Evidence of war crimes by Israel, Palestinian militants in summer 2014 war: UN report

Evidence of war crimes by Israel, Palestinian militants in summer 2014 war: UN report

Published 22 June 2015

 

A UN investigative panel looking into the summer 2014 Israel-Hamas war has found “serious violations of international humanitarian law” which “may amount to war crimes” by both sides. The report was released early on Monday in Geneva by a commission of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). It says that “impunity prevails across the board” regarding the actions of the Israeli military in Gaza, and urged Israel to “break with its recent lamentable track record in holding wrongdoers accountable.” The commission found that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad employed methods of “inherently indiscriminate nature” by using rockets and mortars to fire at Israeli civilians.

A UN investigative panel looking into the summer 2014 Israel-Hamas war has found “serious violations of international humanitarian law” which “may amount to war crimes” by both sides.
The report was released early on Monday in Geneva by a commission of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). It says that “impunity prevails across the board” regarding the actions of the Israeli military in Gaza, and urged Israel to “break with its recent lamentable track record in holding wrongdoers accountable.”
The commission found that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad employed methods of “inherently indiscriminate nature” by using rockets and mortars to fire at Israeli civilians. The report also condemned the execution of suspected collaborators, and said Palestinian authorities “have consistently failed” to bring violators of international law to justice.
The report said that the 2014 hostilities saw a huge increase in firepower used in Gaza, with more than 6,000 airstrikes by Israel and approximately 50,000 tank and artillery shells fired. In the fifty-one day operation, 1,462 Palestinian civilians were killed, a third of them children. Palestinian armed groups fired 4,881 rockets and 1,753 mortars toward Israel in July and August 2014, killing six civilians and injuring at least 1,600.
“Comprehensive and effective accountability mechanisms for violations allegedly committed by Israel or Palestinian actors will be a key deciding factor of whether Palestinians or Israelis are to be spared yet another round of hostilities and spikes in violations of international law,” the report says.
“The extent of the devastation and human suffering in Gaza was unprecedented and will impact generations to come,” the chair of the commission, Justice Mary McGowan Davis told a press briefing on Monday. “There is also on-going fear in Israel among communities who come under regular threat.”
Davis, a former justice of the New York State Supreme Court, replaced William Schabas, a Canadian law professor who resigned in February as chair of the commission after a formal complaint by Israel about, among other things, his having worked as a consultant for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Haaretz notes that the report also condemns Israel’s strict restrictions on Gaza residents’ travel and trade, saying “the blockade and the military operation have led to a protection crisis and chronic, widespread and systematic violations of human rights.”
Referring to the damage in Gaza caused by the war, the commission says that “the scale of the devastation was unprecedented” in Gaza. The commission report lists 2,251 Palestinian deaths and 18,000 homes destroyed, and also cites “immense distress and disruption to the lives of Israeli civilians,” along with $25 million in civilian property damage.
“Palestinian and Israeli children were savagely affected by the events,” the report notes. “Children on both sides suffered from bed-wetting, shaking at night, clinging to parents, nightmares and increased levels of aggressiveness.”
The report found that at least 142 Palestinian families lost three or more members during an Israeli air strike on a residential building, which caused 742 deaths. “The fact that Israel did not revise its practice of air-strikes, even after their dire effects on civilians became apparent, raises the question of whether this was part of a broader policy which was at least tacitly approved at the highest level of government,” the commission found, according to a press release accompanying the report.
“The commission is concerned about Israel’s extensive use of weapons with a wide kill and injury radius; though not illegal, their use in densely populated areas is highly likely to kill combatants and civilians indiscriminately,” the commission found. “There appears also to be a pattern whereby the IDF issued warnings to people to leave a neighborhood and then automatically considered anyone remaining to be a fighter. This practice makes attacks on civilians highly likely.”
The report also noted the “immense distress and disruption to Israeli civilians” resulting from the “indiscriminate” firing of rockets from Gaza.
“With regard to Palestinian armed groups, the commission has serious concerns with regard to the inherently indiscriminate nature of most of the projectiles directed towards Israel by these groups and to the targeting of Israeli civilians, which violate international humanitarian law and may amount to a war crime,” the report said. “The increased level of fear among Israeli civilians resulting from the use of tunnels was palpable. The commission also condemns the extrajudicial executions of alleged ‘collaborators,’ which amount to a war crime.”
“The commission cannot exclude the possibility that the indiscriminate rocket attacks may constitute acts of violence whose primary purpose is to spread terror amongst the civilian population,” the commission found in its report.
The Israeli government refused to cooperate with the Human Rights Council inquiry, saying it was inherently biased.
During the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that reading the report would be a “waste of time.”
The UNHRC is a “hostile body, not objective regarding Israel… which has made more resolutions against Israel than against Syria, Iran and North Korea combined,” Netanyahu told the cabinet.
Israel has compiled its own report, which according to Cabinet Secretary Avichai Mendelblit describes the war crimes committed by Hamas and the other Palestinian organizations, the threats of terror against Israel from Gaza, the measures Israel had taken to act in accordance of international law and avoid harming citizens, as well as the investigations and examinations ongoing in Israel since the end of the war.
“Israel is now faced with an unprecedented attack of delegitimization,” Netanyahu said after receiving the Israeli report. “This is a baseless and political attack aimed at sullying Israel. We will respond to this attack. This is the report that will portray the true picture of what happened in the operation and will prove that the actions taken by the IDF were done in accordance with international law and out of necessity to protect our citizens from the murderous terror organizations who committed double war crimes — shooting at citizens while hiding behind citizens.”
“Israel is committed to international law not because of UN commissions of inquiry but because it is a democratic state,” Netanyahu added. “We are not afraid to check ourselves when necessary. Israel’s mechanism of investigation and examinations are the leading in the world. When there are credible claims, they are checked.”