2001 Israeli Nerve Gas Attacks

Wikispooks comment

Almost no report of Israel using nerve-gas use has ever appeared in the western media. The CNN reported these accusations dismissively on 15th Feb 2000, mentioning reports that "about 80 Palestinians had been admitted to a Gaza hospital suffering from the effects of poison gas" but attributing them to Arafat in the context of accusations he'd made that Israel "employed depleted uranium munitions against Palestinian demonstrators". Israeli Communications Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer is quoted as saying on Israeli TV that the reports were "incorrect and false." Nevertheless the reports cited here appear to come from multiple credible observers, consistent with each other in most obvious details. It should be noted that collusion would have been difficult, since communication and passage between Gaza and the West Bank was very restricted, even in 2001.

A version of this article appeared at Wikipedia for a short period in 2008 and was deleted according to these arguments and this AfD (Article for Deletion). It was claimed that no MSM sources had carried the allegations, as a result all reports were judged as "lacking in editorial over-sight" and non-reliable per WP:RS questionable sources. The article has been added to with material lifted from "Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel"

Precis of contents, article lead

2001 Israel Nerve Gas Attacks. For 6 weeks in early 2001, Israel is reported to have carried out a series of nerve gas attacks on Palestinian civilian populations in both Gaza and the West Bank. The symptoms reported match those of tabun, a known anticholinesterase poison belonging to a family of organophosphate nerve poisons. Israel has sometimes been sensitive to the concerns of the international community. An earlier report of poison gas use can probably be linked to high concentrations of tear gas and subsequent reports were made in much more difficult conditions and are less well documented.

2001 events

Documented use of Nerve Gas

At least eight nerve gas attacks were reported as having been carried out on Palestinian civilian populations, starting in Gaza (Khan Younis and adjacent Gharbi refugee camps) on the 12th February 2001, continuing until the end of March, 2001..

Israeli soldiers reported having coming under fire from Palestinians and responded by shelling and machine-gunning Khan Younis, a town then under strict Israeli blockade, the barrage continuing well into the night. The firing drove people inside where closed windows and doors appear to have offered little protection.

The next morning found an estimated 300 Palestinians newly homeless. and that afternoon the new gas canisters rolled into the streets, courtyards, and houses of both Khan Younis city and the Gharbi refugee camp in Gaza.

This first attack led to forty people being admitted to Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis "in an odd state of hysteria and nervous breakdown", suffering from "fainting and spasms." Sixteen of them had to be transferred to the intensive care unit. Doctors "reported the Israeli use of gas that appeared to cause convulsions."(dead link) At the Gharbi refugee camp thirty-two people "were treated for serious injuries" following exposure to the gas. Dr. Salakh Shami at Al-Amal Hospital reported that the hospital received "about 130 patients suffering from gas inhalation from February 12."

Around 3 weeks later on March 2, similar attacks were reported in the West Bank, beginning with the town of Al-Bireh.

No analysis of the Hebrew-labelled containers has been published, but "irreversible binding" of acetylcholinesterase is the most likely explanation for the recurrent and persistent symptoms experienced by the Palestinian victims. The hand-sized gas canisters lobbed produced a staged release of colored smoke and a strangely attractive fragrance without the immediately irritating effects of tear gas (of which many refugees, particularily in Khan Yhounis, are very familiar).

Of the known nerve gases, tabun is the most likely candidate - even if not, it was likely a potent anticholinesterase poison belonging to this family of organophosphate nerve poisons. Eyewitness testimony and news reports indicate that this gas was deliberately released into the homes, schoolyards, and streets of occupied Palestine, where the presence of civilian men, women, and children was a certainty. A film called "Gaza Strip" included the nerve gas allegations and claimed that "nearly 200 Palestinians" had been left hospitalized in Khan Younis alone. The film-maker discussed the content of his film and answered objections in Sept 2002 and gave an interview about it in 2003.

From the film: "The people we saw in the hospital, were mainly young people, exhibiting neurological manifestations: with hypertonic and choreoathetotic crisis in their limbs, spasms causing the body to stiffen, or worse: to go rigid in an arc position. This was followed by episodes of muscle relaxation: Nearly complete paralysis of the limbs, with hypertonia and also digestive pains like cramps and colics, and behavioral distresses; periods of extreme excitation, that kind of trouble." - Dr. Helen Bruzau - Medecins Sans Frontieres

On the West Bank, Jonathan Cook reported a sudden change in the symptoms from gas attacks in March 2001 and quoted a doctor in Hussein Hospital "reported a rapid increase in untreatable patients since the first such case was admitted in late February". The hospital's director said: "Until a few weeks ago it was simple to help tear gas victims. We gave them oxygen for 10 minutes and then discharged them. Now they arrive having fits, dizzy, sometimes unconscious, having severe problems breathing. Something has definitely changed." A paediatrician who has worked in the West Bank for 15 years, treating dozens of victims of gas inhalation had never seen such symptoms before. "Sliman's condition was certainly not one of anxiety. ... his symptoms were compatible with exposure to a strong poison. This suggests to me that the gas being used by Israel is no longer safe." The Israeli Defence Force said it used only standard CS gas, claiming the victims' complaints were caused by "anxiety."

Political background

These attacks began six days after the 7th March 2000 election of Ariel Sharon, an Israeli widely reviled for attacking unarmed civilians (eg Qibya, 48 years earlier, Sabra and Shatilla in Lebanon and the events leading up to the Second Intifada) but before he'd officially formed a new Israeli government.

