A/HRC/12/48 page 132 call the inhabitants of a house. The Mission notes that these warnings all took place in situations where the view appears to have been reached that those in the house are civilians or predominantly civilians. If the choice is between making another call or firing a light missile that carries with it a significant risk of killing those civilians, the Mission is not convinced that it would not have been feasible to make another call to confirm that a strike was about to be made. 535. Finally, apart from the issue of fear and ambiguity, there is the question of danger. The idea that an attack, however limited in itself, can be understood as an effective warning in the meaning of article 57 (2) (c) is rejected by the Mission. (c) Leaflets 536. The leaflets and radio broadcasts that told people to leave their homes and head towards city centres were in most cases lacking in specificity and clarity: people could not be certain that the warnings were directed at them in particular, since they were being issued as far as they could tell to almost everyone, and they could not tell when they should leave since there was rarely an indication of when attacks would take place. Furthermore, in the circumstances created by the Israeli armed forces, people could not reasonably be expected to flee to what appeared to be even less safe places on the basis of such non-specific warnings. Therefore, the Mission does not consider such warnings to have been the most effective possible in the circumstances and, indeed, doubts that many were effective at all. 7. Conclusions 537. While noting the statements of the significant efforts made by the Israeli armed forces to issue warnings, the sole question for the Mission to consider at this point is whether the different kinds of warnings issued can be considered as sufficiently effective in the circumstances to constitute compliance with article 57 (2) (c). 538. The Mission accepts that the warnings issued by the Israeli armed forces in some cases encouraged numbers of people to flee and get out of harm’s way in respect of the ground invasion, but this is not sufficient to consider them as generally effective. 539. The Mission considers that some of the leaflets with specific warnings, such as those that Israel indicates were issued in Rafah and al-Shujaeiyah, may be regarded as effective. However, the Mission does not consider that general messages telling people to leave wherever they were and go to city centres, in the particular circumstances of this military campaign, meet the threshold of effectiveness. 540. The Mission regards some specific telephone calls to have provided effective warnings but treats with caution the figure of 165,000 calls made. Without sufficient information to know how many of these were specific, it cannot say to what extent such efforts might be regarded as effective. 541. The Mission does not consider the technique of firing missiles into or on top of buildings as capable of being described as a warning, much less an effective warning. It is a dangerous practice and in essence constitutes a form of attack rather than a warning.

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