A/HRC/12/48 page 202 927. No other buildings in the industrial compound belonging to the Hamadas were damaged at the time of the strikes. It appears that the strikes on the flour mill were intentional and precise. 928. The Hamada brothers are well-known businessmen. The Israeli authorities did not appear to consider them either before or after the military operations to be a threat, given the unrestricted issuance of their Businessman Cards and their ability to travel to Israel afterwards. The issuance of a Businessman Card is no trifle, especially in the context of the ongoing restrictions on trade. It is not plausible that the Israeli authorities would issue such a document to any party it regarded with suspicion. 929. The only issue that remains to be examined is whether there was any reason for the flour mill to have been deemed a military objective on 9 January. The building was one of the tallest in the area and would have offered extensive views to the Israeli armed forces. The Mission notes that taking control of the building might be deemed a legitimate objective in the circumstances. However, by 9 January the Israeli armed forces were fully aware that the flour mill could be evacuated at short notice by using the warning message system. If the reason for attacking the mill was to gain control of it for observation and control purposes, it made no sense to bomb the principal machinery and to destroy the upper floors. There is also no suggestion that the Israeli armed forces considered the building to be a source of enemy fire. 930. The nature of the strikes on the mill and in particular the precise targeting of crucial machinery on one of the mid-level floors suggests that the intention was to disable its productive capacity. There appears to be no plausible justification for the extensive damage to the flour mill if the sole objective was to take control of the building. It thus appears that the only purpose was to put an end to the production of flour in the Gaza Strip. 931. From the facts it ascertained, the Mission finds that there has been a violation of the grave breaches provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Unlawful and wanton destruction which is not justified by military necessity would amount to a war crime. 932. Having concluded that the strikes were without any military justification, and therefore wanton and unlawful, the Mission finds it useful to consider if there was any non-military purpose to the strikes. 933. The aim of the strike, if not military, could only have been to destroy the local capacity to produce flour. The question is whether such deliberate destruction of the sole remaining flourproducing capacity in the Gaza Strip can be described as having been done for the purpose of denying sustenance to the civilian population. 934. Article 54 (1) and (2) of Additional Protocol I reflect customary international law.495 Article 54 (2) prohibits acts whose specific purpose is the denial of sustenance for whatever reason, including starvation, forced displacement or anything else. In short, the motive for denying sustenance need not be to starve the civilian population. Indeed, the motive is irrelevant. In this respect the Mission agrees with the views expressed by ICRC in Customary Rules of International Law…, pp. 189-193. 495