Mission Diaries

Civilians have been targeted in Lebanon by the Israeli Defense Forces and in northern Israel by Hizbullah, leaving hundreds dead. Amnesty International has sent missions to investigate the situation in Lebanon and Israel.

Israel Mission Update


Update 4 – Tuesday, August 15


Monday morning, 7th August


Haifa
We had scheduled meetings all morning with Haifa municipal and police officials and NGOs from the Haifa area. We were not sure if after the incidents of the evening before whether they would be able to meet with us or not. Although some of the meetings started late, we were able to keep all our meetings. We also learned that two of the dead, Arab Christians in their 60s, were killed by the ball bearings packed into the rockets. The third person who died was an Israeli Jew killed in the port area while running for shelter.

Haifa is the third largest city in Israel, and with 270,000 residents it is the largest in the north. The municipal officials we met with told us that counting the rockets that hit the evening before, there had been 29 direct hits in Haifa to date and 45 total in the city. Thirteen people in the city had killed and 251 injured. The municipality estimated that before last night's incident that 30% of Haifa's inhabitants had fled the city, of which an approximately 15,000 are children.

During the early days of the conflict, Haifa had been hit by a number of rockets, including one that hit the railway station and killed eight employees. According to the Haifa police department the rocket that hit the Haifa train station on 16th July was the first one that they are aware of that contained the ball bearings. They estimate that the 220mm rocket was carrying around 40 kg of the ball bearings, or around 40,000 of them. Everyone nearby was either killed or badly wounded. Even though the ball bearings are everywhere, when we ask if they could give us some, they had to call to check. In the end they got permission to give us five of their closely held bearings.

Ironically, since Haifa had not been hit for a week and a half, people had just started to return to the city and businesses had started to reopen after being closed for about two weeks. The more we talked to people the more we learned about the ways the rockets had affected civilian life in ways we hadn't anticipated. For example, about 10% of the population is over 75 and many of those had home care workers, at least part time, to assist them. But most of the home health care workers had fled the city, leaving the municipality with the task of trying to provide aid to hundreds of elderly who remained.

Another problem the municipality faced, was that around 18% of the population lived under the poverty line. Most of the people who had fled the north, had done so with their own resources. Some had gone to live with relatives, some with more resources had gone to hotels, and some with even more resources had gone abroad. But in Haifa and elsewhere, many low-income residents had little option but to remain. Still, after the rocket strikes of the evening before, municipal officials believed that even more people would leave town and head south.

Haifa police
"The problem we have is when the sirens go off and nothing happens, people become complacent and don't seek shelter," the chief of the Haifa police department told us. "People's minds work on probability. When you hear many sirens and nothing happens to you, you think you are always going to be OK."

"The time is so short that we are trying to educate the public not to run to public shelters, but to go to the nearest safe place, or even just to lie on the ground," he said.

While we continue to try to track down detailed statistics on the exact causes of the deaths and injuries, it is clear again from our meeting with the Haifa police that the rockets packed with ball bearings are extremely deadly. We are told that in addition to the 220mm rockets, many of smaller 122mm rockets have also been modified to carry around 4 kg or 4,000 ball bearings. One person, the police told us, was killed while driving down a hill at the entrance to the town when his car was sprayed after a rocket impacted nearby.

With so many of the city's residents gone, the police have had to mobilize a large force to prevent looting. Police have also been involved in the relief effort for those residents who remained. Even as we moved around the city with the police, it was clear that more residents had left the city than were there the day before.

"I am starting to miss traffic jams," he concluded "It is hard to see a city like Haifa with no life in it."

The police chief then took us the 'bomb squad' unit in Haifa which analyses the debris of the rockets collected. We were shown fragments of the both the 122mm and 240mm Katushyas, which were laid out on the floor.. They gave each of us a bag of the ball bearings to bring back.

Meeting with Women's NGOs
In the afternoon we met with representatives of two women's organizations in the city. They told us that like in armed conflicts everywhere, women were suffering disproportionately from dealing with the effects of the conflict. One of the groups, that helps women find work, told us that since many women low-income women work cleaning and other jobs where they are paid by the day, they are running out of money, or have already run out. Day care centres, nursery schools and other facilities have been closed down, so with no where to put their children it would be hard for them to get to work in any case. About half of women living under the poverty line are single mothers.

