21.05.2004|Court Documents|Response to Petition
HCJ 4764/04 - Physicians for Human Rights et al. v. Commander of the IDF Forces in Gaza Response on behalf of the Respondent
The respondent contends that the petition should be rejected, inter alia, for the following reasons: it is impossible to depict to the court the situation then occurring on the battlefield, thus the court cannot give effective relief; the petition is supported only by an affidavit by a fieldworker of the Association for Civil Rights, which is nothing more than hearsay; the Palestinians’ description of the humanitarian situation in Rafah is wildly exaggerated; the military expends great effort, even at the risk of soldiers’ lives, to enable the provision of proper medical care to Palestinians and to enable ambulances to cross, and when complaints are received about problems with the supply of water, food, and electricity, it handles the problems as soon as possible. The respondent further argues that its initial examination of the incident indicates that the shelling was not aimed at the demonstrators, and that armed Palestinians exploit the presence of civilian population to get close to the soldiers and strike at them.
