UN confirms IDF breaks laws of war
Reports on the summary of the UN inquiry – see post below this one – from Ma’an news, Ha’aretz and NY Times.
Palestinian boys are seen in a makeshift bedroom at a UN-run school in Gaza. Photo by Mahmud Hams / AFP
UN: Israel responsible for Gaza shelter attacks
By AFP / Ma’an news
April 28, 2015
UNITED NATIONS — A United Nations inquiry blamed the Israeli military Monday for seven attacks on UN schools in Gaza that were used as shelters during the 2014 war.
“I deplore the fact that at least 44 Palestinians were killed as a result of Israeli actions and at least 227 injured at United Nations premises being used as emergency shelters,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a letter to the UN Security Council.
“It is a matter of the utmost gravity that those who looked to them for protection and who sought and were granted shelter there had their hopes and trust denied.”
The UN chief, in presenting a summary of the report, vowed to “spare no effort to ensure that such incidents will never be repeated.”
The board of inquiry investigated the attacks on the schools run by the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA from July 8 to August 26 last year, but it also shed light on the discovery of weapons caches at three schools.
The schools were vacant at the time but Ban noted that “the fact that they were used by those involved in the fighting to store their weaponry and, in two cases, probably to fire from, is unacceptable.”
The UN chief urged Palestinian authorities to investigate.
Israel has repeatedly maintained that Hamas militants were using civilians as human shields and UN premises as storage sites for weapons during the 50-day war.
In response to the report, Israel’s foreign ministry said criminal investigations have been launched against those linked to the attacks on shelters.
“Israel makes every effort to avoid harm to sensitive sites, in the face of terrorist groups who are committed not only to targeting Israeli civilians but also to using Palestinian civilians and UN facilities as shields for their terrorist activities,” said foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon.
The Israeli military said its prosecutors have filed charges against three soldiers for alleged theft from Palestinians in Gaza, the first indictments served over the July-August warfare.
The army said approximately 120 other investigations were still open.
ICC evidence?
The Gaza war ended with an Egyptian-brokered truce after about 2,200 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and 73 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed.
UN spokesman Farhan Haq declined to comment on whether the findings of the report would be taken up by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which the Palestinians have joined.
“It’s not our business to determine what cases the international court takes up,” he said.
Hamas said the report was important since it proved Israeli “war crimes against Palestinian civilians in the (UNRWA) shelters.”
“We call on the world to send the murderous occupation (Israel) leaders to international courts, and we call on the (Palestinian) Authority to investigate this report and to persecute the occupation (Israel) in international courts,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP.
The Islamist movement that rules Gaza de facto also rejected the notion that three facilities were used as weapon caches.
“We deny having any information about any weapons in the three UNRWA schools, which were empty from refugees, according to the report,” Abu Zuhri said.
Ban said he had set up an ad hoc group of senior UN officials to advise him on possible future courses of action.
School GPS coordinates given
The board of inquiry confirmed that UNRWA officials sent twice-daily communications to the Israeli military with precise GPS coordinates of the schools being used as emergency shelters.
The report gave specific details of the projectiles used such as tank shells and high explosive mortars, and included explanations from the Israeli military.
A missile fired by Israeli forces on August 3 that hit a school in Rafah, killing 15 people, was aimed at a motorcycle carrying three militants from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the report said.
“By the time it became apparent that the strike would coincide with the motorcycle passing by the school gate, it had no longer been possible to divert the missile,” the report quoted the Israeli government as saying.
UNRWA welcomed the findings of the report and said they were in line with its version of the facts.
“The inquiry found that despite numerous notifications to the Israeli army of the precise GPS coordinates of the schools and numerous notifications about the presence of displaced people… the hit was attributable to the IDF,” the Israeli defense forces, said UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness.
Gunness also stressed that the inquiry’s findings were “fully consistent with the statements made by UNRWA that we did not hand any weapons over to Hamas.”
Aftermath of Israeli air strike at a United Nations-run school, where displaced Palestinians take refuge, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip August 3, 2014. Photo by Reuters
UN report: Israel responsible for hits on 7 Gaza facilities during war
Report also finds that three UN facilities were used by Palestinian militants for storing weapons, and shooting rockets and mortar shells.
By Barak Ravid, Ha’aretz
April 27, 2015
A United Nations board of inquiry has found that Israel was responsible for the damage to seven UN facilities in the Gaza Strip over the course of Operation Protective Edge last summer, according to an abstract of its report released Monday by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The report also found that three UN facilities were used by Palestinian militant groups for storing weapons, and for shooting rockets and mortar shells.
Ban announced in November 2014 that an “internal and independent” board of inquiry would be established to probe the damage caused to various UN installations in Gaza over the course of the war, as well as into the instances in which weapons were found in these facilities. The board investigated 10 incidents in all.
Prior to the formation of the board, Israel lobbied Ban and his associates in an effort to delay the establishment of the investigative committee on grounds that Israel’s military prosecutors and Military Police are in the midst of their own inquiries into Operation Protective Edge.
The inquiry was headed by retired general Patrick Cammaert, a former senior officer in the Dutch military who later served as the commander of UN forces in the Congo and as Ban’s military adviser. The other four other members are: Maria Vicien-Milburn of Argentina, who serves as legal adviser to UNESCO; Lee O’Brien of the United States, a diplomat who is a senior official in the diplomatic department of the UN Secretariat in New York; Pierre Lemelin, a Canadian professor and expert in international law; and K.C. Reddy of India, a former UN security officer.