"One of the problems these women face is that many of them are so low income they can't even afford a phone that makes out going calls, only incoming," we were told. "So we started calling all the women on our lists to see how they were doing. Many of them didn't know what services were available or where they needed to go to get help. Some went to the govt. offices to get aid and found that they were closed or were told they couldn't help them."

"We have also found that in some cases the stress of the rockets and being forced to remain indoors in the home or in and out of shelters has even had an impact on women who were victims of domestic violence," they told us. "We would call women who had succeeded with much difficulty to leave their batterers. When we would call their homes to see if they were alright and if they need anything, their batters would answer the phone."

Leaving Haifa
That evening the mission joined with members of the Israeli section, who were participating in a vigil calling for an immediate ceasefire. Amnesty activists in cities all over the world held similar vigils that same evening. The Israeli section's vigil was held in front of one of the houses in that had been hit by a rocket. Twice while we were setting up for the vigil, the air raid sirens went off and we had to run to the shelter in the nearby building.

After dark, we headed to Tel Aviv. The city was way more deserted than it had been since we arrived. We saw almost no one on the streets or driving around. Although it was about an hour or so by car, Tel Aviv felt like a different city when we drove in. All the stores and restaurants were open. People were sitting outside in cafes. Traffic was heavy. We even drove by an amusement park that had a small fireworks display. Definitely not something you would do in the north without scaring people to death.

It didn't take long though to see the effects of the war even here. The lobby of our hotel was full of people who were obviously evacuees from the north. They were clearly not on holiday. We had heard reports from people we spoke to and also in the media that many Israelis who had been staying in hotels had run out of money and had been asked to leave. In Eilat, people who were asked to leave refused and the police needed to be brought in. The media reported while that the government had brought in buses to bring people back up north, although later they began an organized evacuation of cities at the most risk like Kiryat Shmona.

Other people we spoke to told us that people who had taken in friends or relatives from the north, were also feeling the strain. Public health officials we talked to said many host families were now "crashing" under the burden of housing, feeding, and taking care of their guests with no clear end in site. Some people we spoke to had moved five or six times as a result.

Tuesday 8th August

Tuesday morning we had more meetings with government officials in the foreign ministry in Jerusalem. Mostly we talked about the IDF actions in southern Lebanon.

In the early afternoon one of our delegates was interviewed on Israeli television. The interviewer was surprised that Amnesty International was on mission to investigate human rights violations against Israelis when usually we were reporting violations committed by them. That, we replied, was exactly the point. Amnesty International judges all parties, whether governments or armed groups, by the common yardstick of international humanitarian law. Deliberately targeting civilians or firing rockets in an indiscriminate manner is a war crime, regardless of who is doing it.

Later that afternoon we went to what is probably the world's fanciest camp for internally displaced people. In the early days of the conflict, a wealthy business man who saw that the government was not taking action fast enough to set up housing for those who had been displaced decided to act on his own. On the beach near Ashkelon, he built a tent city for 6,200 people, with a paid staff of 800 employees. Evacuees lucky enough to get in before the camp reached its capacity, get a place to sleep, all meals provided, and a very nice view of the ocean.

One camp resident we spoke to told us that if they were on vacation, they would even be glad to pay to stay there, but they still wanted to go home. There is little privacy, they worry about family and friends still in the north, and they don't know when they will be able to leave. They were, however, prepared. We saw their suitcases with neatly folded children's clothes. They said that they had the hope of returning to their homes soon so they have to be ready. The family also worries about the future. They owned a small furniture workshop, but most of their orders have been cancelled. Their clients have had to spend all their money on hotels and other living expenses. They had gone first to a hotel, and then to a relatives house. When they heard about the camp they came here, where they had been for three weeks and two days.

