The horror of what Israel did last year in Gaza, detailed in the recently released UN investigative report, cannot be adequately described in a few lines, but the evidence shows that the scale and impact of Israeli violence dwarfed anything allegedly done by the Palestinians.
From March 30-December 31, 2018, when Palestinians were protesting in the Great March of Return for the declared right of Palestinian refugees to return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel, the report said Israeli forces killed 189 Palestinians and wounded more than 6,100. Despite the staggering number of casualties, that was only the beginning of the story.
Thirty-five children were killed. Two journalists were killed. Three “clearly-marked” paramedics were killed. A double amputee was shot and killed as he sat in his wheelchair. Two people visibly walking on crutches were shot in the head. They were killed.
While not one Israeli died and only four were injured, Palestinian protesters were being picked off by snipers while standing and holding Palestinian flags, paramedics were being targeted while coming to the aid of the wounded, and children were killed while sitting, dancing or standing in a crowd.
The commission’s report calls on Israel to immediately lift its blockade on Gaza – one of the key demands of the Great March of Return – and to investigate “every protest-related killing and injury, promptly, impartially and independently.” But how to bring Israelis to justice when the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the report and accused the UN Human Rights Council, which launched the probe, of hypocrisy and lies fueled by “an obsessive hatred for Israel”.
Israel has attacked and delegitimized the investigation from the very start. Its strategy with this investigation, as in others, was to try to obstruct it and then to whine that it is unfair and biased. If Israel is so certain that its actions were legal and correct, it should have nothing to hide.
The report also confirms that Israel remains the occupying power in Gaza as far as international law is concerned, because it continues to exercise “effective control” over the territory. Israel is, therefore, subject to all the legal obligations of an occupying power to protect civilians there. Instead, though, Israel’s military culture resulted in unleashing massive firepower in Gaza in total disregard for its impact on the civilian population. The balance of power between a tenacious occupier and its victims can never be redressed in Gaza or elsewhere in the occupied territories.
After all this carnage, the report said Israeli security forces “may” have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in those weekly protests in Gaza last year in which 122 wounded had a limb amputated, including 20 children. Unless undertaken lawfully in self-defense, intentionally shooting a civilian not directly participating in hostilities is a war crime. In Gaza, Israeli commanders continued attacks for hours even when they must have known about the catastrophic death and injury they were causing to civilians – in itself a war crime.
The report offers no evidence as to how unarmed demonstrators came to be regarded as legitimate military objectives. Even if the person were a “legitimate target,” Israel’s method of attack was disproportionate, indiscriminate and illegal.
The UN report looked at the events in Gaza through the unbiased lens of international humanitarian and human rights law. In doing so it found irrefutable and ample evidence that Israelis committed war crimes and other violations. The findings provide an important basis for Palestinians to pursue political and military Israeli leaders, and bring them to justice in international courts.
The crimes committed by Israel in Gaza were massive compared to anything allegedly done by the Palestinians. There can be no moral equivalence between the legitimate self-defense and resistance of a people under occupation and the aggression of an occupier whose aim is to subject millions of people to its military domination.
