UN votes to send war-crimes investigators to Gaza

Agencies
May 19, 2018

Gaza/London, May 19: The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Friday voted to send a team of international war crimes investigators to Gaza to investigate the violent protests that have left more than 100 people dead. 

An international commission of inquiry is the UNHRC’s highest level of investigation.

But if the intention was to give hope to Palestinians after six weeks of violent confrontation along the border between Gaza and Israel, it has not entirely succeeded. In a heated tirade, Manuel Hassassian, Palestine’s envoy to Britain, dismissed the UNHRC resolution as “PR and propaganda with no kind of political weight.”

Speaking to Arab News from the West Bank, a clearly emotional Hassassian said: “All these resolutions from all the international organizations but there is nothing concrete ever on the ground. There is no implementation whatsoever.”

Even if the UN did send war crimes investigators, their movements and access would be controlled by the Israelis because they are in charge of the borders, Hassassian said. 

“The Israelis are not going to let them be mobile enough to get around all the areas where there was naked aggression. I am really depressed. I am in the West Bank and what I am seeing with my own eyes is total apartheid. And in Gaza, there are two million people living in subhuman conditions. 

“Israel and the United States seem to be above international law, but when there is any violation by the Arab world, immediately there are sanctions imposed. If this is the model of democracy that you want, then stop preaching to us about the rule of law.”

Only two of the council’s 47 members, the US and Australia, voted against the resolution, while 29 voted in favor and 14 abstained, including Britain, Switzerland and Germany.

The resolution calls for a probe into all alleged violations and abuses “including those that may amount to war crimes.” 

The violence has claimed more than 100 Gazan lives. Sixty Palestinians were killed and thousands injured on Monday alone. That was the day that the US embassy transferred from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and also the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ejected from their homes and lands as the state of Israel came into being.

The UN vote was welcomed by Palestinian officials and campaigners.

Issam Younis, director of the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, said: “This decision is very important, especially after the UN Security Council failed to issue a condemnation of the occupation because there must be accountability. These were repeated assaults on civilians. The road to justice is long and not achieved by knockout, but by total points.”

Opening the session on Friday, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein slammed the “wholly disproportionate” use of force by Israeli troops, insisting that many of those injured and killed on Monday were “completely unarmed’ yet were “shot in the back, in the chest, in the head and limbs with live ammunition.” 

He added: “Some of the demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails, used slingshots to throw stones, flew burning kites into Israel and attempted to use wire-cutters against the two fences between Gaza and Israel. 

But these actions alone do not appear to constitute the imminent threat to life or deadly injury which could justify the use of lethal force.” Yet there was “little evidence” of any attempt by the Israelis to minimize casualties, he said.

It has also emerged that Kuwait circulated a draft resolution to members of the UN Security Council calling for an “international protection mission” to be sent to protect Palestinian civilians.

According to AFP, which obtained a copy of the draft, it does not specify what form such a mission should take. 

Israel immediately condemned the UNHRC’s decision. A statement from the foreign ministry said it “proves once again that it is an anti-Israeli body dominated by hypocrisy and absurdity.”

Gazans began queuing at dawn on Friday after Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi declared the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt would be opened during Ramadan, in a move widely thought to be part of a deal to persuade Gazans to tone down their protests. Hamas leader Ismail Hanuyeh visited Egypt on Sunday but Hamas denies it has come under pressure from Cairo.

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News Network
March 26,2024

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There is no let-up in the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an “immediate ceasefire.”

Israel carried out air raids and artillery strikes on several parts of Gaza on Tuesday, hitting residential buildings and gatherings of displaced people, “killing and wounding hundreds of people”, the Palestinian Information Center said.

Among the victims are 15 people, including four women and children, who were killed in an attack on a house in the neighborhood of Mosbeh, north of Rafah.

Media reports also said that fighting on the ground continued unabated.

That’s while the UN Security Council on Monday adopted a resolution for an “immediate ceasefire” for the ongoing Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The resolution was put forward by the 10 non-permanent members of the UN Security Council. The US abstained and the 14 other council members all voted in favor of it.

After the vote, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wrote on social media platform X that failing to implement the resolution “would be unforgivable.”

Palestinian resistance movements have welcomed the resolution, but Israel’s minister for military affairs Yoav Gallant said Israel will not stop its attacks in Gaza. 

