A/HRC/12/48 page 180 lethal attack on two under-age civilians. The fact that they were hit in the chest and the abdomen, respectively, indicates that the intention was to kill them. 801. The Mission further notes that in this case the Israeli armed forces denied the ambulances access to the area to evacuate the wounded and then opened fire on the relatives of the wounded who were trying to take them to the nearest hospital. C. Information concerning the instructions given to the Israeli armed forces with regard to the opening of fire against civilians 802. The Mission found in the above incidents that the Israeli armed forces repeatedly opened fire on civilians who were not taking part in the hostilities and who posed no threat to them. These incidents indicate that the instructions given to the Israeli armed forces moving into Gaza provided for a low threshold for the use of lethal fire against the civilian population. The Mission found strong corroboration of this trend emerging from its fact-finding in the testimonies of Israeli soldiers collected by the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence443 and in the Protocol of the Rabin Academy’s “Fighters’ Talk”. These testimonies suggest in particular that the instructions given to the soldiers conveyed two “policies”. Both are an expression of the aim to eliminate as far as possible any risk to the lives of the Israeli soldiers. 803. The first policy could be summarized, in the words of one of the soldiers: “if we see something suspect and shoot, better hit an innocent than hesitate to target an enemy.” Another soldier attributed the following instructions to his battalion commander: “If you are not sure – shoot. If there is doubt then there is no doubt.” The first soldier summarized the briefing from the battalion commander as follows “the enemy was hiding behind civilian population. […] if we suspect someone, we should not give him the benefit of the doubt. Eventually, this could be an enemy, even if it’s some old woman approaching the house. It could be an old woman carrying an explosive charge.” A third soldier explained “you don’t only shoot when threatened. The assumption is that you constantly feel threatened, so anything there threatens you, and you shoot. No one actually said ‘shoot regardless’ or ‘shoot anything that moves.’ But we were not ordered to open fire only if there was a real threat.”444 804. The Mission notes that some soldiers stated that they agreed with the instructions to “shoot in case of doubt.” One of them explained “this is the difference between urban warfare and a limited confrontation. In urban warfare, anyone is your enemy. No innocents.” Another told of his profound discomfort with the policy and of how he and his comrades had attempted to question their commander about it after a clearly harmless man was shot.445 While they disagreed about the legitimacy and morality of the policy, they had little doubt about the terms of the instructions: each soldier and commander on the ground had to exercise judgement,446 but the policy was to shoot in case of doubt. 443 Soldiers’ Testimonies…. 444 Ibid., testimony 21, pp. 50–51, testimony 7, p. 20, and testimony 9, p. 24. 445 Ibid., testimony 7, p. 20, and testimony 14, pp. 38-39. 446 Ibid., testimony 13, p. 37.