The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor documented, in a preliminary file submitted to special rapporteurs of the United Nations and the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, dozens of cases of field executions carried out by the Israeli occupation army in the Gaza Strip, calling for their immediate investigation to hold the perpetrators accountable and provide justice to the victims.

Euro-Med - according to a statement today, Monday - submitted the initial file to Mr. Maurice Tidball Benz, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial or arbitrary executions, and Ms. Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since In 1967, Ms. Navanethem Pillai, Chair of the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and Mr. Karim Khan, Prosecutor of the Criminal Court.

Euro-Med urged the aforementioned parties to declare a position on all the widespread killing operations carried out by Israeli forces targeting Palestinian civilians, especially executions and physical liquidations in the Gaza Strip.

Euro-Med called for the announcement of the formation of an international legal team, and exercising pressure to ensure its access to the Gaza Strip, and the opening of an investigation into these and other incidents of killing and physical liquidation of Palestinian civilians.

Euro-Med urged the aforementioned parties to take serious action with the international community for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip to ensure an end to the ongoing killings without military necessity, leading to the opening of a criminal investigation into all the horrific violations that occurred to achieve accountability and justice.

The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory documented the Israeli occupation army carrying out dozens of direct executions and physical liquidations by shooting or shelling against civilians, without any military necessity, about 10 days after the start of the Israeli army’s ground attack in the Gaza Strip, on October 27, coinciding with the continued of its comprehensive military attack, which began on the seventh of the same month.

It stressed that this - in addition to the intense air and artillery attacks - came as a form of revenge after the armed attack carried out by Palestinian factions in the settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip.

Euro-Med highlighted the death of more than 28,000 Palestinians since the start of the Israeli genocidal attacks in the Gaza Strip, including those who have been counted so far who are still under the rubble of destroyed buildings, while children and women constitute about 70%. Thus, Palestinian casualties are the highest rate of civilian casualties in the world in the twenty-first century.

In the legal file, the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory reviewed a group of extrajudicial execution crimes and liquidations carried out by Israeli forces during their ground incursion into the Gaza Strip, as follows:

December 22, 2023: An execution was carried out against six civilians from one family when Israeli forces raided their home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City, and opened fire on them without any justification. The victims of this execution were “Raed Abd Rabbuh Al-Khalidi,” “Amjad Abd Rabbuh Al-Khalidi,” “Ahmed Faisal Al-Khalidi,” “Hamid Muhammad Al-Khalidi,” “Moamen Raed Al-Khalidi,” and “Muhammad Zuhair Al-Khalidi.” While four others were injured, including a woman and her son.

December 21, 2023: Akram Abu Hasira and his wife, who were elderly, were killed after Israeli forces took them out of their home on Yarmouk Street in Gaza City. The soldiers shot them and left them to bleed to death, before burning their house and their families were able to transport and bury them after the Israeli forces retreated from the region, according to what their son, Mahmoud Abu Hasira, reported.

December 13, 2023: The elderly person, “Ahmed Suleiman Hassan Muhammad Abdel-Al” (60 years old), who was suffering from a psychological illness, was killed in his home in Jabalia camp, after he was exposed to gunfire from Israeli forces, after they stormed the camp and then the house after the Yemeni hospital was besieged for several days. 

December 13, 2023: Euro-Med received testimony about the execution by Israeli army forces of nine civilians, including children, inside a shelter center at the “Shadia Abu Ghazaleh” school in Jabalia. In his testimony about what happened, the elderly person, “Youssef Khalil,” told Euro-Med that after the Israeli forces stormed the school, two soldiers opened direct fire on his family members while they were in one of the classrooms. “Khalil” stated that after his family members were liquidated, Israeli forces arrested him and others for several days, during which he was beaten and tortured, before he was later released. After the Israeli forces withdrew from the vicinity of the school where they were stationed for a week, Khalil returned to the school to find the bodies of his family members nearly decomposed. Among the victims were a woman, her husband, and several of their children. Video clips from the school monitored by the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory, filmed from December 13 to 15, showed destroyed classrooms, at least two bodies on the floor, a number of bodies of people, including a woman, a mattress soaked in blood, bullet holes, and bloodstains on the floor.

