50Days4Gaza: What actually happened over the 50 days of conflict?

On 8 July 2014, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip – a military operation to put a halt to rocket fire from Hamas. The war continued for 50 days and claimed the lives of 2,251 Palestinians – most of whom were civilians, and over 500 of whom were children.

One year on, 9,000 homes in the Gaza Strip are still in rubble and roughly 100,000 people remain homeless. NGO Christian Aid, who work on the ground, have said that less than one per cent of the material needed for reconstruction has been allowed into Gaza since the war ended. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu continues to maintain that his military did everything possible to minimise civilian casualties, but evidence has begged the question whether this is really true.

Now, NGO Amnesty International has teamed up with Forensic Architecture to answer this question once and for all by creating The Gaza Platform, an interactive mapping tool detailing Israeli attacks during the 2014 war. The project aims to uncover the truth behind what happened during Operation Protective Edge, as well as push for accountability for war crimes and breaches of international humanitarian law that some believe may have occurred during the war.

Phillip Luther, the Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa programme, said it “has the potential to expose the systematic nature of Israeli violations committed during the conflict.”

He continued:

“What we’re trying to do with this tool is to cut through those two different narratives and to come out with independent analysis that draws out conclusions that we believe point to the commission of war crimes.”

The map takes into account details such as the time and location of every attack, the type of attack, the type of location it hit, and the number of casualties that resulted from it. So far 2,500 separate attacks have been added to the database – a number that is expected to grow as more data from Amnesty and Gaza-based human rights organisations, Al Mezan and Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

The tool also highlights Israeli attacks that hit first responders, medical workers, medical facilities, and indicates the use of the the “knock on the roof” warning attacks.

Francesco Sebregondi, research fellow at Forensic Architecture and Coordinator of the Gaza Platform project, said:

“The Gaza Platform exploits the power of new digital tools to shed light on complex events such as the latest war in Gaza. It enables users to move across scales, from the granular details of each incident to the big picture of the overall conflict, by revealing connections between scattered events.”

The data on the map is expected to be updated within the coming months, but people can check out the priliminary data now by accessing The Gaza Platform’s website: www.gazaplatform.amnesty.org