Geneva – The United Nations human rights body called on Israel and the Palestinians to prosecute alleged war crimes committed in the 2014 Gaza war and to cooperate with the International Criminal Court’s preliminary investigation.
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The U.N. Human Rights Council debated the issue days before the first anniversary of Israel launching “Operation Protective Edge” in response to rockets fired by militants in the Hamas-ruled enclave into Israel.
The 47-member state forum adopted a resolution, presented by the Palestinian delegation backed by Muslim states, by a vote of 41 in favor, one against (the United States) and five abstentions. Israel denounced it as an “anti-Israeli manifesto”.
After hours of behind-the-scenes negotiations on the text, all European Union member states of the Council, including Britain, France and Germany, voted in favor.
The resolution underlined “the need to ensure that all those responsible for violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law are held to account, through appropriate fair and independent domestic or international criminal justice mechanisms”.
Independent U.N. investigators issued a report on June 22 that Israel and Palestinian militant groups committed grave abuses of international humanitarian law during the 2014 Gaza conflict that may amount to war crimes.
ISRAELI OBJECTION
Israeli Ambassador Eviatar Manor took the floor during Friday’s debate to say: “This council has lost its bearing. I have no interest in debating the content of the resolution, it is an anti-Israeli manifesto.
“Israel is fully committed to investigating all alleged violations of laws of armed conflict. Israel’s investigative mechanism has already filtered close to 200 cases, over 100 of these cases have been handed over to the Military Advocate General.”
Karim Lahidji, President of the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights, said in a statement: “By supporting this milestone resolution, the EU sends a message that … impunity will not prevail.”
In a 50-day war, more than 2,100 Palestinians were killed, mostly civilians. Israel put the number of its dead at 67 soldiers and six civilians. Israeli air strikes and shelling hammered the densely populated Gaza Strip, dominated by the Islamist Hamas movement, causing widespread destruction of homes and schools.
Hamas and other militant groups launched thousands of rockets and mortar bombs out of the enclave into Israel.