and they told us that they would take her to a hospital and they gave us the green light and we walked. We were injured and bleeding and with us was a one-and-a-half-year-old girl. We arrived at 11:30 in an area before the Shuja’iyya junction where there were tanks. There was heavy gunfire and then they started giving the green light until we passed. There was no one in our way until we reached the Baptist Hospital.’
Euro-Med confirmed that it had previously documented many incidents of the Israeli army killing Palestinian civilians by intentionally trampling them alive while they were under the tracks of Israeli tanks.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor recalled the incident in which the Israeli army deliberately ran over the Palestinian Jamal Hamdi Hassan Ashour (62 years old) in the Al-Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City on February 29, after arresting him, handcuffing him with plastic restraints, and interrogating him before running him over with an armored vehic
le. It became clear that the Israeli army ran over the lower half of his body and then the upper half of his body.
Ashour, a father of five, was displaced from his home after it was targeted by Israeli aircraft, killing his nephew. Eyewitnesses told the Euro-Med team at the time that the incident took place on Salah al-Din Street in the al-Zeitoun neighborhood, where Israeli forces surrounded Ashour and his wife inside their home, before arresting him and transferring him to a house designated for interrogating detainees. The forces tied the victim’s hands with plastic handcuffs and then trampled on his body from the legs up, indicating that the victim was alive when he was crushed. The victim was placed on the asphalt rather than the surrounding sand to ensure complete and total crushing.
Euro-Mediterranean previously documented a similar incident when an Israeli tank ran over a temporary shelter caravan in the Taiba Towers area in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, on 23 January, where members of the Gh
anem family were sleeping. The incident resulted in the death of a man and his eldest daughter, and the injury of his three remaining children and his wife.
His daughter, Amina Ghanem (13 years old), reported that an Israeli tank ran over the caravan repeatedly and without warning while they were sleeping, killing her father and older sister, and saving the rest of the family, while she suffered severe pressure in her eyes, which almost caused her to lose her sight.
On December 16, 2023, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor documented Israeli tanks and bulldozers running over and crushing displaced people inside their tents in the courtyard of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, north of the Gaza Strip, killing a number of them, including those injured, in addition to crushing the bodies of dead people who were buried in graves in one part of the courtyard.
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor also documented repeated instances of Israeli military vehicles destroying civilian property, especially veh
icles, during their ground incursions into various areas of the Gaza Strip, with tanks destroying and crushing private vehicles on the streets without any military necessity, reflecting the Israeli army’s intention to systematically and extensively destroy the property of Palestinian citizens.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor stresses that all these violations come in the context of dehumanizing all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and thus justifying and normalizing the brutal and serious crimes committed against them, as killing by crushing under tank tracks is one of the methods used by the Israeli army to kill Palestinians in the Gaza Strip without regard for their humanity, life, pain and dignity. These practices reflect the Israeli army’s desires for revenge against the Palestinians as a nation with the aim of eliminating them as such, and intimidating and destroying them physically and psychologically, as they come in implementation of the public incitements calling for the mass exterminatio
n of Palestinians in Gaza, which were stated by Israeli officials, media professionals and settlers, and as a result of the absolute immunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of these crimes and their continued impunity in light of the failure to take any action to hold them accountable at any level or by any party.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor stated that Israel continues to kill Palestinian civilians on a large scale through aerial and artillery bombardment of residential areas in the Gaza Strip, as well as through escalating the pace of carrying out deliberate killings and extrajudicial executions, through sniping, shooting from drones, and running over, amounting to committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, as crimes in themselves, according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. These violations also constitute a pillar of the crime of genocide committed by Israel against the residents of the Gaza Strip since October 7.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor al
so points out that the widespread destruction of property by the Israeli army, as is happening now in the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood east of Gaza City, and what is happening in Rafah and Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, and what previously happened in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, of the destruction of more than 65% of the buildings there without any military necessity justifying it, and in a wanton manner, is also considered a war crime under the Rome Statute.
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor renews its call for the international community to immediately implement its international obligations to stop the genocide committed by Israel against all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for nearly nine months, and to ensure Israel’s compliance with its international obligations, the Security Council’s ceasefire resolutions, and the measures of the International Court of Justice, in parallel with taking all measures to ensure that it is held accountable for the crimes it is committing against the Pale
stinian people.
Source: Maan News Agency
