“It found ‘serious violations of worldwide humanitarian law’ that ‘may amount to war crimes’ by both Israel and the Palestinian militants during a 50-day war that killed 2,251 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians, and destroyed 18,000 homes in the Gaza Strip“.
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“Israel defends itself against a terrorist organization that calls for its destruction and carries out many war crimes”, Netanyahu said Monday.
“Hamas welcomes the report’s condemnation of the Zionist occupier for its war crimes during the last war against Gaza,” said Mr Fawzi Barhum, a spokesman for the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip.
Davis noticeably choked up while referring to the number of children killed during the seven-week conflict, an AFP correspondent said, with the United Nations giving a figure of 551.
This raises concerns “that the strikes may have constituted military tactics reflective of a broader policy, approved at least tacitly by decision-makers at the highest levels of the Government of Israel”, the report said.
Asked about juxtaposing the Israeli army and Hamas, the New York-based jurist says that “Israel and the armed groups operate under the same principles, the same global human rights principles”, and therefore it was correct to juxtapose their conduct during the conflict.
A new report by the UNHRC found both Hamas and Israel responsible for possible war crimes during last summer’s Israel-Gaza war.
Canadian worldwide law specialist William Schabas resigned as chair of the commission after Israel charged he was biased because he had prepared a legal opinion for the PLO in October 2012.
The report also criticised the “indiscriminate” nature of Palestinian rockets and mortars.
Aaron David Miller, a former adviser on the Middle East to Democratic and Republican USA presidents, said the harsh U.N. report and divisions with the USA and Europe over the Palestinian issue contribute to “extreme Israeli sensitivity”. Israel accused the Human Rights Council of being obsessed with it and of assuming that Israel was guilty even prior to beginning its investigations.
The commission plans to formally present its findings on the Gaza war crimes to the United Nations Human Rights Council on June 29th, 2015 in Geneva.
Palestinian militants fired 4,881 rockets and 1,753 mortars towards Israel, killing six civilians and injuring at least 1,600 others, it said.
Israeli media reported that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had instructed his ministers not to publicly comment on the report. Israel responded to the teens’ kidnapping by arresting hundreds of Hamas members in raids in the West Bank, prompting militant groups in Gaza to step up their rocket attacks.
“The report contains some positive paragraphs condemning the Israeli occupation, but it is equal between the victim and executioner”, said senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad.
Israel didn’t cooperate with the U.N. commission, saying its mandate was skewed.
“It is a committee that condemns Israel more than it condemns Iran, Syria, and North Korea combined”, he said.
The remarks are made in a report, overseen by the U.N. Human Rights Council, which affirms that, “The 2014 hostilities have had an enormous impact on the lives of Palestinians and Israelis”.
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“It is well known that the entire process that led to the production of this report was politically motivated and morally flawed from the outset”, a foreign ministry statement said.
