BICOM

Israel has rejected the findings of a UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) report that investigated violence on the Gaza border last year.

The UNHRC presented its findings on Thursday and said there were “reasonable grounds” to conclude that Israeli security forces violated international law.

According to the UN report, 6,000 Palestinians were shot by snipers using live ammunition, 183 people were killed and of those 154 were unarmed. The report recommended that UN members consider imposing individual sanctions, such as a travel ban or an assets freeze, on those identified as responsible.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn wrote on Twitter: “The UN says Israel’s killings of demonstrators in Gaza – including children, paramedics and journalists – may constitute ‘war crimes or crimes against humanity’. The UK government must unequivocally condemn the killings and freeze arms sales to Israel.”

Israel rejected the findings and criticised the UNHRC and the investigation team. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “The council has set new records of hypocrisy and lies out of an obsessive hatred for Israel. Israel will continue to fiercely defend its sovereignty and citizens against Hamas attacks and Iran-backed terror organisations. Hamas is the one shooting rockets at Israeli civilians, hurling explosives and conducting terror activities during the violent demonstrations on the fence.” Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz called the report “hostile, mendacious and biased”.

The Israeli organisation, NGO Monitor, said the UN fact-finding team: “Clearly established a pre-determined legal and factual conclusion and merely gathered ‘evidence’ to fit its desired outcome”. It said that the report relies heavily on sources from Hamas and other terror-linked NGOs, uses anonymous and unverifiable “testimonies,” and “largely erases the dimension of Palestinian violence along the Gaza border, as well as Hamas’ leading role in orchestrating the attacks”.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry noted that: “During the same time period under investigation, 1,300 rockets and mortars were fired from Gaza into Israel. This was not even mentioned in their report.”

The fact-finding team, known as the ‘UNHRC Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 Gaza protests’, was established in May 2018 following an increase in the number of deaths in demonstrations beginning in March of last year.

Twenty-nine countries who are members of the Human Rights Council supported the investigation, including Spain and Belgium. The US and Australia opposed launching the investigation, whilst the UK along with Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia abstained.