Rights centre documents dozens of attacks on Gaza's police

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said it has recorded dozens of Israeli attacks on police officers and police premises across Gaza, and that their cumulative effect is to hollow out the bodies that hold daily order together. The centre set out the finding in a statement condemning the bombing of a temporary municipal police headquarters in central Gaza City late on Wednesday.

It said an Israeli special forces unit, accompanied by military dogs, moved into an area known as the Regional Park, to the southwest of al-Mawasi in Khan Younis, in the south of the Strip, at about 1:45am on Wednesday and took away two men to a location it did not name. They were identified as Sabri Atwa Shehda Abdel Aal, 46, a serving police officer, and Nashet Mustafa Suleiman Za'rab, 34, who works for a company supplying security and logistical services. The strike in Gaza City followed hours later.

The centre put the toll from that strike at 8 police personnel killed, two of them women officers, along with a girl who was in a municipal park next to the building, and 18 wounded, some of them critically. Ambulance crews on the day counted 9 dead and more than 15 injured.

Its argument is about what the attacks leave behind. The centre said they have intensified while disputes between families have been multiplying in several areas, with officers still trying to get between the parties before violence starts. Thin the force out, it said, and residents lose the little security and service they can still reach, quarrels are settled without any authority present, and lawlessness widens.

Officers who carry out civilian duties — keeping order, organising the ordinary business of a town — remain protected under international humanitarian law for as long as they take no direct part in the fighting, the centre said, and that line is the one it wants drawn rather than the whole force being treated as a target. It asked for accountability for the attacks it has documented, and for civilians in the Strip to be given protection.

On the ground the response has been to close ranks around the police. Community and tribal figures said families would stand behind officers because what replaces them is a vacuum, and support committees have been formed alongside the force in neighbourhoods and markets. Rami Kaheel, 62, said the police are what keeps the internal front steady and urged people to back them with money as well as words. Ziad al-Dayah, 53, said officers have gone on reporting for duty though they have been unpaid for months and have had their lives threatened. Traders said an officer on the street is what holds down theft and profiteering in the markets. The force's commander, Brig. Gen. Jamal Abu Kmeil, was killed in his car days before the headquarters was hit.