The Israeli poison gas attacks: A preliminary investigation

‘New’ Israeli gas causes mass convulsions in the Gaza Strip

Just six days after the landslide election of Ariel Sharon, February 12, 2001 was a violent day in occupied Palestine. In the war-ravaged neighborhoods of Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched a barrage of collective punishment after soldiers were shot at by Palestinian gunmen. Machinegun fire and tank shells rained down on the refugee camps, a fusillade that lasted long into the night. The next morning would find an estimated 300 Palestinians newly homeless.(1)

In occupied Palestine, where neighborhoods can become high-tech, made-in-America shooting galleries in the blink of an eye, it might have been just another day of occupation. But the Israeli army chose that afternoon to introduce a new and mysterious gas weapon to a defenseless population. To ensure its delivery, the soldiers fired the gas canisters into the streets, courtyards, and houses of the Khan Younis and Gharbi refugee camps.(2)

The people of Khan Younis are utterly familiar with teargas; their neighborhood has long been known as one of the most heavily teargassed areas in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). But no-one in Khan Younis had seen these strange canisters before, or their seemingly harmless multicolored smoke.

The smoking gas had no immediate effect. There was none of the instant irritation to the eyes and breathing passages caused by all forms of teargas. And, at first, the gas had no odor. “It’s harmless – this gas is nothing!”, yelled a few teenagers, taunting Israeli soldiers. “Throw more!” The soldiers complied.(3)

After a few minutes, the gas started to smell. “Like mint,” several people said. One resident later recalled that, “the smell was good. You want to breathe more. You feel good when you inhale it.” A girl reported that “its taste was like sugar. The smell was sweet.”(4)

“First..the smoke was white, then yellow, then black,” a teenage victim recalled later. Another victim said that the smoke changed colors “like a rainbow.” But mostly the smoke was black, and very sooty. When the gas canisters landed on homes, black smoke billowed so thickly that neighbors rushed to the scene, believing the houses had caught fire.(5)

Soon, however, people began to realize that the gas wasn’t harmless after all. One man recalled: “..ten – fifteen minutes later I got severe stomach cramps. I felt that my stomach was being torn apart. And a burning sensation in my chest. I couldn’t breathe.” People began to vomit, and go into seizures and spasms, then collapse and lose consciousness.(6)

Forty people were admitted to Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis “in an odd state of hysteria and nervous breakdown”, suffering from “fainting and spasms.” Sixteen of them had to be transferred to the intensive care unit. Doctors “reported the Israeli use of gas that appeared to cause convulsions.”(7)

At the Gharbi refugee camp, also in Khan Younis, thirty-two people “were treated for serious injuries” following exposure to the gas. Dr. Salakh Shami at Al-Amal Hospital reported that the hospital received “about 130 patients suffering from gas inhalation from February 12.”(8)

Bewildered medical personnel had “never seen anything..like the gas at Tufa.” Victims were “jumping up and down, left and right..thrashing limbs around”, suffering “with convulsions..a kind of hysteria. They were all shaking.” Others were already unconscious. An hour or two later, they would come to. And the convulsions and the vomiting and disorientation and pain would return. And so it would go, for days or, for some, weeks to come.(9)

The following day, February 13, Israeli forces again lobbed the poison gas canisters into the neighborhoods of Khan Younis. Over forty new gas victims, “including a number of children..from 1 to 5 years-old”, arrived at Al-Nasser Hospital and the hospital of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.(10)

The news began to trickle out that Israel might be using something new and dreadful. AFX News Limited reported that “Palestinian security services have accused the Israeli army of using nerve gas during a gunbattle yesterday..”, and noted “the army has strongly denied the charges.” The BBC wire picked up the Voice of Palestine’s report that “specialists believe that this is an internationally banned nerve gas.” Those who inhaled the gas, the report said, “suffered a nervous breakdown and vomited blood.”(11)

The next day, the Deutsche Presse-Agentur news service reported that “Israel has been using a powerful type of tear gas against the Palestinians that causes convulsions and spasms,” a quote attributed to Dr. Yasser Sheikh Ali at Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. “More than 80 Palestinians arriving at Nasser Hospital..reported that Israeli soldiers had used the white smoky gas, but Israel denied doing so.”(12)

According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), on February 15, three more canisters of the poison gas were fired at houses in the Khan Younis camp, and “another 11 Palestinian civilians, mostly children, suffered from suffocation and spasms due to gas inhalation.”(13) In the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram, British journalist Graham Usher wrote that Khan Younis civilians were “incapacitated” by “a ‘new’ form of toxic gas.”(14)

The same day, PA President Yasser Arafat publicly “accused Israel of using poison gas”, reported CNN. The IDF issued another denial. Israeli Communications Minister Ben-Eliezer called the reports of gas casualties in Khan Younis “incorrect and false.” Senior Palestinian Authority minister Nabil Shaath reportedly said that a sample of the gas would be sent to “an international center for analysis.”(15)

During the following six weeks, the Israeli Defense Forces would continue to deploy this novel weapon against civilians. In all, at least eight separate attacks with the “new gas” are recorded in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. According to the Israeli government, the victims of these attacks were suffering from “anxiety.”

 

* Read the rest of this article at its original locations: Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel, MMN, Information Clearinghouse. This article was first published on 8 January 2003.

James Brooks of Worcester, Vermont, is an independent researcher and former business owner whose articles have been published by Vermont newspapers, Antiwar.com, Media Monitors Network, Dissident Voice and several other sites. Currently Mr. Brooks serves as webmaster for Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel (www.vtjp.org) and publishes News Links, a free once-daily e-mail digest of in-depth Middle East news and commentary. To subscribe, contact jamiedb@attglobal.net