“We will operate against Hamas everywhere – including in places where we have not yet been,” Gallant said.

Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, also said in a post on X that the attacks will continue until all the captives taken by Hamas during its October 7 blitz are released.

Israel unleashed its war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed more than 32,300 Palestinians and injured over 74,000 others.

The Tel Aviv regime has also imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said Israel has committed acts of genocide in Gaza.

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News Network
March 14,2024

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The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says at least five people, including a staff member, were killed and 22 others wounded after Israeli forces targeted a food distribution centre in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini in a statement on Wednesday said that the strike hit one of the very few remaining UNRWA distribution centers in the eastern part of Rafah.

“Today’s attack on one of the very few remaining UNRWA distribution centers in the Gaza Strip comes as food supplies are running out, hunger is widespread and, in some areas, turning into famine,” Lazzarini said.

“Every day, we share the coordinates of all our facilities across the Gaza Strip with parties to the conflict," he continued.

He said the attack was carried out even though "the Israeli Army received the coordinates including of this facility yesterday."

Lazzarini further urged the protection of the UN, its staff, and its premises and called for an independent investigation.

Israel acknowledged an airstrike on a food aid distribution center in southern Gaza, which it claimed targeted and killed a high-ranking member of Hamas. 

Meanwhile, the statement by the UNRWA head added that since October 7, at least 165 team members have been killed while in the line of duty and more than 400 people sheltering in UN buildings also lost their lives due to Israel's attacks.

More than 150 of the agency’s facilities, including schools and shelters, have been hit in the war, with some destroyed, and UNRWA staff have reportedly been mistreated and humiliated while in Israeli detention centers, according to the UNRWA.

Six aid seekers killed in Israeli attack

Separately, the health ministry in the Gaza Strip said six people were killed in the latest attack on Palestinians waiting for humanitarian aid at the Kuwait Roundabout in Gaza City.

The Wafa news agency said some 83 people who were wounded in the attack have been transferred to the al-Shifa Medical Complex in the city.

Over the past weeks, Israeli forces have increased their offensives on the Kuwait Roundabout, an area where large groups gather to wait for aid deliveries.

Israeli forces killed 11 people waiting for food aid at the roundabout on Monday night.

The Israeli military has restricted the delivery of humanitarian supplies to northern Gaza for weeks, and thousands of children are going without sufficient food and medication.

The prevention of aid convoys comes as humanitarian officials have already issued a dire warning, stating that unless a ceasefire is implemented and aid is significantly increased, the toll of malnutrition and disease is expected to rise, leading to an alarming loss of lives.

So far, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 31,272 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 73,024 others.

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News Network
March 21,2024

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Israeli military siege, hunger, and diseases will soon become the main killer in Gaza, says commissioner- general of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the UNRWA for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, took to X on Wednesday to vent his concern for the growing hunger and spread of diseases as a result of the Israeli siege on the besieged strip.

He said starvation and illness may soon be the main killer in Gaza.

"This fabricated and catastrophic level of hunger can still be reversed by flooding Gaza with food and life-saving assistance," Lazzarini said.

"More than ever humanity requires political will,” the UNRWA chief added.

In a press release on March 19, UNRWA said that “famine is imminent in the Gaza Strip, especially for isolated populations in northern Gaza deprived of humanitarian aid.”

The statement noted that the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), in a latest food security outlook, concluded that up to 1.1 million people in Gaza are facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.

“Nutrition screenings conducted in February by UNICEF and UNRWA show that rates of acute malnutrition among children in northern Gaza and Rafah have nearly doubled since January,” it said.

The Israeli regime has accused UNRWA staff of being involved in the October 7 attack by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas against the occupied territories, prompting a number of its western allies to suspend funding for the UN agency.

On Wednesday, an agreement was reached by US congressional leaders and the White House on a massive funding bill will continue a ban on US funding for UNRWA until March 2025, Reuters reported.

Earlier this year the US, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Estonia, Japan, Austria and Romania  decided to cut their funding to the UNRWA, considered a lifeline for the Palestinians in Gaza.

France had also announced that it does not plan a new payment to fund UNRWA in the first quarter of 2024.

Condemning the suspension of funding, Lazzarini had said, “It would be immensely irresponsible to sanction an agency and an entire community…, especially at a time of war, displacement and political crises in the region.”

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