No escape from Israeli drones in Gaza

Click banner for more info

Israeli drones are omnipresent in the Gaza Strip. Though most of them fly surveillance missions, there may also be attack drones among them. There is no way to tell one from the other.

There have been no Israeli troops in Gaza since 2005 - they are all in the so-called buffer zone along the border. Yet, ubiquitous drones make it look like the Israeli occupation of the enclave continues.

Al Mezan, a local human rights watchdog, has been recording Israeli drone strikes from as long as they first happened in Gaza.

Because of the secrecy about Israel’s drone use, it is hard to get officially confirmed figures of the exact number of casualties caused by drone strikes. The first time Al Mezan was able to be sure that deaths were caused by an armed drone attack was in 2004, when two people were killed, said Mohammed Mattar, the group’s data entry analyst.

In 2009, the number of people killed by drones was 461, nearly half of the total number of people killed that year. In 2012, the year of the Israeli invasion known as ‘Pillar of Cloud’, 201 out of a total of 255 people were killed via remote control by drones, according to Al Mezan. These statistics do not include people killed by other weaponry in attacks aided by drone surveillance or people injured in drone attacks.

But the alarming numbers of drone fatalities do not tell the full story. There is the psychological impact of drones on the population of Gaza.

A family in al-Quarara near Khan Younis go inside their house every time they hear a drone in the sky after their daughter was killed in a drone strike in 2009. In Meghazi, schoolchildren complain about drones buzzing above classrooms in the morning, making it hard for them to concentrate on their schoolwork.

The most common complaint of all is about drones’ interference with TV reception - whenever the signal breaks up it’s because of Israeli drone activity in the area.

While Al Mezan and other human rights organizations report increases in the use of Israeli drones over Palestinian territories, drone technology developed by Israeli companies such as Elbit and IAI is being sold as ‘battle tested’ in Gaza to almost 50 countries, including Britain.

The British Ministry of Defense has bought drones from both Elbit and IAI and is working with Elbit to develop the Watchkeeper drone, modeled on the Israeli Hermes 450. Although the Watchkeeper is a surveillance drone, it can be modified to carry missiles. A Watchkeeper with missiles attached to it was exhibited at an arms fair in London two years ago.