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This summer, Palestinians in Gaza were pounded by Israeli bombs. | :00:08. | :00:12. | |
More than 2,000 people died - a quarter of them children. | :00:13. | :00:17. | |
We find out what it?s been like for Israelis living under a barrage | :00:18. | :00:28. | |
This war has fuelled anger not only in Gaza but around the world. | :00:29. | :00:41. | |
We investigate how and why the battles were fought | :00:42. | :00:44. | |
These terror tunnels, their whole purpose is just to | :00:45. | :00:51. | |
Peace talks are due to begin, but what has either side achieved | :00:52. | :00:58. | |
Asma al Ghoul is going to her old family home for the first time since | :00:59. | :01:26. | |
She hasn?t dared to come here till now. | :01:27. | :01:33. | |
It?s August - the fighting is still going on. | :01:34. | :01:36. | |
There?s a ceasefire today - but the area is | :01:37. | :01:39. | |
a Hamas stronghold and Asma fears it could be hit again any time. | :01:40. | :01:42. | |
That room, my mum and our sister and brother always used to stay there. | :01:43. | :01:55. | |
This relative survived, but nine other members of Asma?s | :01:56. | :02:00. | |
extended family died when her uncle?s house was bombed. | :02:01. | :02:07. | |
And how old was - how old was the youngest child who died? | :02:08. | :02:14. | |
One of the twins died - the other survived but is injured. | :02:15. | :02:28. | |
And this home, I know everything, this home, | :02:29. | :02:32. | |
Parts of Gaza have been devastated - more than 100,000 are homeless. | :02:33. | :02:42. | |
It?s the fourth war here in less than a decade, | :02:43. | :02:45. | |
For weeks, bombs pounded Gaza and rockets | :02:46. | :02:53. | |
It seemed like a showdown between Hamas and the Israeli army, but what | :02:54. | :03:00. | |
And why was the cost in civilian lives lost, overwhelmingly here | :03:01. | :03:06. | |
Israel was trying to protect its communities in the south, | :03:07. | :03:20. | |
which have always born the brunt of Hamas attacks. | :03:21. | :03:25. | |
I headed to a hill near the town of Sderot, overlooking Gaza. | :03:26. | :03:28. | |
A ceasefire was supposed to be in force. | :03:29. | :03:32. | |
But it wasn?t long before we found out what living under fire is like. | :03:33. | :03:43. | |
We just heard a mortar come whistling over our heads. | :03:44. | :03:49. | |
It landed just a few hundred metres to our right | :03:50. | :03:53. | |
in the Israeli village over there, so we?re getting out of here now. | :03:54. | :03:57. | |
In the car, we heard a rocket, too, had just hit Sderot. | :03:58. | :04:03. | |
The rocket hit a house when the family were out. | :04:04. | :04:10. | |
The physical damage may not look that great but there is | :04:11. | :04:14. | |
Thousands of rockets have hit Sderot over the years - | :04:15. | :04:19. | |
You see what they try to do to us, to kill us the innocents? | :04:20. | :04:27. | |
Nobody can live with this situation - nobody in all the world. | :04:28. | :04:33. | |
In a bomb shelter, I found four children from the | :04:34. | :04:36. | |
house, taken there by the babysitter before the rocket attack. | :04:37. | :04:41. | |
Many Israeli children have had to spend the summer in shelters. | :04:42. | :04:49. | |
A neighbour whose own home had been hit a couple of days | :04:50. | :04:53. | |
before blamed Hamas and his own Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu. | :04:54. | :05:16. | |
Sderot has had to put up with Hamas fire for years. | :05:17. | :05:20. | |
But the Israel government wasn't prepared to stand by | :05:21. | :05:24. | |
when major cities and more than a million people were threatened. | :05:25. | :05:29. | |
Just 27 miles long, the Gaza strip is home to 1.8 million Palestinians. | :05:30. | :05:35. | |
It was occupied by Israel until 2005. | :05:36. | :05:42. | |
I was in Gaza two years later, when Hamas took charge, | :05:43. | :05:46. | |
ousting the more moderate Palestinian Authority government. | :05:47. | :05:53. | |
Hamas is considered a terrorist organisation by Britain, | :05:54. | :05:57. | |
The militant Islamist group has sworn to destroy Israel. | :05:58. | :06:06. | |
When Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza, Hamas dug tunnels | :06:07. | :06:10. | |
into Egypt to smuggle in everything from household goods to weapons. | :06:11. | :06:16. | |