Even in this seeming paradise the conflict is not far away. Two of the camp?s residents had to be told by the camp's administration that they had lost close family members to the rockets. One woman, with 12 children lost her husband who had stayed behind in the north. The other was the mother of one of the people killed in Acre the day before we arrived.

Wednesday 9th August

In the morning the delegation splits up to try to get the maximum amount of information on our last day. Half the group went to meet with the "Homefront Command". We get more detailed statistics than we have had before. Authorities from the Home Guard tell us that to date 39 Israeli civilians had been killed, and 1,300 wounded. Twenty-nine of the injuries were severe, 57 moderate and the rest less serious. We are also told that over 50% of the population in the north, had fled. It is a figure that is hard to verify because it constantly changes, although it matches what we are hearing from other sources.

We are also told that the north has been divided into three zones for purposes of the instructions that are given to civilians on how best to protect themselves. In the cities, towns and villages furthest in north, including Nahariya and Kiryat Shmona, were told to stay in shelters all day. In that zone residents do not have enough time to reach a shelter once the rockets are spotted. In the second zone, which includes Haifa and Tiberias, residents had been told to remain in the protected spaces or in interior rooms with as few openings, windows and exterior walls as possible. The alert time in Haifa is very short. From the time the rockets are spotted and an alarm can be sounded., people have between 25-30 seconds before impact. In the third zone, residents were told to stay in their homes so they would be close to their safe rooms and the shelters in their buildings.

The other half of the group met with a former IDF official who provided more information about the rockets that had been fired into Israel. He said that according to his information, 3,343 rockets had been fired into Israel to date, with a combined payload of 72,379 kilograms. He added that 352 of these were packed with the ball bearings.

On the way to the airport we stopped at a display the IDF was putting on of the weapons they claimed they had confiscated from Hizbullah in arms caches and houses. It seemed mostly to be for the Israeli press as few of the signs were in English. Most of the weapons on display were AK47s.

We left later that evening to return to London. When we arrive the first thing we do is check the news on the internet. A five-year old boy and his 26 year old mother were killed by a rocket in the Arab village of Deir al-Assad. The boy's three year old brother and 10 other people were injured.

Update 3 – Monday, August 7


Nahariya, 06/08/06

Today our mission headed further north to the city of Nahariya, which sits about five miles from the Lebanese border and is one the cities that has been hardest hit by the rockets. According to the municipality and police officials, approximately 350 rockets have hit inside the city limits and another 450 in the surrounding area. The municipality told us that two people have been killed and 68 injured in the city and estimates that over 1,000 houses have been damaged. Ordinarily Nahariya is a busy tourist town in the summer, but when we arrive it is virtually deserted.

Haifa

Visiting Western Galilee Hospital

After a short briefing by the city spokesperson, we headed to the Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya. The hospital estimates it has treated 1,300 patients, about 65% of which were for psychological trauma. Others were more seriously injured including a storekeeper from Nahariya who lost his leg when a rocket fell near his store. The hospital had built an elaborate underground facility, including everything from a dialysis unit to an underground network of roads. The deputy director of the hospital told us they built the underground part of the hospital hoping they would never have to use it. Shortly after the war began, they were able to move many of the hospital's essential functions either underground or to safer parts of the hospital. The hills of Lebanon are clearly visible from the north facing windows.

Hospital within firing range

The hospital, did in fact sustain a direct hit. A rocket hit a patient's room a few days after the patients on that floor had been moved elsewhere. Although only one room was hit directly, all the rooms that we saw on the floor had clear signs of damage. While we were inspecting the damage, the sirens went off for the first of many times today, and we took the opportunity to look at the underground facility.

Underground we saw everything from patients getting their regular dialysis treatments, to a day care centre for the children of employees to people who had been injured. Some of the injured were older residents who fell while running to shelters including a 66- year old woman who broke her thigh when she fell down the stairs while trying to get to the shelter in her building's basement and an 84-year old woman who fell when a bomb exploded near the shelter she was in when she was trying to get to the shelter's bathroom. We also talked to a 13-year old boy who was injured in the same incident that killed five people in Acre the day before we arrived. The boy's mother said she considered that day to be his birthday, because he was born again since he was only injured and not killed in the explosion.

