Tear gas canisters are fired by Israeli troops toward Palestinians during a protest at the Israel-Gaza border fence, in the southern Gaza Strip February 22, 2019. (photo credit: REUTERS/IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA)
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In a likely war crime, IDF soldiers deliberately shot at children and people with disabilities when it quelled Hamas led protests at the Gaza border during the last 11 months, United Nations Human Rights Council commission of inquiry reported on Thursday morning in Geneva.
IDF soldiers “have intentionally shot children and people with disabilities. They intentionally shot journalists,” said legal expert Sara Hossain of Bangladesh, who was one of the three investigators on the commission. She spoke at a press conference in Geneva, along with the two other experts who published the report on the Hamas led protests, which Palestinian call the Great March of Return, that began on March 30.
“The commission has reasonable grounds to believe that during the Great March of Return, Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law,” said Argentinian Santiago Canton, who chaired the UNHRC’s commission of inquiry into the protests. “Some of those violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity, and must be immediately investigated by Israel.”
The three-person panel investigated the deaths of the 189 Palestinians who were killed during the first nine months of the protests, which are still held on a weekly and sometimes daily basis.
“The commission found that Israeli security forces killed 183 of these protesters with live ammunition. Thirty-five of these fatalities were children, while three were clearly marked paramedics, and two were clearly marked journalists,” the UNHRC report stated.
During that time, the IDF wounded 6,106 Palestinians with live ammunition at the protest sites and another 3,098 Palestinians were wounded by bullet fragmentation, rubber-coated metal bullets or by tear gas canisters.
“Four Israeli soldiers were injured at the demonstrations,” the report stated. “One Israeli soldier was killed on a protest day but outside the protest sites.”
“There can be no justification for killing and injuring journalists, medics and persons who pose no imminent threat of death or serious injury to those around them,” said lHossain of Bangladesh. “Particularly alarming is the targeting of children and persons with disabilities.”
“Many young persons’ lives have been altered forever,” she continued. “One hundred and twenty two people have had a limb amputated since March 30 last year. Twenty of these amputees are children.”
The commission stated that the intentional shooting of civilians “not directly participating in hostilities is a war crime.”
The commission added that it found “reasonable” grounds to believe that members of the IDF, in the course of their response to the demonstrations, killed and wounded civilians who were neither directly participating in hostilities, nor posing an imminent threat.
“These serious human rights and humanitarian law violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity,” wrote the commission.
“The onus is now on Israel to investigate every protest-related killing and injury promptly, impartially and independently in accordance with international standards, to determine whether war crimes or crimes against humanity were committed, with a view to holding accountable those found responsible,” said Canton. “We also urge the organizers, the demonstrators, and the de facto authorities in Gaza, to ensure that the Great March of Return is entirely peaceful, as it is intended to be.”
“The commission finds that these protests were a call for help from a population in despair,” Canton said. “Not only Israel, but also the de facto authorities led by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have responsibilities towards them. The commission calls on Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza, and on all three duty bearers to comply with their responsibilities and improve the living situation in Gaza.”
Kenyan legal expert Betty Murungi, who is the third member on the committee, said the International Criminal Court is already concerned with this situation. She asked the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to pass the report to the ICC.
The IDF has argued that the protests are violent riots designed by Hamas to attempt to infiltrate into Israel. Protestors have thrown Molotov cocktails, burning tires and stones at IDF soldiers. They also placed explosive devices along the border fence and in some cases used live ammunition.
In addition, Palestinians launched incendiary devices that have landed in southern Israel, burning thousand of acres of fields and forests and endangering civilian lives.
At a press conference after the publication of the report, the three-member panel acknowledged that it did not know what the IDF’s rules of engagement were. It added that it had looked solely at the sites of Palestinian protests and did not place them in the broader context of Hamas-Israeli violence.
When the UNHRC voted to form a commission of inquiry last year, Israel blasted the biased nature of its mandate and banned its investigators from entering Israel.
The commission said it had “conducted 325 interviews with victims, witnesses and sources, and gathered more than 8,000 documents.” It also made use of social media, audio-visual material, drone footage and the IDF web pages.
Anne Herzberg, NGO Monitor’s legal advisor and UN liasion, noted: “The UN Human Rights Council, dominated by dictators and rights abusers, has issued yet another absurd report whitewashing Hamas terrorism while condemning Israel for protecting its citizens. It is laughable that the UN treats cross-border violence as the same as a domestic policing situation.
“None of this is surprising given the UN relied overwhelmingly on information provided by Hamas and terror-linked NGOs, and uncritically adopted their false claims. The commission itself had no military or legal expertise, and was completely unqualified to author this report.
“Horrifically, the UN has given Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups a green light to exploit children to serve as cover for violent attacks on Israeli civilians. As usual, the UN Human Rights Council has done nothing to protect human rights, but rather has encouraged ever more violations.”
Education Minister Naftali Bennett Bennett (New Right) said, “It’s hard to imagine the UN could sink any lower. Alternating between excusing terror and ignoring terror it is letting down democracies and backing dictators and tyrants.”
Acting Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the UNHRC’s “theater of the absurd of the Human Rights Council produced another hostile, false and biased report against the State of Israel.”
The commission of inquiry on the Gaza border protests is “based on false information in which the facts were not even examined,” he said. “The report’s sole purpose is to discredit the only democracy in the Middle East and to damage its right to self-defense against a murderous terror organization.”
He added that “Israel rejects the report outright.” No one can “deny Israel’s right to self defense and its obligation to defend its borders and its citizens from violent attacks.”
He blamed Hamas for pressuring Gaza residents, including women and children, to protest along the fence. It is Hamas, whose “declared goal is the destruction of Israel,” that is responsible for the border violence, Katz said.
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