In a new escalation by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), seven Palestinians have been killed and wounded in the Gaza Strip, including three children.
The new escalation included aerial bombardment, shelling of neighborhoods and destruction of land in an arbitrary way.
Four were killed and three wounded.
Al Mezan's fieldworkers reported that has IOF attacked in several places around Gaza since Friday 29 October 2006.
At 8am Friday 1 October, IOF centered at the northern border fired at civilians northern Beit Lahia wounding Hasan Tamboura, aged 24.
At 9:40pm Saturday, 30 October, an IOF drone fired a missile into a crowd in As Salam neighborhood in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, killing 33-year-old Bassam Bin Hamad and 22-year-old Houssam Ghaiyad, and wounding 8-year-old Hamza Shaheen and 18-year-old Raed Udwan.
Earlier at 9:15 Friday, IOF fired a missile at two children who were riding bicycles in the town of Beit Hanoun and killed them.
The two were identified as 16-year-old Anwar Hamdan and his brother 13-year-old Hammam.
The same area was bombarded Saturday without casualties.
IOF tanks and armored bulldozers have entered the Shurrab neighborhood in Beit Hanoun around 2:3am Sunday, and another area east of Jabalia.
They leveled areas of cultivated land.
Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights condemns this escalation, which demonstrates IOF's disregard to its obligations under International Humanitarian Law (IHL), especially the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the protection of Civilians in Times of War (the Convention).
The continued targeting on Palestinian civilians and their property, and the use of excessive force arbitrarily represent grave breaches of the Convention.
In particular, the nature and scale of these attacks reflect disrespect of essential legal principles such as military necessity, discrimination and proportionality in an occupying power's use of force.
Al Mezan views that the international silence towards these acts, and many other violations of human rights in OPT, has encouraged Israel to continue and escalate them.
Thus, the Centre calls on the international community, especially the High Contracting Parties to the Convention, to act with the view to bring to an immediate end the IOF's breaches and provide effective protection to Palestinian civilians in OPT.
END