Among the other patients we met was a five-year-old boy from the Arab village of Maj'd al-Krum who was injured by the same missile that killed two of his uncles. He was eating ice-cream in his uncle's car when the bomb hit.

Visiting public shelters

From the hospital we went to visit some of the public shelters, where many of the cities' residents have spent the past 26 days mostly underground. The emotions of the people we spoke to ranged from resignation, to indignation, to barely suppressed rage. In the first shelter we visited, most of the people were not sleeping in the shelters since there had been fewer rockets at night, but many spent the entire day there, going out only for an hour a day to shop or run other errands. There was about 20-40 in the shelter, including around five children. We were told that the family with children was sleeping in the shelter. Several people we met told us that families with children were being much more cautious.

Overwhelming fear

In the second shelter we visited, which was only one block away, the situation was much different. The shelter was "home" to around 40 people, including 10 children. Most of them had been living there 24 hours a day since the first rockets hit Nahariya on the second day of the conflict. Since they were so close to the border, they told us, that the sirens often go off after the bombs hit or simultaneously. This made many of them too afraid to step outside. One woman told us "We do everything in fear. We eat in fear, we sit in fear. We shower in fear. We sleep in fear." All of the people we spoke to in the shelter told us that their nerves were shot and rubbed raw. The main problem was that they did not know when it would end.

Update: Haifa hit by several rockets

As we were leaving Nahariya, we heard that Haifa had been hit with several rockets. We arrived shortly after the those who had been killed and injured had already been pulled from the rubble and taken to the hospital. We visited three of the sites that had been hit, including one building that had collapsed entirely, and two others that were badly damaged. Again we saw the signs of the metal marbles that we have seen at all the other sites that had been hit by the rockets.

We then headed to Rambam Hospital to try to gather information about the casualties. The hospital reported that three people had been killed and they had over 60 casualties. The other two hospitals in the city had received over 100 casualties. Most of the casualties, however, were treated for shock and released, although they were still compiling figures for the other injuries.

While we were there, they had just begun the process of evacuating over 100 patients from the oncology ward into the basement. Unlike Nahariya which had a purpose built facility, they were simply moving patients into what used to be a storage are they had airconditioned on an emergency basis. The maternity ward and the pediatric intensive care had been moved earlier. These facilities all used to have a view of the ocean facing north. In the past this had provided patients with what was thought was a restful view to help with the healing process. With the recent round of missiles hitting the city, the circumstances, we were told, it had simply become too dangerous.

5:48 PM


Sunday, August 6


Northern District, 5th August

On the second day of our mission, we started the day in by meeting with the director of health services for the Northern District. She is responsible for coordinating health services for approximately 1,200,000 residents, which she says is split equally between Jewish and Arab residents. Later in the day we met with the director of the mayor's office in lower Nazareth.

She explained that main difference between this conflict and ones in the past, was that many Israeli cities, towns and villages that had never been hit before by rockets were being hit for the first time. This has meant that people were not prepared, and a major impact from a public health perspective has been from people experiencing psychological trauma and anxiety. They were also helping people cope with the psychological effects of being in or in and out of shelters for 25 straight days. They had learned from past experience in dealing with trauma victims that the earlier counseling was provided the lower the long term effects were so they were trying to provide counseling to victims as soon as they could.

While the government has been trying to get as many people as possible to evacuate, many are unable or unwilling to leave. And in many cases evacuating people who were elderly or with major health problems presented logistical challenges. The government mobilized ambulances, physicians, and paramedics to move people to safety, but we were told that two elderly patients still died while being transported to safer parts of the country. According to the health ministry, about 2/3 of the populations of the population had fled from the Northern District.

For the population that is left, in addition to providing psychological services, they were dealing with the challenges of trying to provide the same basic health services they were providing in the past as well as additional health challenges presented by the civilians living in the shelters. Even with mobilizing all of its resources the authorities were only able to visit a small percentage of the shelters to make a health assessment. In cities like Nahariya and Kiryat Shmona which had been particularly hard hit, trying to provide services like chemotherapy and kidney dialysis was straining hospitals and other facilities already coping with people who had been injured.

