U.N. Finds Evidence of War Crimes in Gaza

A U.N. fact-finding mission to Israel and Gaza announced today that it has found evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity and violations of international humanitarian law committed by both Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas during the Israeli invasion of Gaza that commenced at the end of last year.

“The mission finds that the conduct of the Israeli armed forces constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of wilful killings and wilfully causing great suffering to protected persons and as such give rise to individual criminal responsibility,” the report’s executive summary said. “It also finds that the direct targeting and arbitrary killing of Palestinian civilians is a violation of the right to life.”

On the Palestinian side:

“There’s no question that the firing of rockets and mortars [by armed groups from Gaza] was deliberate and calculated to cause loss of life and injury to civilians and damage to civilian structures. The mission found that these actions also amount to serious war crimes and also possibly crimes against humanity.”

Though evidence of international criminal violations was present on both sides Palestinians clearly bore the brunt of the casualties:

Palestinians and human rights groups say more than 1,400 Gazans were killed, but Israel puts the figure at 1,166.

Three Israeli civilians and 10 Israeli soldiers were also killed.

The fact finding mission was headed by Richard Goldstone who has served as Chief Prosecutor for both the Yugoslav and Rwandan International Criminal Tribunals.  Goldstone, one of the most eminent international lawyers in the world and trustee of Hebrew University in Israel, is almost unanimously viewed as a fair an impartial choice to have led the mission, an important factor to the mission’s legitimacy considering the widely perceived anti-Israeli bias of the U.N.  The climate for the release of the mission’s findings could have been better – Human Rights Watch recently suspended one of its top investigators in light of the discovery of his obsession with Nazi paraphernalia – but it comes on the heels of Chief ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo announcing last week that his office is launching a preliminary investigation into possible war crimes committed during the Gaza invasion (and also Afghanistan, Georgia, Colombia and Kenya).