29 Jan 07: B'Tselem calls on armed Palestinian groups to respect the humanitarian law

The past three months has seen a sharp increase in violent clashes between the armed Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip. From October 2006 to 28 January 2007, these clashes have taken the lives of sixty persons, including at least ten people (five of them minors) who were not taking part in the fighting. Three more children were killed on 11 December in an incident believed to be related to the conflict between the armed groups. During this period, armed activists abducted members of other armed groups, foreign journalists and Palestinian civilians who were not involved in the fighting, and held them as hostages.

Since the beginning of the second intifada, Palestinian armed groups have killed in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank 268 Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as part of the internecine violence or on suspicion of collaboration with Israel . At least eighty-one of those killed were not involved in the fighting, and twenty-six were minors.

B'Tselem is concerned by the deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip. The organization calls on all armed Palestinian groups to respect international humanitarian law, as set forth in common Article 3 of the four Geneva conventions, which deals with non-international armed conflict and applies automatically to all parties taking part in hostilities. This article sets forth four acts that are forbidden at any time and in any place with respect to persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including combatants who have laid down their arms or are wounded: "(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized people. These acts constitute war crimes and a person who perpetrates them bears individual criminal liability.