Israel's Gaza inquiry 'lacks credibility'

Amnesty International criticises an Israeli army investigation into the conduct of its soldiers in Gaza.

RAMALLAH // Amnesty International has criticised an Israeli army investigation into the conduct of its soldiers in Gaza during its war there earlier this year and called on Israel to make public the findings of the internal investigation. "In the absence of the necessary evidence to substantiate its allegations, the army's probe appears to be more an attempt to shirk its responsibilities than a genuine process to establish the truth," Donatella Rovera, Amnesty's Israel/Palestinian Territories specialist, said in a statement on Friday. "Such an approach lacks credibility." Details of the army investigation have not been made public, but its conclusions were distributed on Wednesday. Among them the military said that "throughout" the war on Gaza it had "operated in accordance with international law" except in "a very small number of incidents in which intelligence or operational errors took place". These, however, were "unavoidable", according to the army, which instead blamed Hamas for "choosing to fight from within the civilian population". Such findings stand in sharp contrast to those of human rights organisations as well Palestinians who have called for an international investigation into the numerous allegations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. These include white flag killings, the indiscriminate use of heavy weaponry including artillery, white phosphorous shells and unmanned aerial drones in densely populated civilian areas, as well as widespread destruction to civilian property and infrastructure. Israel denies that it deliberately targeted civilians during its assault and while Palestinians say that of the 1,400-plus people killed more than two-thirds were civilians, Israel says of 1,166 killed two-thirds were militants. Either way, however, there was a high civilian death toll and human rights groups have argued that the number of civilian casualties alone warrants an international investigation. Israel has refused to co-operate with any international fact-finding mission, including the one set up by the UN Human Rights Council and headed by Richard Goldstone, an international war crimes prosecutor, to investigate violations of international law by all parties during the war. "If Israel truly did nothing wrong, than it should co-operate with Goldstone," said Bill Van Esveld of Human Rights Watch. "If Israel is confident that the investigation [by the Israeli army] is accurate then it has nothing to fear." Human Rights Watch has been critical of the internal Israeli investigation. The New York-based group is conducting its own investigation into allegations of war crimes in Gaza and has so far published one report on Israel's use of white phosphorous shells with more to follow. The Israeli investigation found that no white phosphorous munitions were used in populated areas, something Mr Van Esveld said was "blatantly wrong". "Ask the people in the UN school in Jabaliya. Ask the people in the UN warehouse where millions of dollars worth of sacks of flour and medicine burned down because of white phosphorous. It's not credible at all." One incident that the army released some details about was the bombardment near Fukhara School, a UN school, in Jabaliya on Jan 6. The army's investigation stated that "soldiers responded with minimal and proportionate retaliatory fire, using the most precise weapon available to them." Amnesty International, however, said at least four Israeli mortars were fired at what was a crowded street and that the decision to use mortars - "notoriously imprecise weapons" - in a crowded area was "virtually certain to cause civilian deaths and injury and should have never been made". Amnesty also disputed the Israeli army's casualty figures in the incident. The army said 12 people had been killed, while Amnesty said about 30 died, mostly civilians. "The [Israeli army] investigation is an insult to the civilians who were killed and an embarrassment to people in the Israeli Defense Forces [IDF] who take the investigation seriously," said Mr Van Esveld. "The idea that you could have an investigation into every case of apparently unlawful killings during the war and find that the IDF did nothing wrong doesn't look like an investigation, it looks like a whitewash." Mr Van Esveld said he suspected Israel would continue to resist any efforts to proceed with an international investigation. With Israel not a signatory and the Palestinian territories not a state, the likelihood of pursuing human rights violators through the International Criminal Court also appears low. Palestinian groups such as the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) have instead focused their efforts in countries that allow universal jurisdiction, mostly European countries. "We are identifying where the Geneva conventions are part of a legal system and how we can then effectively use that system," said Raji Sourani of PCHR. Mr Sourani said he was hopeful that violators would be brought to justice. "This was the first ever war crime broadcast live on TV with the whole world watching. What happened to our people was unjustified, unfair and illegal. We are not going to be good victims and stay quiet and we are not going to give up." [e-mail]