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(The following article is from the February 1-14, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

Special to PV

Credible reports are emerging that Israel's tactics in Gaza have included use of the incendiary weapon white phosphorus, which is banned in civilian areas under international conventions.

     One such report from Agence-France Presse concerns a January 5 Israeli bombardment of the outskirts of Beit Lahiya, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. AFP reports that "Sabah Abu Halima and her family rushed to the top floor of their house, to shelter in a corridor without windows and escape any flying glass." Two weeks later, Chris Cobb-Smith, a British weapons expert, arrived to examine the home. He found a hole in a burnt-out ceiling, fragments of a shell, and a substance that bursts into flames at the slightest contact with oxygen.

     AFP quotes Cobb-Smith: "Here the white phosphorus comes through the roof, detonates as it hits the wall and distributes the pieces of white phosphorus within the house, and that's the explanation for the severe burning that you see around."

     Cobb-Smith was part of an Amnesty International delegation investigating the Israeli army's use of phosphorous bombs. These weapons are regulated by the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, specifically by Protocol III on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons, which bans them in civilian areas.

     In the Beit Lahiya attack, five civilians were killed and four wounded, including Sabah Abu Halima.

     "It hurts me terribly, my skin is burning. I don't sleep any more, neither day nor night," she told AFP in the burns unit of Gaza's Shifa hospital. Gaza hospitals have been inundated with victims of white phosphorus, which they don't know how to treat as the substance has never been used in the Gaza Strip.

     At Shifa hospital, survivors recounted how their wounds began smoking when they washed them or took off their bandages; white phosphorus remains active for a long time and continues to burn when you try to smother it. It explodes on contact with the air and is used by armies mainly to create a smokescreen or to mark targets for aerial bombardment.

     "There is absolutely no military, tactical reason for the use of white phosphorus in this environment," Cobb-Smith says. "I believe it's just being purely used as a weapon of terror to frighten, to intimidate people. Obviously it's going to cause physical harm as well because it can kill people and it can destroy property."

     Israel has now admitted that white phosphorus was deployed in its Gaza offensive, a report in The Times of London said on Jan. 25. When the Times reported the matter on January 5, it was strenuously denied by the Israeli army, which was finally forced to backtrack in the face of mounting evidence and international outcry.

     "Yes, phosphorus was used but not in any illegal manner," the Times quoted Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor as saying. "Some practices could be illegal but we are going into that. The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) is holding an investigation concerning one specific incident."

     The Times said Palmor was thought to be referring to the firing of phosphorus shells at a UN school in Beit Lahiya on January 17. Pictures of this attack show Palestinian medics fleeing as blobs of burning phosphorus rain down on the compound.

     There are increasing calls for war crimes trials to be launched against Israel. While the International Court of Justice in The Hague cannot try Israel as it is not a signatory to the Geneva Convention, any country that is a signatory can prosecute individuals who took part in the Gaza operation as culpable of war crimes. The ICJ did rule several years ago that Israel's so-called "separation wall," which carves Palestinian West Bank territories into small pieces, is a violation of international law.