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Military says no action will be taken against soldiers responsible for shelling that killed 21 members of the Samouni family in 2009

The Israeli military has closed its file on the killing of 21 members of a Palestinian family during the Gaza war in 2009, saying there were no grounds for criminal or disciplinary action against those responsible for the shelling of the house in which civilians were sheltering.

"None of the persons involved ... acted negligently in a manner giving rise to criminal responsibility," concluded the Military Advocate General following an internal investigation. The decisions of the brigade commander "did not deviate from the boundaries of discretion that a 'reasonable military commander' operating in similar circumstances possesses."

Its investigation, which had been thorough and rigorous, "comprehensively refuted" claims that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) had intentionally targeted civilians or had acted in a reckless manner, it said.

The 21 members of the extended Samouni family were killed on 5 January 2009, nine days after Israel's onslaught on Gaza began. About 100 members of the family, including women, children, babies and the elderly, has been ordered by the IDF to crowd into a house amid fierce fighting.

Survivors said they felt relatively secure because they were following IDF instructions. However the following day, three or four missiles struck the house. Nine children were among the dead; medical access to the dozens of injured was denied for two days.

The commander of the Givati Brigade, Colonel Ilan Malka, who gave the order for the strike, reportedly told investigators that he believed militants were in the building and was unaware of the civilian presence.

The Military Advocate General said the military operation took place mostly in a heavily populated urban environment, and rockets had been fired from the vicinity before the IDF launched an airstrike. It added that lessons should be drawn "in order to prevent the reoccurrence of similar incidents in the future".

The Israeli human rights organisation, B'Tselem, which filed a complaint with the IDF over the incident, said it was unacceptable that no one had been found responsible for an action that led to the death of 21 civilians. "The way the army has exempted itself of responsibility for this event ... is intolerable," said Yael Stein. An investigation process independent of the army was needed, Stein added.

Salah Samouni, who survived the shelling, told the Ynet website he was outraged about the conclusion of the investigation. "The senior officer who authorised the bombing became a heralded officer at the expense of our children's blood and the people he killed," he said.

A report by South African judge Richard Goldstone on behalf of the United Nations examined in detail the Samouni family incident. It concluded that the deaths were the result of "Israeli fire intentionally directed at them" in breach of the Geneva conventions.

The Goldstone report said Israel had repeatedly violated international law and possibly committed war crimes during the conflict, which Israel named Operation Cast Lead. It also accused Hamas of war crimes.

About 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in the three-week conflict.

I was born in New York, but raised mainly in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. I currently study in Cairo, but returned to Ramallah to spend my Easter break with my family. My joy soon gave way to heartbreak.

Last Wednesday night, just past midnight, my mother and I were chatting when we suddenly heard pounding on the door and someone shouting in chillingly familiar broken Arabic, “iftakh bab!” (open the door). We looked carefully from behind the slit-open curtain to realize that many Israeli occupation soldiers were surrounding the house, heavily armed and in combat formation. Shortly afterwards, they broke in and occupied the house.

They pointed their machine guns at us and told us they wanted to search the house. My 14-year-old cousin, Nai, and 69-year-old aunt were sleeping inside. Without thinking, I rushed to my room to alert Nai so that she would not wake up with a gun pointed at her face. That was the most haunting experience in my own traumatic childhood, when Israeli forces arrested my father many years earlier.

Nai still woke up trembling and speechless, though silence is not one of her virtues. Simultaneously, as if on cue, my mother jumped to wake up my aunt. The visibly agitated soldiers considered our moves hostile and ordered us to stop, aiming at our heads. Fortunately, my mother and I succeeded in waking the two before the soldiers reached them.

After a futile search, the soldiers went to the apartment right above ours whose owners — also US citizens — were away. They knocked down the main door and wrecked the place.

There we were, four Palestinian females of different ages stuck in a room with a bunch of guns pointed at us. They confiscated our phones, disconnecting us from the outside world. I could not prevent some tears from slipping down my cheeks, despite my attempts not to let that happen in front of the soldiers. I thought to myself, I shall not get a chance to say goodbye to my father — he is more than my beloved baba, he is my mentor. My vacation will be over in a few days, and I’ll head back to my college. He was dreaming of me getting my diploma, so I must continue at all cost, I convinced myself.

Nai suddenly interrupted my thoughts and said, “Look, we can either cry or talk non-stop” — the latter being her pastime. She and I transcended our fear and decided to talk, laugh, make jokes and talk more, enough to make the soldiers regret the moment they cruelly invaded our home. To help calm us down, Nai played “Li Beirut,” a charming song by the Lebanese diva Fairouz, on her iPod. A visibly angry soldier shouted at her “Give me the [expletive] thing or else!” She handed it to him — but not before poking fun at him — “Cowards! Even Fairouz scares you!”

As they were about to enter my room, I warned the commander, “My MacBook and Blackberry are inside; I hope they’ll still be there after your search.”

“We never take anything that is not ours,” he irately shot back. I could not resist shouting, “Aside from stealing our land on a regular basis, nine years ago, Israeli soldiers were caught lifting valuables from many Palestinian homes. Don’t you dare tell me you do not steal what is not yours!” Pointing his US-made M-16 at me, he silenced me. How ironic, a weapon made in my country of birth is being used by Israeli soldiers to silence me while they ransack my own room in the middle of the night.

They told us that they were looking for my father, Ahmad Qatamesh.

Unsurprisingly, they did not explain why they wanted to arrest him. They kept us against our will in the living room, insisting that he must “turn himself in” before they would leave. My mother told them, “He is not here, and he is not wanted!” Only then did we realize that we were taken hostage.

My father is a sixty-year-old political scientist, writer and human rights advocate who is widely respected in Palestinian society. This whole commotion took me back to when I was nine, anxiously waiting at the gates of an Israeli prison for his imminent release. He had been held for almost six years under “administrative detention,” without charge, without trial, without a chance to defend himself or even know what he was accused of. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations condemn the procedure as an affront to justice. I hugged him then like I was meeting him for the first time and asked him to promise not to be gone for so long again. Being impeccably honest, he said: “I wish I could. They must first get out of our lives before I can make such a promise.”

The commander forced me at gunpoint to call my father, who was at his brother’s house. I did. He then grabbed my phone and shouted at him, “Surrender yourself or we’ll destroy the house!”

My father shouted back, loudly enough so I could hear him, “You and your soldiers are tools of the occupation. You are violating our basic rights. You have no right to be in our home. Come arrest me here and leave my family out of this!”

Some of them went to arrest him, and only after they held him did the soldiers who stayed at our place prepare to leave. Before the last one exited, however, he rubbed it in my face, saying “We got your father, and we are gonna take care of him!” Almost crying, I shouted, “He takes care of himself! You are criminals!”