Operation Pillar of Defense

On the afternoon of 14 November 2012, after weeks of escalating cross-border incidents, an Israeli airstrike hit a car in Gaza City, killing Ahmad al-Ja’bari, the head of Hamas’s military wing, and a passenger, Muhammad al-Hams. The assassination opened Operation Pillar of Defense. Over the following eight days the Israeli military attacked approximately 1,500 targets across the Gaza Strip, while Palestinian armed groups fired 1,667 rockets toward Israel — for the first time reaching the Tel Aviv area and Jerusalem — of which 436 were intercepted by the Iron Dome system, according to the Israeli Security Agency.

According to B’Tselem’s investigation, the Israeli military killed 167 Palestinians during the operation, at least 87 of whom — 32 of them minors — did not take part in the hostilities. OCHA, in a situation report issued the day after the ceasefire, reported 158 Palestinians killed, including 103 civilians; the gap reflects the timing of the counts. The single deadliest incident came on 18 November, when an airstrike on the a-Dalu family home in Gaza City killed twelve people, among them five minors and five women; Israel’s Military Advocate General closed the case five months later without charges, offering shifting explanations of the target. B’Tselem noted that Palestinian deaths in the operation’s final four days were nearly two and a half times those of the first four. Seven Palestinians, most of them prisoners accused of collaboration with Israel, were also shot dead in the street by Palestinian gunmen.

On the Israeli side, four civilians and two members of the security forces were killed by rocket and mortar fire. The fighting ended on 21 November 2012 with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. B’Tselem’s subsequent report concluded that in at least some of the incidents it investigated, there was grave suspicion the military had violated international humanitarian law — among them strikes carried out with no effective warning to civilians.