Gaza, Haifa, 16 July 2024 — Today marks exactly 10 years since the killing of four Palestinian children from the Bakr family – Ahed (9 years), Zakaria (10 years), Mohammed (11 years), and Ismail (9 years) – by the Israeli military in Gaza. In marking this somber anniversary, Al Mezan, Adalah, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) highlight the systematic failure of the Israeli legal system to hold perpetrators accountable for acts of violence against Palestinians. This failure persists amid Israel’s genocidal military campaign against more than two million Palestinians in Gaza over the last nine months.
On 16 July 2014, at approximately 3:30 pm, Israeli forces fired three missiles that killed the four boys while they were playing football on Gaza City’s fishing beach. Six other Palestinian civilians were also wounded, among them, four children from the same extended family. These events garnered extensive international media and public attention, especially due to its occurrence near a hotel where many foreign journalists were staying. Two days after the attack, Adalah and Al Mezan demanded the opening of a criminal investigation by Israeli authorities into the incident on grounds of grave suspicions that international humanitarian law and criminal law were violated in the direct attack which killed the children. Despite clear evidence as to the indiscriminate nature of the attack, the Israeli probe, which was neither impartial nor independent as required by international law, was promptly closed in June 2015 without further action. Over the next five years, Al Mezan, Adalah, and PCHR appealed this decision to no avail.
In 2020, the three human rights organizations petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court challenging the decision to close the case. In its ruling, delivered on 24 April 2022, the Court rejected the petition stating it found no grounds to intervene in the Israeli authorities’ decision to close the file. The Court did not assess the substantial evidence presented or the significant flaws in the probe conducted by Israeli authorities, including the fact that no civilian witnesses, such as the international journalists, were questioned. Instead, the Court noted that Israel’s investigative procedures comply with international law and saw no justification for intervening in the discretion of the other authorities.
With this case, the human rights groups attempted to bring one of the gravest cases from the 2014 war—the direct killing of four Palestinian children while playing on the beach and the injury of others—before the Israeli Supreme Court. Despite the lack of a genuine and effective criminal investigation in this case, the Court held no one to account. This lack of accountability is not an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern of impunity, demonstrating that the Israeli judicial system is unable and unwilling to ensure accountability for international crimes perpetrated by its nationals against Palestinians according to international standards.
According to Al Mezan’s documentation, in the 51 days between 7 July and 26 August 2014, 2,219 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, 70 percent of them civilians, including 566 children. Adalah, Al Mezan and PCHR submitted requests regarding hundreds of incidents that occurred during the 2014 military offensive, including direct attacks on residential buildings, hospitals, mosques, and UNRWA facilities that sheltered internally displaced people, as well as attacks resulting in widespread civilian harm, including deaths, injuries, and damage to civilian objects. The Israeli authorities did not issue a single indictment for these apparent war crimes, and no Israeli officials, military commanders, or personnel have been held accountable for the massive killing and injuring of Palestinian civilians.
A decade later, there is no justice for the Bakr family and countless other Palestinian victims of blatant crimes committed by the Israeli military and other officials during the 2014 offensive on Gaza. The complete shielding of perpetrators from accountability for past crimes either by the military or the Israeli legal system, including by Israel’s Supreme Court, has emboldened Israeli authorities to persist in committing egregious violations of international humanitarian, human rights and criminal law against the Palestinian people. This pattern of impunity was evident during the Great March of Return, the repeated full-scale military offensives in Gaza, and the ongoing actions amounting to genocide. Further, Israel has blatantly ignored the provisional measures orders issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 26 January, 28 March, and 24 May 2024.
Without clear international accountability, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian victims and their families are unlikely to see justice, whether for the atrocities they endured during the 2008-2009, 2012, 2014, 2021, and 2022 offensives, the Great March of Return, or the past nine months of genocide in Gaza. The international community must not forget past atrocities. The systematic failure to hold perpetrators accountable within the Israeli domestic legal system necessitates an urgent call for international action. The International Criminal Court (ICC) must intensify its investigations into the international crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territory since 13 June 2014, including during the 2014 offensive on Gaza, to ensure that those responsible for such crimes are brought to justice.