Last year when a new Egyptian government destroyed those tunnels, | :06:17. | :06:19. | |
Hamas lost its economic lifeline, seriously affecting | :06:20. | :06:23. | |
By the start of this year, Hamas couldn't pay the salaries | :06:24. | :06:33. | |
of its workers and its leader warned the people of Gaza | :06:34. | :06:35. | |
Hamas was preparing for a showdown with Israel, to ease the blockade | :06:36. | :06:41. | |
The trigger was pulled not in Gaza, but on the occupied West Bank | :06:42. | :06:53. | |
A Hamas cell targeted three Israeli teenagers hitching home | :06:54. | :06:58. | |
One of them was 16-year-old Naftali Frenkel. | :06:59. | :07:07. | |
Somebody stopped, er, apparently Israeli with an Israeli licence, | :07:08. | :07:10. | |
The boys got into the car but quickly realised they were | :07:11. | :07:18. | |
One of them made a phone call to the police. | :07:19. | :07:24. | |
Then there was the sound of muffled gunshots. | :07:25. | :07:44. | |
For me, the silence was very, very scary - | :07:45. | :07:49. | |
It's every parent's nightmare, their child shouldn't get home | :07:50. | :08:02. | |
Israel cracked down, destroying the homes of the suspected kidnappers. | :08:03. | :08:11. | |
They arrested hundreds of members of Hamas. | :08:12. | :08:14. | |
After 18 days, the bodies of the teenagers were found. | :08:15. | :08:16. | |
In an interview with Panorama, the leader of Hamas took | :08:17. | :08:19. | |
Hamas hasn't avoided responsibility for this event. | :08:20. | :08:30. | |
Hamas cells did it, but in the context | :08:31. | :08:32. | |
of self-defence against Israeli occupation and settlement policy. | :08:33. | :08:35. | |
Two weeks later, another boy - Palestinian Mohammed Abu Khadir - | :08:36. | :08:38. | |
was the victim of a tit-for-tat murder. | :08:39. | :08:44. | |
His father described how Mohammed was seized from outside this shop | :08:45. | :08:48. | |
The man who abducted Mohamed was an Israeli with a history | :08:49. | :08:58. | |
TRANSLATION: Killing him was the worst crime in history. | :08:59. | :09:10. | |
They poured petrol in his mouth, on his body, he was still alive when | :09:11. | :09:14. | |
With tensions boiling over, Hamas fired a barrage of rockets into | :09:15. | :09:19. | |
Israel, and Israeli jets bombed Gaza. | :09:20. | :09:22. | |
By the beginning of July, it was all-out war. | :09:23. | :09:28. | |
Hamas has launched rockets from built-up areas of Gaza, | :09:29. | :09:31. | |
They've hidden the identity of this fighter as he positions | :09:32. | :09:41. | |
But the crude rockets are no match for Israel's Iron Dome. | :09:42. | :09:51. | |
This half-billion dollar anti-missile system has destroyed | :09:52. | :09:53. | |
nearly 90% of the thousands of Hamas rockets which have targeted Israel. | :09:54. | :09:59. | |
In this asymmetric war, Hamas deployed a weapon they too had | :10:00. | :10:02. | |
An even more complex network of tunnels - these ones built under | :10:03. | :10:10. | |
TRANSLATION: Everybody knows that "necessity is the mother of | :10:11. | :10:22. | |
These tunnels were dug by the Resistance, | :10:23. | :10:26. | |
in self-defence against a superior technological and military power. | :10:27. | :10:32. | |
The Israelis had tried to keep tabs on the tunnel network as it grew, | :10:33. | :10:35. | |
according to a government minister and former spy chief. | :10:36. | :10:45. | |
The Hamas has built an underground Gaza, and that's | :10:46. | :10:48. | |
a famous tactic in order to use this as a weapon, a terroristic | :10:49. | :10:52. | |
Hamas filmed themselves during this war launching | :10:53. | :11:01. | |
an attack through a tunnel on the Israeli village of Nahal Oz. | :11:02. | :11:06. | |
Their mission was to seize a soldier - they failed, but killed | :11:07. | :11:09. | |
We capture Israeli soldiers on the battlefield - not civilians. | :11:10. | :11:32. | |
We capture them to release our 7,000 prisoners. | :11:33. | :11:34. | |
When Israel frees our prisoners, we will no longer need to capture | :11:35. | :11:38. | |
During this war, the Israelis discovered just how | :11:39. | :11:44. | |
extensive the Hamas tunnel network was, running up to two miles | :11:45. | :11:47. | |
An Israeli commander took me into one of Hamas's attack tunnels | :11:48. | :12:02. | |
which emerges between two Israeli villages. | :12:03. | :12:07. | |
So you see, it's well-designed - works very well. | :12:08. | :12:09. | |