Israeli actions

International agreements

Israel signed but has not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. Israel recognises the Fourth Geneva Convention, but not its applicability to the Occupied Palestinian Territory of the West Bank (and formerly Gaza). Article 147 of the Geneva Convention stipulates that to "willingly cause [civilians] great suffering or serious injury to body or health" is a "grave breach", which, according to Article 146, requires all High Contracting Parties to "search for persons alleged to have committed or to have ordered to commit such grave breaches" and must "bring such person regardless of their nationality before their own courts".

Nerve-gas Production

Confirmation that the Israel Institute for Biological Research near Tel Aviv was receiving the components of nerve gas weapons came after El Al Flight LY 1862 crashed just outside Amsterdam on October 4, 1992. In April 1998 again Israel denied there had been dangerous chemicals on board, but in Oct 1998 it was revealed that the plane was carrying 10 tons of chemicals used in the most dangerous of the known nerve gases, Sarin. The shipment from Solkatronic Chemicals of Morrisville, Pennsylvania to IIBR was under US Department of Commerce licence, contrary to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) to which the US, but not Israel, is party.

The IIBR facility has been involved in "an extensive effort to identify practical methods of synthesis for nerve gases (such as tabun, sarin, and VX) and other organophosphorus and fluorine compounds." In a 4 October 1998 interview with The London Sunday Times, a former IIBR biologist said "There is hardly a single known or unknown form of chemical or biological weapon ... which is not manufactured at the institute."

Israeli reaction to concerns

1988 Toxic gas withdrawn

In 1988 the Jerusalem and Chicago based DataBase Project on Palestinian Human Rights (precursor to The Palestine Human Rights Information Center) claimed that, in the first five months of the First Intifada, at least 50 Palestinians died from exposure to U.S.-made tear gas, and more than 150 pregnant women suffered miscarriages or fetal deaths. On 6th May 1988 US manufacturer stopped shipments of rubber ball grenades, 9.8 pounds in weight, that give off CS fumes as they bounce and roll along the ground. The supply suspension was linked to a UN official charging that Israeli tear gas was responsible for Palestinian miscarriages and deaths, a charge denied by Israel.

Known cases of false denial

Recent examples of false denial by Israel include organ-harvesting from dead Palestinians. The practise is thought to have been widespread since the late 1980s but were never picked up by any western press until a poorly researched article appeared in Sweden in 2009. See the quaintly named Wikipedia article at Aftonbladet-Israel controversy - despite heated denials from the highest levels it turned out that the offences had been admitted in an interview to an American journalist in 2000, and Israel had handed down an administrative punishment over them in 2004. Also in 2009 the use by Israel of White Phosphorus (on civilians) was repeatedly alleged in the MSM and repeatedly denied by Israel despite widespread photographic evidence.

Subsequent reports

Reporting difficulties increase

It must be noted that reporting from Gaza became much more dangerous after the events described. Two Britons (Tom Hurndall March 2003 and James Miller May 2003) were shot dead and an American (Rachel Corrie March 2003) was crushed by a bulldozer. In 2005, BBC produced a 60 minute documentary entitled "When Killing is Easy aka Shooting the Messenger, Why are foreigners suddenly under fire in Israel?" described as a "meticulous examination" of the deaths of cameraman Miller, photography student Hurndall and activist Corrie. HRW examined the death of all three (and the disfigurement of Brian Avery) in a report "Promoting Impunity: The Israeli Military’s Failure to Investigate Wrongdoing." A few months earlier in Nov 2002, and some distance away in the West Bank, Briton Iain Hook, UN Chief of Reconstruction, was shot dead. Compensation was eventually paid to the families of all three Britons after international pressure. The killer of Tom Hurndall was convicted and jailed for 8 years by Israel.

Possible 2004 repeat

Alleged to have come from a press release by Israel's 'Peace Bloc', Gush Shalom in 2004, was the following quote from clinics near Al-Zawiya (where there has in the past been tenacious nonviolent resistance to Israel's wall): "What the army used here yesterday was not tear gas. .... When we were still a long way off from where the bulldozers were working, they started shooting things like this one (holding up a dark green metal tube with the inscription "Hand and rifle grenade no.400" - in English). Black smoke came out. Anyone who breathed it lost consciousness immediately, more than a hundred people. They remained unconscious for nearly 24 hours. One is still unconscious, at Rapidiya Hospital in Nablus. They had high fever and their muscles became rigid. Some needed urgent blood transfusion. Now, is this a way of dispersing a demonstration, or is it chemical warfare?" The medical report (procured by the International Middle East Media Center - IMEMC), "the gas used against the protestors is not tear gas but possibly a nerve gas."

"The incident in Al-Zawiya appears to be the tenth attack by Israeli soldiers using an "unknown gas" against Palestinian civilians since early 2001. We have photographs of the canisters. We have film of victims suffering in the hospital. We have interviews with Palestinian and European doctors who have treated the victims. And we presumably have hundreds, perhaps thousands, of survivors. But we know nothing of their fate. Despite the evidence, we have not inquired".

Unsubstantiated 1999 claim

In Nov 1999, Yassir Arafat's wife Suha Arafat made a statement (in Arabic) that has usually been translated as: "Our people have been subjected to the daily and extensive use of poisonous gas by the Israeli forces, which has led to an increase in cancer cases among women and children." Hilary Clintonn was present and commented that "We do not believe that ... inflammatory statements [are] helpful to the peace process." No evidence for this claim was ever presented, though it could refer to the suffocating effect of tear-gas released in confined places.

References

• Interview with James Longley conducted by Jane Adas about the making of Gaza Strip in Framework, The Journal of Cinema and Media, Volume 43, No. 2 Fall 2002.
• Transcripts of selected interviews with witnesses during the week of February 12, 2001 in Khan Younis Refugee Camp. Recorded for the documentary film, "Gaza Strip".
• Map of the filming locations of "Gaza Strip".