Nazareth, North Israel, 5th August

We then went to Nazereth which is the largest Arab city in Israel. Two children had been killed in Nazareth while playing outside in the early days of the conflict. We were told that at the time there were no sirens functioning, so the children, young brothers who were outside their home playing, had no warning. The municipality representative told us that even if they had heard a siren, shelters in Arab areas are virtually non-existent, although the reasons behind this is something we need to continue to follow up on. In Nazareth most of the population has not left, although some of the more affluent residents had fled. About 50% of the population lives below the poverty line.

We also met with representatives of two women's groups who were helping Arab women deal with the conflict. In addition to dealing with their own stress over the rockets falling on Nazareth and nearby, they were also responsible for caring for their families. Since none of the nursery schools or kindergartens had shelters or safe rooms, they had to be closed down.

On our way out of town the sirens went off again. This time there was no were no formal shelters, but we were invited by local shopkeepers into a backroom that had no windows and was relatively safe. But the majority of the people nearby just looked at the sky. Today, the media reported that three more Israelis, all Arabs, were killed. Yesterday, reports stated that three Israelis were killed and today three more were killed. All of the those who have died since we have arrived have been Israeli Arabs.

Clearly the Israeli health and other services are pressed to their maximum to cope with the conflict, and that is with their infrastructure still in place. We wondered what the other half of our delegation was finding in Lebanon, where most of the infrastructure had been destroyed.

8:40 PM


Saturday, August 5


Arriving in Tel Aviv

The mission arrived in Tel Aviv and headed straight up to north to Haifa. The day we left had one of the highest civilian death tolls in Israel since the conflict began three weeks ago so we were expecting the situation to be tense.


Haifa

From Haifa, the first stop on our agenda was visiting the city of Carmiel. Driving through Haifa on our way to Carmiel we could see several buildings that had been damaged in recent rocket attacks. Usually on a Friday morning both Carmiel and Haifa would be bustling with people doing their shopping for the Sabbath. But we were all very surprised at how quiet they were, Carmiel in particular was virtually empty of people on the streets.

Carmiel

We met up with people from the Carmiel municipality who took us to see several houses that had been hit by Hizbullah rockets. In the first house we visited, a rocket had came through the roof of one apartment and went through the floor to the apartment below. Luckily no one was home at the time on the top floor and no one was seriously injured below. Both apartments are currently uninhabitable.

The municipality estimates that 30% of the population have left the city. The way they have been trying to measure the number of people who were still there and who have left is by counting the number of trash bins that are empty and those that are full. The municipality, as other municipalities throughout the country, are working to provide basic services to those residents who are spending most of their times in shelters or afraid to leave their homes. When we pulled up to the building there were over a dozen volunteers packing up meals to deliver to people who were still in the city. They estimated they provided food to about 2,500 people per day.

Acre

From Carmiel we moved on to Acre, where again we met with people from the municipality. Acre is a mixed city with a large Israeli Arab population (Palestinian citizens of Israel). Acre was even more deserted than Carmiel, because the day before five people had died when they left their shelter prematurely.

We were told that two of the people who died were killed by small steel balls that have been packed into the rocket's warhead. In addition to killing and injuring many civilians, everywhere we saw places where rockets had hit we saw evidence of these still balls, with walls, windows, and even steel fences damaged and often with the steel balls still embedded.

Most of the sites where rockets have hit have been cleaned up and repaired, but we were able to visit a kindergarten that had been hit, although again luckily no children were there at the time.The soundtrack for the day was the sound of air raid sirens and rockets.

Over 10 times during the day we had to seek shelter when the air raid sirens went off, including three times while driving where the only thing we could do was pull over quickly and do the best we could to lay low.

Across from the kindergarten we met an 85 -year-old woman who spent most of her time sitting right outside the shelter because she was blind and unable to make it up and downstairs every time the sirens went off.

We did hear reports that in many Arab neighborhoods the air raids sirens either aren't working or aren't present.

For us, it was just one day, but many Israelis have been living like this for weeks.

1:15 PM