Israel sees bias in Gaza war crimes charges

Israel's Foreign Ministry charged a political campaign against Israel. Hamas welcomed the report – with reservations.

By Ilene R. Prusher | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the September 16, 2009 edition

Jerusalem - Fallout continued on Wednesday following the release of a UN report that accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity during the war in Gaza in December and January, and suggested that Hamas may be guilty of war crimes as well.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry accused the report's authors of trying to instigate a "political campaign against Israel" and operating from a "one-sided mandate."

Israeli officials say that the Palestinians interviewed for the report were hand-picked by Hamas, and that the authors overreached by making judicial recommendations and ignoring information that would explain Israel's position.

Hamas welcomed the report, albeit with reservations. Its prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, called it "a clear conviction against Tel Aviv for committing war crimes against civilians in the Gaza Strip."

The two reactions underscore longstanding differences over international investigations of Israel's actions. Israel has almost always viewed such inquiries as inherently biased and refused to participate. That stance, says a leading commentator on legal affairs, may work to its detriment.

"Unfortunately, as I see it, the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry have taken the position that this is a hostile report, that everything was prejudged, and that the investigators came with prejudice, though I disagree," says Moshe Negbi, the legal affairs expert for Israel Radio.

"They repeated the same mistake twice," adds Mr. Negbi, pointing to the debate a few years ago over Israeli's construction of its controversial separation barrier in the West Bank. Israel also refused to argue its case in that instance, something that ultimately led to a condemnation of the project by the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

Targeting Israel's use of force

Hamas, by shooting rockets indiscriminately in the direction of Israeli civilians, may also have committed war crimes, the lead UN investigator, Richard Goldstone, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.

But his report was far more critical of Israel's use of force, which involved airstrikes, artillery, and ground troops who took over Palestinian homes, and the use of controversial weaponry such as white phosphorus.

The report said it found "strong evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity."

The key findings of the 574-page report called for "an end to impunity," indicating that alleged perpetrators be brought to trial.

Though the report covers Hamas's indiscriminate firing of rockets, it lays more blame at Israel's doorstep, focusing on 36 incidents that Goldstone investigated as potential war crimes.

Hamas: comparing apples, oranges

Though Hamas largely welcomed the report, many of its officials criticized the UN for comparing Israeli firepower with what Palestinians define as "resistance fighters."

"Israel used half of its weapons and practiced mass killings during 22 days of war," Hamas Prime Minister Haniyah said in a statement to the press on Wednesday.

"The Palestinian resistance fighters were in a position of a self-defense and not in a position of attack," Mr. Haniyeh said, adding: "It's unreasonable to compare between the primitive and small arms the Palestinian resistance had to defend its people and the big Israeli power of arms used to carry out large-scale aggression on innocent civilians."

Israel: we responded to rockets

Israel says that the war that began last year was a response to the daily barrage of Qassam rockets launched from Gaza at nearby Israeli communities, as well as a number of cross-border attacks. The rockets, fashioned from smuggled metals and explosives, are low-tech and unguided – but occasionally deadly.

Hamas says these rockets were a tool of resistance aimed at what it calls Israel's siege of Gaza: Israel controls all crossings into Gaza, except for Rafah, a small terminal Gaza shares with Egypt, and has severely curtailed the entry of all but basic humanitarian aid and foodstuffs.

The devastating war left close to 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead in the fighting between Dec. 28, 2008 and Jan. 18, and another 5,500 people wounded.

Earlier this month, B'tselem, a leading Israeli human rights group, published a detailed report which put the total number of Palestinians killed during the three-week campaign at 1,387, of whom 773 were noncombatants, indicating that more than half of those killed were civilians not involved in the fighting.

Those figures mirror tallies provided by other human rights groups, but differ substantially from the Israeli army's figures. It said that 1,166 Palestinians were killed, of whom 709 were Hamas combatants.

The wide discrepancies, says Negbi, a lawyer, are one reason why he wishes that Israel would cooperate in such investigations, or at least agree to some form of external investigation.

Israeli soldiers' complaints

He said that Israeli soldiers' anonymous complaints about conduct during the war – some of which were reported this summer by the group "Breaking the Silence" – indicate a wide disparity in information about what happened in Gaza.

"I would hope that following this report, there will the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry by the Israeli government, which would include international figures," says Negbi.

"It's not only regarding war crimes. There's a tendency in Israel not to open defense issues to inquiry – even inside Israel itself, when it comes to issues such as army accidents or friendly fire incidents. The army simply refuses to let non-military bodies investigate.

"It's unfortunate," he continues, "because it's in the interest of the Israeli army itself to be investigated in a professional, objective manner, and such an investigations are possible only by outside bodies. It's in the interest of Israel that there be real investigations and not cover-ups."

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Arabs tackle free speech taboo

Across the Middle East, what would never happen in polite company now appears on broadcasts of The Doha Debates: discussion of controversy.

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