The tunnels are lined with cement, a precious commodity in Gaza, | :12:10. | :12:13. | |
which Israel has tried to restrict with its blockade. | :12:14. | :12:18. | |
The Hamas used tens of millions of dollars, thousands of tonnes | :12:19. | :12:25. | |
As the war went on, the Israelis discovered what a huge investment | :12:26. | :12:32. | |
of time and money Hamas had made in these tunnels, dug by hand. | :12:33. | :12:39. | |
Why didn't you know about these tunnels before? | :12:40. | :12:45. | |
We were aware of those tunnels, but it's very complicated. | :12:46. | :12:49. | |
It's not enough to find it in Israel, because you have to | :12:50. | :12:53. | |
On 17th July, the Israelis launched a ground | :12:54. | :13:10. | |
offensive that would destroy more than 30 tunnels inside Gaza. | :13:11. | :13:21. | |
Deep underground, these special forces were the first | :13:22. | :13:24. | |
They used robots to scout the extensive network to find | :13:25. | :13:31. | |
We can't identify these combat engineers - they've | :13:32. | :13:41. | |
We have encountered the enemy in the tunnels several times. | :13:42. | :13:51. | |
The Israeli unit lost that soldier here in Shujayea ? scene of one | :13:52. | :14:07. | |
of the most intensive battles of the war. | :14:08. | :14:11. | |
This built up area in eastern Gaza was the starting point | :14:12. | :14:14. | |
Hamas used them to try and seize Israeli soldiers. | :14:15. | :14:20. | |
The entrance to the tunnel was just a hundred metres from this | :14:21. | :14:31. | |
I personally witnessed in trying to kidnap soldiers, trying to separate | :14:32. | :14:39. | |
The entrance to the tunnel was just a hundred metres from this | :14:40. | :14:42. | |
It had been hit a week earlier by Israeli shelling. | :14:43. | :14:46. | |
Staff and patients then evacuated the hospital following | :14:47. | :14:48. | |
The building then became a flashpoint in the battle. | :14:49. | :14:58. | |
we took a heavy fire from the hospital. Yes, I'm sure about it, | :14:59. | :15:06. | |
they continued to fire from the hospital. | :15:07. | :15:09. | |
The Israelis say their army video shows flashes | :15:10. | :15:11. | |
of fire - Hamas attacking them from inside the Wafa hospital. | :15:12. | :15:17. | |
We had to bomb the hospital because it was a standing post of Hamas. | :15:18. | :15:22. | |
The Israelis also claim secondary explosions prove weaponry was | :15:23. | :15:25. | |
This is a lie. Israel accuses Hamas of doing this | :15:26. | :15:32. | |
Today much of Shujayea is a wasteland. | :15:33. | :15:41. | |
This pile of rubble is all that?s left of the Wafa hospital. | :15:42. | :15:51. | |
It will cost millions to re-build it. | :15:52. | :15:58. | |
In the battle, many houses around it were destroyed - | :15:59. | :16:00. | |
TRANSLATION: I left because the area was being shelled and bombed from | :16:01. | :16:19. | |
the east, I was afraid for my family. TRANSLATION: Where is our | :16:20. | :16:27. | |
street, our house? 25, 30 people living in it. It's a catastrophe. | :16:28. | :16:30. | |
200 people, some of them civilians, died in the battle in Shujayea. | :16:31. | :16:33. | |
The question is did Israel target them or was Hamas using them | :16:34. | :16:36. | |
You have to ask this question to Hamas, why are they using civilian | :16:37. | :16:53. | |
spots, schools, hospitals, as their military headquarters? You have no | :16:54. | :16:59. | |
choice if you are in this round of war hostility and rockets are | :17:00. | :17:07. | |
launched from these places. Cancellation | :17:08. | :17:14. | |
Israel is seeking excuses to strike hospitals. | :17:15. | :17:16. | |
The next chapter in the war of the tunnels was here in Rafah ? | :17:17. | :17:19. | |
When Hamas tried to abduct another Israeli soldier this place became | :17:20. | :17:23. | |
the focus of the so-called Hannibal Directive ? an order to | :17:24. | :17:26. | |
You are using all the means from the ground | :17:27. | :17:35. | |
and sometime you are also asking for an outside backup in order to chase | :17:36. | :17:40. | |
On August 1st there was a humanitarian ceasefire. | :17:41. | :17:49. | |
Under its terms, this Israeli unit was continuing | :17:50. | :17:52. | |
Hamas killed two of them, and dragged a third, | :17:53. | :17:57. | |
One of his comrades, Lt Eitan, told me how he carried out | :17:58. | :18:06. | |
