A/HRC/5/11 Page 3 Clouds”. I also visited the scene of the killing of 19 persons and the wounding of 55 persons in Beit Hanoun on 8 November 2006. (The Human Rights Council later established a mission headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to investigate this event. Again, no consent by Israel was forthcoming for such a mission.) I reported to the Human Rights Council on this visit in my report on 22 March 2007 (see A/HRC/4/17). 7. In this report I examined the consequences of Israeli military action in Gaza between 25 June and the end of November 2006, action that took the names “Operation Summer Rains” and “Operation Autumn Clouds”. I reported that over 400 Palestinians were killed and some 1,500 injured in 364 military incursions which were accompanied by persistent artillery shelling and air-to-surface missile attacks. Missiles, shells and bulldozers destroyed homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, agricultural land, public buildings, bridges, water pipelines and sewage networks. On 27 June the Israeli Air Force (IAF) destroyed the only domestic power plant in Gaza, which deprived half of the population of Gaza of electricity for several months. Thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their homes as a result of Israel’s military actions. 8. The report paid particular attention to IDF action in Beit Hanoun in November 2006. In this action 82 Palestinians were killed and more than 260 injured. I reported on my visit to the home of the Al-Athamnah family, which was shelled on 8 November 2006, killing 19 persons and wounding 55 persons. I expressed the view that there were reasons for doubting that this shelling was the result of a “technical failure”, as maintained by Israel. 9. The report also examined the humanitarian crisis occasioned by the siege of Gaza and Israeli military action. I found that 70 per cent of Gaza’s potential work force was out of work or without pay and that over 80 per cent of the population live below the official poverty line. I considered the effect that the destruction of the Gaza power plant had had on daily life in Gaza and the consequences of the siege for health and education. 10. I concluded that Israel had violated a number of rights contained in the two International Covenants and that it had, in addition, violated the most fundamental rules of international humanitarian law by attacking civilian targets, spreading terror among the civilian population, destroying property not justified by military necessity, and using force excessively and disproportionately. In my view such action constituted unlawful collective punishment of the people of Gaza. My report on Gaza (A/HRC/4/17) ran to 10 pages and 17 paragraphs. It presented a full picture of the events of June to November 2006 in Gaza and the consequences of these events. 11. 12. I am the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. In this capacity, I report on the overall situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory without attempting to investigate or resolve any factual dispute. I am not a one-person factfinding mission. Consequently, the above report raises questions about Israel’s justification for the shelling of the Beit Hanoun home, in which 19 persons died, and states that “it seems clear that the indiscriminate firing of shells into a civilian neighbourhood with no apparent military objective constituted a war crime”, but it makes no attempt to pronounce definitively upon the factual dispute whether the shelling was the result of a “technical failure”, as maintained by Israel. The line between situation-reporting and fact-finding is admittedly not absolutely clear.