Evidence points to Israeli role in deadly blast
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...0395/1001/NEWS
BY DION NISSENBAUM
June 22, 2006
BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip -- Two weeks after an explosion on a Gaza Strip beach killed eight picnickers and turned images of an 11-year-old Palestinian wailing over her dead father into an icon of the Arab-Israeli conflict, new evidence is raising questions about the Israeli version of what took place.
The Israeli military cleared itself of responsibility for the deaths, saying that whatever exploded June 9 wasn't an errant shell fired by Israeli soldiers during a barrage of the waterfront. Based on video clips from one of its ships, Israel concluded the explosion came at least 10 minutes after the military had stopped shelling.
But medical logs, cell phone records and other evidence suggest the explosion took place during the barrage and probably was caused by an artillery round.
According to phone records and ambulance logs, the first call for help at the beach came at 4:40 p.m., while the shelling was going on and about 20 minutes before Israel contends the blast hit the Palestinians.
Defense analysts and human rights advocates say a large piece of shrapnel that a Palestinian family says hit their son that afternoon came from the same type of artillery shells that Israel uses, though Israel disputes that.
Doubts about the military investigation have sparked calls from human rights groups and the Palestinian Authority for an independent examination, something Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has suggested is unnecessary.
"This Israeli military investigation is incapable of uncovering the truth," said Lucy Mair, an Israel-based researcher for Human Rights Watch.
If no one had been at the beach to capture the explosion's aftermath, the incident might have passed quickly with a few Palestinian condemnations and a brisk Israeli retort.
But a cameraman caught 11-year-old Huda Ghaliya sobbing over the body of her father. The unsettling images, broadcast around the world, made the attack an international drama.
Israel is standing by its conclusion: No Israeli shell fired that Friday hit the beachgoers.
"We don't know what caused it, but we know what didn't cause it: It wasn't any artillery fired that day," Israel Defense Forces spokesman Jacob Dallal said.
Dallal said it could have been a defective shell buried in the sand that someone in the family triggered accidentally or a booby trap that Palestinian militants had planted.
Human Rights Watch offered to provide the Israeli military with shrapnel it pulled from a car that was hit by the blast, but investigators refused, said Marc Garlasco, a Human Rights Watch researcher and former Pentagon analyst.
"An investigation that refuses to look at contradictory evidence can hardly be considered credible," he said.
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