LONDON, United Kingdom. Both Israelis and Palestinians may have committed war crimes during last year’s Gaza conflict, says a United Nations inquiry.
The report said it gathered “substantial information” pointing to “serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law” by both sides during the 50-day war.
New York judge Mary McGowan Davis, who chaired the inquiry, said: “The extent of the devastation and human suffering in Gaza was unprecedented and will impact generations to come.”
Israeli forces launched their offensive in July last year after Hamas and other militant groups fired rockets at Israel.
More than 2,200 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, were killed during the fighting, according to UN officials, while 73 people died on the Israeli side.
A third of the civilians killed were children, the report said.
It denounced the “huge firepower” used in Gaza, with Israel launching more than 6,000 airstrikes and firing 50,000 artillery shells.
Palestinian groups fired 4,881 rockets and 1,753 mortars at Israel, killing six civilians and injuring at least 1,600 others.
The report, commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council, pointed out that hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed in their homes, especially women and children.
Heart-wrenching evidence came from a member of the Al Najjar family who lost 19 of his relatives in an attack in Khan Younis on 26 July.
“We all died that day, even those who survived,” he told investigators.
The report said: “The fact that Israel did not revise its practice of airstrikes, even after their dire effects on civilians became apparent, raises questions of whether this was part of a broader policy which was at least tacitly approved at the highest level of government.”
It voiced concerns that a sense of “impunity prevails across the board for violations … allegedly committed by Israeli forces, whether it be in the context of active hostilities in Gaza or killings, torture and ill-treatment in the West Bank.”
The investigators urged Israel to “break with its recent lamentable track record in holding wrongdoers accountable.”
They also decried the “indiscriminate” firing of thousands of rockets and mortars at Israel, which it said appeared to be have been intended to “spread terror” among Israeli civilians.
Israel, which has long had a thorny relationship with the UN, immediately slammed the report as biased.
“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.
“This report was commissioned by a notoriously biased institution.”
It said the UN inquiry failed to differentiate between Israel’s “moral behaviour” and the actions of Palestinian “terror organisations”.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas.
A similar report into the 2008-2009 Gaza war was harshly critical of both Israel and Hamas.
Credit: Sky News