I decided to go inside the tunnel so I took with me a couple of soldiers | :18:07. | :18:24. | |
Andrew went down the tunnel to look for Hadar. We saw he was dragged | :18:25. | :18:32. | |
inside, we continued about 800 Metres. What was it like in the | :18:33. | :18:41. | |
tunnels? Very deep, very dark, very small, claustrophobic. | :18:42. | :18:46. | |
The tunnel was booby trapped with explosives. | :18:47. | :18:49. | |
We had to go find him, we had to get him no matter what the cost is. | :18:50. | :18:53. | |
But the Hannibal Directive didn?t save Hadar Goldin. | :18:54. | :18:55. | |
He was declared dead the next day ? Hamas has still not | :18:56. | :18:58. | |
Over the next two days the Israelis bombed Rafah intensively. | :18:59. | :19:08. | |
Some were militants ? some, women and children. | :19:09. | :19:14. | |
Israel?s been accused of using indiscriminate force while carrying | :19:15. | :19:16. | |
The blame that we have used it in order to attack civilians | :19:17. | :19:28. | |
I am not only denying it ? I am talking facts. | :19:29. | :19:43. | |
Israel claim it only bombed military targets in Rafah. | :19:44. | :19:47. | |
But Asma al Ghoul?s family home here was destroyed ? women | :19:48. | :19:50. | |
When I heard the news and I saw the bodies, like my uncle... | :19:51. | :20:09. | |
Some of Asma?s family belong to Hamas. | :20:10. | :20:11. | |
But as a journalist she?s had her run-ins with the Islamist group - | :20:12. | :20:14. | |
harassed for not wearing a headscarf on the beach. | :20:15. | :20:25. | |
Your relatives had connections with Hamas, surely that is why the house | :20:26. | :20:34. | |
was attacked. Not this uncle at all. If they are, I will say that, it's | :20:35. | :20:36. | |
very easy. The Israeli military says | :20:37. | :20:40. | |
the house was a Hamas command and control centre used to plan | :20:41. | :20:43. | |
terror attacks against Israel. They could not confirm if civilians | :20:44. | :20:46. | |
were there when they bombed it. There?s anger across the world over | :20:47. | :20:54. | |
the civilian casualties caused They say they make every | :20:55. | :20:56. | |
effort to avoid them. I met one of the Israeli | :20:57. | :21:09. | |
surveillance pilots ? we cannot show We have to make sure there's no | :21:10. | :21:12. | |
people walking around, any So we?ll have to have cameras | :21:13. | :21:17. | |
on that area before So if you are carrying out this | :21:18. | :21:44. | |
surveillance, how come so may civilians have been killed in | :21:45. | :21:52. | |
Israeli air strikes? We can only see what is going on outside so if | :21:53. | :21:57. | |
people are inside the houses, we have developed techniques to get the | :21:58. | :22:00. | |
civilians as far away as possible from the battlefield. | :22:01. | :22:02. | |
One controversial Israeli technique used in this war | :22:03. | :22:04. | |
and over the last six years is what they call ?the knock on the roof?. | :22:05. | :22:08. | |
First a non explosive warning rocket is fired. | :22:09. | :22:11. | |
The impact is intended to give people a few minutes to get | :22:12. | :22:15. | |
However Israel justifies its methods of avoiding civilian | :22:16. | :22:24. | |
casualties ? its bombs have killed hundreds of women and children. | :22:25. | :22:27. | |
So has their military action been disproportionate? | :22:28. | :22:35. | |
We have warned civilians, Hamas could avoid many, many losses. So | :22:36. | :22:46. | |
the blame is not on Israel, the blame is on Hamas and Israel is | :22:47. | :22:50. | |
sorrow for every loss of civilian life. | :22:51. | :22:56. | |
The UN is now investigating alleged war crimes on both sides. | :22:57. | :22:58. | |
Hamas is accused of using its own people as human shields | :22:59. | :23:02. | |
and firing rockets indiscriminately at civilians in Israel. | :23:03. | :23:11. | |
TRANSLATION: First, we do not target Israeli civilians. Second, we don't | :23:12. | :23:19. | |
have accurate smart missiles like the Israeli military. Give us those | :23:20. | :23:24. | |
guided missiles and we will never launch rockets at just anyone, we | :23:25. | :23:28. | |
will only target the Israeli military. | :23:29. | :23:29. | |
On the other side alleged war crimes by Israel include hitting | :23:30. | :23:32. | |
On July 30th paramedic Ibrahim abu el Qais was in this ambulance | :23:33. | :23:43. | |
