From the outset of Operation Cast Lead, Israeli airstrikes attacked private homes and many civilian public and private structures as a matter of course. All are prohibited targets under the laws of war, unless absolutely necessary for military purposes and/or are themselves sources of the adversary’s military activity.

This report addresses only those most-clearly prohibited objects classified as civilian residences and places of refuge for the civilian population trapped in the Gaza Strip under bombardment.

Some of those refuges were UN facilities well known and monitored in cooperation between UN and Israeli officials through their “joint coordination map.”

Much of the destruction was wanton and resulted from direct attacks on civilian objects as well as indiscriminate attacks that failed to distinguish between legitimate military targets and civilian objects. Such attacks violated fundamental norms of international humanitarian law, notably the prohibition on direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects (the principle of distinction) and the prohibition against the disproportionate use of force, as well as the ban on collective punishment.

Hundreds of civilians were killed in attacks carried out using high-precision weapons, including bombs and missiles launched from Israeli F–16s , and tank shells, as well as weapons whose use is prohibited in residential, urban and civilian- inhabited areas. The Israeli army also shot civilians, including women and children, at close range when those persons posed no threat to the lives of the Israeli soldiers.

Aerial bombardments targeted and destroyed civilian homes without warning, killing and wounding scores of their inhabitants, often while they slept. Other attacks injured and killed civilians in and around their home in broad daylight by precision Hell fire missiles launched from helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).Israeli aircraft repeatedly and indiscriminately fierce white phosphorus, a highly incendiary and restricted substance, over densely populated residential areas, killing and wounding civilians and destroying civilian property.

Often the Israeli army launched white phosphorus from artillery shells in airburst mode, which widely spread the devastating consequences of the incendiary chemical weapon. Each shell spewed over a hundred felt wedges impregnated with a highly incendiary substance, which rained down over houses and streets, igniting on exposure to oxygen and setting fire to people, homes and other buildings and properties.

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