‘Forensic Architects’ investigating Gaza

As 2015 draws to a close we are republishing some of our best documentaries of the year.

Jehad Saftawi was one of hundreds of Gazans to document the impact of “Operation Protective Edge”, launched by Israel in response to rockets and mortar bombs fired by Hamas and other militant groups out of Gaza into Israel.

Setting up a camera on his balcony in Gaza City, he live-streamed the bombing each night to thousands of viewers around the world.

“When we started the idea to have a livestream, we were not asking to achieve anything. We were just searching for any channel, for any way to the world, to make them understand (the situation) Gaza people are living in,” Saftawi, 24, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a Skype interview.

FORENSIC ANALYSIS

A year on, Amnesty International says evidence collected by Saftawi and others during one of the most controversial episodes of the conflict shows that Israeli forces carried out war crimes in retaliation for the capture of an Israeli soldier.

The global human rights group has been working with Forensic Architecture, a research team based at Goldsmiths, University of London, to piece together what happened on Aug. 1 2014, when an Israeli air and artillery bombardment killed 150 people in a few hours.

The Forensic Architecture team analysed hundreds of videos, photos and satellite images to piece together a timeline of the day.

By creating a 3D architectural model of Rafah, they were able to analyze smoke plumes and shadows, to verify the exact time and location of individual photos and videos. They could also assess the exact size of missiles moments before they reached their target.

“The evidence for us is not within any single image. It is only through the architectural model that we are able to see the relation between images,” said Weizman, from Forensic Architecture.

‘Black Friday: Carnage in Rafah’ can be read in full here.