Prior to the formation of the board, Israel lobbied Ban and his associates in an effort to delay the establishment of the investigative committee on grounds that Israel’s military prosecutors and Military Police are in the midst of their own inquiries into Operation Protective Edge.
The board submitted its finding to the UN secretary general on February 5, but it was subject to numerous deliberations over the course of the last few months. The full report is 207 pages and is considered “top-secret.” The abstract released on Monday is a 27-page unclassified document.
Ban sent a letter to the Security Council members, sharing his stance regarding the committee’s findings, in which he applauded Israel for its cooperation with the committee. He also praised Israel for opening investigations into a series of incidents that occurred during the Gaza war, including those in which UN facilities were hit.
In contrast, he issued criticism of the Palestinian Authority to that regard, noting that he hopes that Ramallah will also probe possible war crimes on the Palestinians side. “Swift investigations must be undertaken, in accordance with the international standards,” Ban wrote.
In his letter, Ban deplored the Israeli fire that hit the UN facilities, which killed a total of 44 Palestinian civilians and wounded 227 others who took shelter there. “United Nations premises are inviolable and should be places of safety, particularly in a situation of armed conflict,” Ban wrote. “I will work with all concerned and spare no effort to ensure that such incidents will never be repeated.”
Ban also said that he was “dismayed” by the discovery that Palestinian militant groups used the UN facilities to store weapons, thereby putting civilians at risk.
“The fact that they were used by those involved in the fighting to store their weaponry and, in two cases, probably to fire from, is unacceptable,” Ban wrote. “It serves to undermine the confidence that all concerned should have that United Nations premises are civilian objects and may therefore not be made the object of attack. I am determined to take the necessary steps towards ensuring that there is no repetition of any such incident in that future, whether in times of armed conflict or not.”
A United Nations school in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip after the building was damaged by fighting in July. Photo by Wissam Nassar for The New York Times
U.N. Says Israeli Military Actions Killed 44 Civilians in Schools in Gaza War
By Somini Sengupta, NY Times
April 27, 2015
UNITED NATIONS — Israeli military actions killed 44 Palestinian civilians who had sought refuge in seven United Nations schools during last summer’s conflict in Gaza, the United Nations said Monday in releasing findings of an internal inquiry.
It also said that weapons had not been found inside those United Nations schools, but rather in three other United Nations-run schools that were vacant at the time, that were used by Hamas militants to stash arms and that were “probably” sites from which rockets were fired at Israel.
The internal inquiry is the first United Nations report to come out of the 50-day Gaza conflict last summer between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants affiliated with Hamas and other groups, which devastated the Mediterranean territory of 1.8 million people.
The conflict left more than 2,200 Palestinians dead, and 72 were killed on the Israeli side, including 66 soldiers.
It sharply raised tensions between Israel and the United Nations, which is responsible for administering an array of services to Palestinians in Gaza. United Nations officials said they had repeatedly communicated the locations of facilities harboring civilians to the Israeli military.
The United Nations released a summary of the inquiry along with a letter about its findings by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the Security Council, criticizing the Israelis for attacking “inviolable” facilities of the organization in Gaza and criticizing Hamas for “unacceptable” misuse of those facilities.
Neither the summary nor Mr. Ban’s letter explicitly accused the antagonists of having violated international law, emphasizing that the board of inquiry was not a court. But the finding that Israeli actions killed civilians who had taken shelter in schools may serve to buttress the Palestinian Authority’s intention to hold Israel accountable at the International Criminal Court, which it officially joined this year.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it was studying the summary and noted that it “clearly documents the exploitation by terrorist organizations of U.N. facilities in the Gaza Strip.”
Only the summary of the findings from the 207-page report was made public. Mr. Ban’s spokesman, Farhan Haq, said the secretary general was weighing whether the United Nations should press for “reparation for the losses that it has sustained,” but declined to say whether he would seek compensation from Israel alone, or also from Palestinian militants.
Israel paid a record $10 million to the United Nations for damage to its sites in a 2009 military action in Gaza. Both the death toll and the damage to United Nations sites were considerably less.
The inquiry into the 2014 conflict, led by a Dutch general, Patrick Cammaert, found that the seven schools used as emergency shelters faced in some instances a barrage of “high-explosive projectiles,” mortar rounds, and in one instance a precision-guided missile that landed “five to six meters from the school gate,” killing 15 people nearby.
The board looked at episodes in Gaza from July 8 to Aug. 26, 2014. In addition to the 44 killed, the United Nations found that 227 had been wounded.
The report summary said Israeli military officials informed the board that United Nations sites were not their targets and that they were instead aiming at Hamas arsenals.
Mr. Ban described United Nations premises as “places of safety.”
“It is a matter of the utmost gravity that those who looked to them for protection and who sought and were granted shelter there had their hopes and trust denied,” he wrote.
The report also found that Hamas militants had endangered United Nations facilities by storing weapons in three empty schools that were not being used to shelter civilians. “The fact that they were used by those involved in the fighting to store their weaponry and, in two cases, probably to fire from is unacceptable,” he said.