December 10, 2023: Israeli forces executed an elderly person, “Nawaf Muhammad Musa Al-Zaanin,” while evacuating the “Awni Al-Harthani” school in the Beit Lahia project in northern Gaza. The elderly man, “Al-Zaanin,” is a resident of the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. He and his family were displaced several times until Israeli forces stormed the school in which they took refuge and he was executed by a direct bullet to the head.

December 10, 2023: Israeli forces executed “Munir Fadl Ali Al-Najjar” (41 years old) after direct fire was directed at him while he was with his elderly mother (74 years old) in a house in the Jabalia camp. They wounded him in the neck and he continued to bleed to death while he was next to his mother. The elderly man was a civilian and had injured his foot since he was a child. The Israeli forces did not allow his brother, “Sami,” who works for a United Nations agency, to remove his brother’s body from the room, and subjected him to interrogation in the house, and he remained until the forces withdrew, a day later, when they turned the house into a barracks to interrogate civilians.

December 8, 2023: The elderly “Abdel Nasser Khader” Haboub (62 years old) was killed after he was subjected to field execution by an artillery shell fired by Israeli forces towards him shortly after his release after two days of detention, and “Ahmed Hamdi Abu Absa” (38 years old), was killed with him who is the dean of Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Palestine. An eyewitness told Euro-Med: that Haboob and his family took refuge in the Holy Family School after an Israeli bombing of a house where they were taking refuge after they had been displaced from their home before, following a previous bombing in Gaza City. The day after their arrival at the school, Israeli forces stormed it and arrested all the men and some women. They then stripped the men and took them to an unknown destination.

After midnight on December 10, the Israeli forces released some elderly people and a group of detainees while they were naked, then targeted them several minutes later with a tank shell and a Quadcopter flying over them, which led to the death of the elderly “Habob” and the academic “Ahmed Abu Absa ” who accompanied him.”

November 11, 2023: Israeli army forces executed “Muhammad Eid Shabir” (77 years old), the former president of the Islamic University in Gaza, along with his wife, “Rehab Muhammad Shabir” (74 years old), after they left a relative’s house that was bombed in Gaza City. His daughter told Euro-Med: “Israeli planes bombed my aunt’s house on Abu Hasira Street in Gaza, killing 5 civilians, and saving 15, the majority of whom were women and children.” Among them were my parents and my brother’s wife, “Najat Ayoub Al-Helu,” and my nephew, “Muhammad Malek Shabir.” They came out alive, fleeing into the street. My mother sent a distress message, and my father’s voice was heard after the bombing, calling for one of his grandchildren. After more than 24 hours, the army forced the survivors to evacuate the place and walk to Al-Shifa Hospital. Among them were some wounded and elderly people, leaving the bodies of the dead under the rubble. On the way, those who went out saw my brother's wife and nephew killed in the street. After the start of the truce on November 25, my parents were found in the street on the opposite road to Shifa, dead bodies after they had been shot by an army sniper.”

November 10, 2023: Israeli forces executed the elderly “Bashir Hajji” (71 years old), a resident of the Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City, while he was crossing the main “Salah al-Din” road, after the Israeli army published a photo showing one of its soldiers talking to him to claim that he was helping Palestinian civilians and providing Protection for them during their displacement.

The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory confirmed that the aforementioned victims are part of other victims whose killings were directly documented without justification, while Euro-Mediterranean crews continue to document and prepare comprehensive files on the circumstances of their arbitrary, extrajudicial, and unnecessary killing by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.

Euro-Med stressed that these executions and liquidations carried out by Israeli forces violate international standards and violate the right to life stipulated in Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It also violates Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that the right to life is an inherent right of every human being, that “the law shall protect” this right, and that “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to life.”

Accordingly, the Euro-Mediterranean Monitor called on the rapporteurs at the United Nations and the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate the violations documented above and other war crimes committed by Israel against civilians in the Gaza Strip, and to bring everyone who issued and implemented the orders to justice.