A/HRC/12/48 page 158 698. The Mission does not say that the Israeli armed forces had to accept the risk to themselves at all cost, but in addressing that risk it appears to the Mission that they had ample opportunity to make a choice of weapons that would have significantly limited the risk to civilians in the area. According to the position the Government has itself taken, Israeli forces had a full 50 minutes to respond to this threat – or at least they took a full 50 minutes to respond to it. Given the mobilization speeds of helicopters and fighter jets in the context of the military operations in Gaza, the Mission finds it difficult to believe that mortars were the most accurate weapons available at the time. The time in question is almost 1 hour. The decision is difficult to justify. 699. The choice of weapon – mortars – appears to have been a reckless one. Mortars are area weapons. They kill or maim whoever is within the impact zone after detonation and they are incapable of distinguishing between combatants and civilians. A decision to deploy them in a location filled with civilians is a decision that a commander knows will result in the death and injuries of some of those civilians. 700. Even if the version of events presented now by Israel is to be believed, the Mission does not consider that the choice of deploying mortar weapons in a busy street with around 150 civilians in it (not to mention those within the school) can be justified. The Mission does not consider that in these circumstances it was a choice that any reasonable commander would have made. 701. From the facts available to it, the Mission believes that there has been a violation of: • Additional Protocol I, articles 57 (2) (a) (ii) and (iii) as set out above; • The inherent right to life of the Palestinian civilians killed in the above incidents by depriving them arbitrarily of their life in violation of article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 702. The Mission views as being unreliable the versions given by the Israeli authorities. The confusion as to what was hit, the erroneous allegations of who was specifically hit and where the armed groups were firing from, the indication that Israeli surveillance watched the scene but nonetheless could not detect where the strikes occurred, all combine to give the impression of either profound confusion or obfuscation. 703. Whatever the truth, the Mission is of the view that the deployment of at least four mortar shells to attempt to kill a small number of specified individuals in a setting where large numbers of civilians were going about their daily business and 1,368 people were sheltering nearby cannot meet the test of what a reasonable commander would have determined to be an acceptable loss of civilian life for the military advantage sought. XI. DELIBERATE ATTACKS AGAINST THE CIVILIAN POPULATION 704. According to the Israeli Government, the Israeli armed forces’ rules of engagement for the military operation in Gaza emphasized the principle of distinction as one of four “guiding principles that applied in an integrated and cumulative manner: military necessity, distinction, proportionality and humanity”. It defines the principle of distinction in the following terms: “Strikes shall be directed against military objectives and combatants only. It is absolutely