The order to bomb the house has been explained as the brigade commander's legitimate interpretation of drone photos shown in the war room.
By Amira HassA Military Police investigation into an air strike that killed 21 Palestinian civilians during Operation Cast Lead, according to a recent Haaretz report, indicates senior air force officers had approved the attack. The report, published on Friday by Amos Harel and Anshel Pfeffer ("IDF probes top officers on Gaza war strike that killed 21 family members" ), alleges senior officers authorized the bombing despite being warned by more junior officers that civilians were likely located at or nearby the target site.
One officer involved in approving the attack is then-Givati Brigade commander Col. Ilan Malka. To date it has not yet been determined whether he will stand trial as an officer involved in the affair.
The incident took place on January 5, 2009, in the Zeitun neighborhood of Gaza City. During Givati Brigade activity in Zeitun, a house there - home to the Al-Samouni family - was identified as harboring armed Palestinians. The Israel Air Force hit the house twice with missiles, killing 21 civilians, including women and children, and wounding 19 others.
While some Givati soldiers agreed to testify to Breaking the Silence (an organization of veteran combatants who served during the second intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to everyday life in the occupied territories ) about their part in Operation Cast Lead, notably absent are the soldiers who manned the position nearest the house that was bombed on Malka's orders.
On the morning of January 4, the commanders of this force ordered the dozens of members of the extended Samouni family to leave the three-story house (the home of Talal Samouni ), which they then turned into their outpost. The soldiers told them to gather in the one-story home of Wail Samouni, on the other side of the road and about 30 meters southeast. The Samounis took the fact that the soldiers themselves concentrated the family in one building, and saw that there were infants, children, women, elderly people and unarmed men, as insurance that they would not be harmed.
Despite the intense firing heard all around them that entire evening, the family's fears were mitigated by the proximity of the soldiers who had assembled them into the one home. Several of the Samouni men even left the house on Monday morning (January 5 ) to collect wood for a fire, hoping to bake pita and heat up tea. They also called out to a relative who had remained in his home, a few meters east of them, and suggested he join them because their house was safe.
Shortly before that, one of the women of the house ventured outside with a child to draw water from a nearby well, as the water tanks on the roof had been riddled by the soldiers' bullets a day earlier. The woman and the child were within view of the soldiers, a fact which the Samounis reported to Haaretz, in Gaza, over a year and a half ago. Their testimony received extensive coverage in Haaretz, in world media outlets, and in reports filed by Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/what-led-to-idf-bombing-house-full-of-civilians-during-gaza-war-1.320816
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