Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, played an air raid siren from a cell phone during a UN Security Council session on Thursday in order to highlight Israel’s plight as a nation under fire from Gaza rockets.
“As I speak, there is a storm of rockets being fired by the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza,” Prosor said.
“Hamas is intentionally and indiscriminately threatening the lives of three and a half million innocent men, women, and children in Israel from north to south – from Beersheba to Tel Aviv to Haifa.”
The Ambassador added, “In the last three days, 442 rockets have been fired into Israel – that’s one every 10 minutes.”
“Fifteen seconds. That’s how much time you have to run for your life,” he said after sounding the alarm from the cellphone.
“Imagine having only 15 seconds to find a bomb shelter. Now imagine doing it with small children or elderly parents or an ailing friend.”
''A generation of Israeli children is growing up under the shadow of this threat. This abnormal way of life has become the ‘normal’ way of life for many Israelis and it is absolutely unacceptable.No nation, no people, and no government could tolerate this,'' the ambassador stated.
Prosor said the Security Council had the duty to condemn Hamas and the terror against Israel and to call for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to dismantle the unity government with Hamas.
A new United Nations document says that in most cases where Palestinians have been killed or injured during Israel’s ongoing operation, the Israeli army alerted civilians ahead of time who were occupying buildings, that they planned to bomb in Gaza, to leave the premises.
The document was released by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Hamas, however, has officially urged residents to ignore the Israeli warnings to evacuate prior to Air Force air strikes, and, instead, called on them to serve as human shields.
In an interview on July 8, Hamas Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri justified using residents as human shields.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a statement released at the conclusion of a security cabinet meeting Thursday evening on the third day of ‘Operation Protective Edge’, emphasized that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was “making every effort to avoid hitting civilians and innocents.”
He noted that the casualties so far were because Hamas officials were “maliciously hiding behind Palestinian civilians.”
Israeli Air Force (IAF) GOC Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel said at the same meeting that Israel dropped “hundreds of tons of ordnance and bombs on terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip, in a very complicated environment in which civilians are being used as human shields and we are trying to avoid hitting civilians as much as possible.”
Israel says that many of the casualties are members of Hamas and other terror groups. “When houses are used for military purposes, they may become legitimate military targets under international law,” the army additionally said in a statement released Thursday.
However, “Even when a house is considered a lawful military target, the IDF makes great efforts to minimize potential harm to the surrounding civilian population,” the army said.
“The IDF may use real-time visual coverage in order to assess the civilian presence at a target,” the statement said. “The IDF also carefully chooses weaponry and ammunition that will help to minimize any harm to civilians. In certain instances, the IDF also provides advance warning before striking a target,” according to the statement.
“Many of the IDF’s efforts in this regard go beyond its legal obligations and the accepted practice of other militaries operating in urban areas,” the statement read.