when a call came ? Shujayea was under Israeli fire again. | :23:44. | :23:55. | |
TRANSLATION: When we headed there, the situation was incredibly | :23:56. | :24:04. | |
dangerous. Everywhere we went to common sense that death was a | :24:05. | :24:05. | |
certainty. The ambulances were being | :24:06. | :24:07. | |
followed by local TV crews. Ibrahim, one of the first | :24:08. | :24:09. | |
on the scene went into Then in the street below him, | :24:10. | :24:12. | |
there was another explosion. 17 people were now dead, including | :24:13. | :24:21. | |
a paramedic and a photographer. Unfortunately there is no respect | :24:22. | :24:36. | |
for the uniform or the ambulance. The planes bombing knew we were | :24:37. | :24:41. | |
here. After they bombed us the first time, then you another ambulance | :24:42. | :24:42. | |
would be coming here soon. The Israeli army told us they are | :24:43. | :24:46. | |
still investigating this incident involving the ambulances | :24:47. | :24:48. | |
in Shujayea. The Israelis have also announced | :24:49. | :24:50. | |
they are investigating possible war crimes by their own forces | :24:51. | :24:53. | |
in five other cases. There were no comparable scenes | :24:54. | :24:59. | |
in Israel like the ones the world saw daily from Gaza?s | :25:00. | :25:02. | |
hospitals during the war. And so arguably | :25:03. | :25:07. | |
in many countries Israel?s lost the biggest battle in this conflict | :25:08. | :25:10. | |
? the battle for public opinion. What should Israel do when 5 million | :25:11. | :25:26. | |
civilians are under heavy rocket attack? We should sit and wait? I am | :25:27. | :25:35. | |
asking the international community, what they have done is the same | :25:36. | :25:40. | |
would happen in their country against their civilians? | :25:41. | :25:45. | |
Thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv as the war drew to a close. | :25:46. | :25:48. | |
The majority of Israelis don?t think this conflict had any clear winner. | :25:49. | :26:01. | |
Many of the tunnels are destroyed ? but the war cost Israel the lives | :26:02. | :26:05. | |
And Hamas is still in Gaza - armed with rockets. | :26:06. | :26:12. | |
Many Israelis wanted their army to stay in Gaza | :26:13. | :26:15. | |
When the ceasefire took hold, Hamas celebrated what they called | :26:16. | :26:28. | |
They tightened their hold on Gaza ? executing people they | :26:29. | :26:31. | |
But Hamas have made no solid gains in this war ? there?s no guarantee | :26:32. | :26:37. | |
the blockade will be lifted or they?ll get the airport | :26:38. | :26:40. | |
and the seaport they?re demanding to open Gaza to the outside world. | :26:41. | :26:51. | |
If the international community doesn?t deliver this or if Israel | :26:52. | :26:53. | |
manoeuvres and deceives, we will fight and resume our struggle. | :26:54. | :26:56. | |
These are our rights and the whole world will be responsible | :26:57. | :26:59. | |
The solution is not a military solution. The solution is | :27:00. | :27:14. | |
diplomatic. We have to sit around the table. Israel is committed to | :27:15. | :27:20. | |
defend its sovereignty, it citizens and unfortunately, if we have to do | :27:21. | :27:26. | |
it again, we will do it without hesitation. | :27:27. | :27:39. | |
Israel?s now seized nearly a thousand acres | :27:40. | :27:40. | |
of the occupied West Bank ? in response to the killing of the three | :27:41. | :27:44. | |
Israeli teenagers. The move?s been condemned by the Palestinians and | :27:45. | :27:46. | |
internationally. Last night two Palestinians suspected of kidnapping | :27:47. | :27:48. | |
the three boys were killed when the Israeli army tried to capture them. | :27:49. | :27:55. | |
In Gaza, Asma is visiting baby Ibrahim whose | :27:56. | :27:57. | |
twin brother Mustafa was killed when their family home was bombed. | :27:58. | :28:07. | |
Asma now believes it is Hamas who will reap the advantage | :28:08. | :28:18. | |
Once again they?re trying to rebuild their lives in Gaza. | :28:19. | :28:47. | |
Peace talks are due to start this week. | :28:48. | :28:53. | |
But people here ? and in Israel, don?t believe they?ve seen | :28:54. | :28:56. | |
I put my arms over my son and I put my leg over my daughter, | :28:57. | :29:30. | |
then the footsteps got closer and closer | :29:31. | :29:32. | |
A year on, those that survived the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi | :29:33. | :29:37. |