Geneva // The United Nations condemned Israel on Monday in its most damning report yet into last summer’s 50-day war on Gaza.
Israel’s political and military leaders may have committed war crimes by deliberately bombing densely populated areas and destroying entire neighbourhoods, the Commission of Inquiry on the conflict found.
It criticised the “huge firepower” Israel had used in Gaza, with more than 6,000 airstrikes and 50,000 artillery shells fired. More than 2,140 Palestinians died, most of them civilians, and 73 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
“The extent of the devastation and human suffering in Gaza was unprecedented and will impact generations to come,” said the chair of the commission, New York judge Mary McGowan Davis.
The bombings of residential buildings wiped out whole families, with 551 children killed, said the judge, clearly emotional as she spoke.
Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed in their homes, and the report provided heart-wrenching testimony from a man who lost 19 of his relatives in an attack in Khan Younis, including his mother and all of his children. “We all died that day, even those who survived,” he said.
The report says: “There is little or no information available to explain why residential buildings, which are … civilian objects immune from attack, were considered to be legitimate military objectives.
“There are strong indications that these attacks could be disproportionate, and therefore amount to a war crime.”
The report, which will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council next week, says 742 people were killed in attacks on residential buildings, with at least 142 families losing three or more members.
“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,” the commission said.
The judge pointed to a “pervasive failure on all sides to achieve justice” for the wrongs committed, and the investigators urged Israel to “break with its recent lamentable track record in holding wrongdoers accountable”.
The report said it had received “credible allegations” that both sides had committed war crimes during the conflict.
Investigators criticised the “indiscriminate” firing of thousands of rockets and mortars at Israel, which it said appeared to have been intended to “spread terror” among Israeli civilians.
Palestinian militants fired 4,881 rockets and 1,753 mortars towards Israel, killing six civilians and injuring at least 1,600 others, it said.
The two-member commission also pointed out that tunnels dug by Palestinian militants into Israel had traumatised Israeli civilians “who feared they could be attacked at any moment by gunmen bursting out of the ground”.
The commission said it could not confirm Israeli allegations that Palestinian militants had used civilian buildings, mainly because Israel refused investigators permission to go to Gaza.
“The questionable conduct of these armed groups, however, does not modify Israel’s own obligations to abide by international law,” the report said.
Investigators were also not granted entry to Israel, but the commission obtained evidence in more than 280 confidential interviews and about 500 written submissions, and said it had “received full cooperation of the state of Palestine”.
In the occupied West Bank, a senior Palestine Liberation Organisation official said the report reinforced “our will to go to the International Criminal Court”.
Palestinians have been seeking to open criminal proceedings against Israel at the ICC as part of an increased focus on diplomatic manoeuvring and appeals to international bodies.
The UN investigators refused to say yesterday whether they thought the ICC was an appropriate forum for ensuring accountability for the abuses committed during the conflict, which started on July 8.
Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, hailed the report’s “condemnation of the Zionist occupier for its war crimes”.
Israel, which has been harshly critical of the commission since its inception last year, blasted the report as biased, and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country “does not commit war crimes”.
“Israel defends itself against a terror organisation which calls for its destruction and that itself carries out war crimes,” Mr Netanyahu said.
The report, initially scheduled for publication in March, was delayed after the head of the team quit under Israeli pressure.
Canadian international law expert 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.
Israel was not satisfied, calling for the entire inquiry to be shelved, insisting the commission and the Human Rights Council which created it are inherently biased against Israel.
A report by the council into the 2008-2009 Gaza war, conducted by South African jurist Richard Goldstone, found evidence that Israel and Hamas both committed war crimes, though Mr Goldstone later backed off his key allegations against Israel.
* With reporting by Agence France-Presse
