Gaza Conflict

'The Street Smells of Death'

By SPIEGEL Staff

Part 2: Better Civilian Casualties than Dead Soldiers

Nevertheless, the soil of Gaza has not turned into fire beneath the feet of Israeli soldiers, as Hamas's propagandists had threatened. On the contrary, Fortress Gaza was subdued within 48 hours, the Hamas infrastructure was weakened, its weapons supply system was temporarily interrupted and more than 150 prisoners were taken.

Rocket fire has subsided with each passing day. At first, Hamas fighters were launching more than 70 rockets a day, a number that has now dropped to about 30. Since the beginning of the war, more than 600 missiles have been fired at Israel, even though Hamas, according to Israeli estimates, had the capacity to launch 200 to 300 rockets a day. The second front that some feared would erupt -- in the West Bank, in southern Lebanon or in Israel's Arab cities -- has failed to materialize.

Nevertheless, the Israelis have made some tragic mistakes. In the first phase, the air war, their fighter pilots worked their way down a list of almost 500 targets. Though the attacks were not as surgically precise as the generals like to claim, the resulting destruction was at least somewhat targeted. The chaotic destruction began with the ground offensive, when civilians were all too often struck by bullets and projectiles from Israeli tanks.

The Israeli strategy in this unequal war is to strike Hamas with full force, so as to avoid losses of its own and maintain public support. One of the horrific lessons the Israelis learned from the Lebanon war two years ago was that civilian casualties are preferable to dead soldiers. "We will pay the international price for the collateral damage and the expected civilian casualties later on," writes Alex Fischmann, a military expert with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot.

And so the Gaza Strip is being razed to the ground. The bombardments from land, sea and the air have not only destroyed the Hamas infrastructure, but also civilian targets in which witnesses say there were no Hamas fighters. Israeli missiles struck ambulances and mobile clinics, currency exchange offices, a printing company, the main vegetable market, an orphanage and the American private school.

Two families died in mortar attacks, four people at a funeral and a number of others in a shopping center. In northern Gaza, occupied by the Israeli army, four starving children sat next to their dead mother and at least 11 other bodies for three days. Injured civilians bled to death in other houses because the soldiers refused to allow paramedics to evacuate them.

Yasser al-Shrafi is one of the few to have escaped the misery of Gaza. German diplomats convinced the Israelis to issue an exit visa for the 32-year-old Palestinian-born German citizen, who owns a pharmacy in Berlin's Spandau neighborhood. "The streets smell of death," says Shrafi.

His family held out for two days in their house in the Jabaliya refugee camp, before fleeing to the house of Shrafi's brother in Gaza City. They barely escaped with their lives when the Israeli Air Force bombed a nearby police station. Two of Shrafi's cousins died in subsequent attacks. "This is not a war," he says. "It's a bloodbath."

'We Thought It Would Be a Safe Place'

The turning point in this operation came last Tuesday at 3:45 p.m. local time. An Israeli mortar shell landed near the entrance of a school in Jabaliya operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), followed by a second one half a minute later. Both shells landed in the middle of a crowd of people. Groups of families, believing that they were safe here, were in the process of unloading cars and donkey carts. About 40 people died and 55 were injured, some seriously. Israeli Foreign Minister Livni claims that the shells landed next to the school, causing a wall to collapse.

Tens of thousands of people are fleeing the violence in the Gaza Strip. About 500 had sought shelter on the school grounds, including the family of Abu Naser. After hearing a radio announcement by the UN that it planned to open 23 schools for refugees, Abu Naser's family left their house in Beit Lahia. The 30 family members, including children, women and old men, walked for an hour until they reached the al-Fakhura school, which was flying a blue-and-white UN flag. "Now we are safe," said Mohammed, the 22-year-old son. The mortar shells detonated a few minutes later.

An Israeli army spokeswoman later said that Hamas had fired mortars from the school grounds (a later version had the mortar fire coming from near the school) and the army had merely responded in self-defense.

Somia al-Araani, 28, one of the civilians who had sought shelter at the school, says: "If there had been Hamas fighters there, we would not have gone there." She and her children had fled to her sister's house next to the school. "We thought it would be a safe place," she says. Her two sons, Abd al-Rahman and Hotheifa, lie next to each other, wrapped in bandages like small mummies, on beds at Shifa Hospital. The mother sits between the two boys, holding their hands.

John Ging is usually a reserved man, but after the head of the UN's Gaza relief operations had visited the injured at Shifa Hospital, he was seething with rage. He said he was "shocked" by "the brutality of the injuries." Ging calls the Israeli claim that Hamas fighters were firing rockets from the grounds "completely untrue." After speaking with employees and survivors, he said that: "I was reassured by the management of the school, my own staff, senior, experienced, long-serving staff, that there were no militants in the school."

The shift in the public mood was also triggered by the callousness with which the Israeli government has dismissed the Palestinians' desperate situation. "The humanitarian situation is exactly the way it should be," said Foreign Minister Livni.

At that time, the wounded were dying because doctors could not attend to them quickly enough. People were waiting in long lines for bread. One-third of the population has no water at all anymore, and almost no one has electricity. Hospitals rely on generators around the clock, and if one of them breaks down it cannot be repaired, because Israel has prevented spare parts from getting into the country for the past two years. Gasoline is also becoming scarce.

Paying a High Price

In Shifa Hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, the beds are lined up tightly next to each other, a cold wind enters the building through broken windows and the floors are sticky with blood. Eric Fosse is a blond, stocky Norwegian who wears a white lab coat over his green surgeon's uniform. He has already performed a dozen emergency operations. He and his colleagues have spent the entire night amputating hands and feet and removing shrapnel. "We operated everywhere," he says, "in seven operating rooms at the same time, even in the hallways."

Fosse normally works as a professor at the University of Oslo. A heart surgeon, over the last 30 years he has repeatedly volunteered during crises and wars in the Middle East, most recently in Lebanon in 2006.

Naturally the Norwegian doctor is not an entirely neutral bystander. His views are shaped by the horribly injured Palestinians he sees in his operating room all day long. It is not surprising that someone like Fosse would have little sympathy for Israel's position in this war. "Civilians pay a high price in any war," says Fosse. "But Gaza is so densely populated, and the people cannot flee. That's why it is so much worse here than in other wars."

In recent days, people like Fosse and UNRWA director Ging have been key witnesses in reporting what is really happening on the ground. Normally the international press would fulfill that role, but the Israelis have refused to allow reporters, both Israeli and foreign, into Gaza. According to an army spokeswoman, journalists could harm the image of the Israeli soldiers. As a result, a democracy is waging a war while standing in the way of those who could investigate and report on the events on the ground.

Too many civilians are dying in Gaza. Their deaths have become an integral part of this war. Meanwhile, the government in Jerusalem is periodically changing its supposed objectives, from the destruction or weakening of Hamas, to changing the "security-related reality" in Gaza, ending the rocket attacks or stopping smuggling across the border with Egypt.