UN's Navi Pillay warns of Israel Gaza 'war crimes.' Pillay, who thanks to Timaeus we know is the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, told an emergency session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that Israel's military offensive had not done enough to protect civilians, and also criticized Hamas for its "indiscriminate attack" on Israel.
"There seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes," Ms Pillay said.
Israel claims the UN Human Rights Council is biased and BBC's Imogen Foulkes reports Israel is unlikely to cooperate with an UN investigation.
Israel's Justice Minister Tzipi Livni described the UN Human Rights Council as an "anti-Israel" body, Reuters news agency reported.
Referring to a 16 July Israeli air strike that killed children playing on a beach in Gaza, Ms Pillay said "the disregard for international humanitarian law and for the right to life was shockingly evident".
After 15 days of battle the death count has reached 649 Palestinians and 31 Israelis. The UN reports about 74% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza are civilians, and was especially critical of Israel's attacks on medical clinics.
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni claims "Israel is acting according to international law," and says while "(i)t is regrettable civilians are killed, but when we call on them to vacate and Hamas calls on them to stay, then that is what happens."
The Assistant Secretary-General at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that the civilians in Gaza have no place else to go because 44% of the entire Gaza area has been declared 'no-go zones' by Israel and there are no ways for the people of Gaza to leave.
"Families are taking the heart-wrenching decision to split to different locations - mother and son to one; father and daughter to another - hoping to maximise the chance one part of the family survives."
In England several Ministers of Parliament, including former Cabinet minister Peter Hain denounced Israel's military incursion into Gaza as constituting war crimes, as we learn in Israel Accused of Gaza War Crimes.
Former Labour Cabinet minister Peter Hain brought up the issue of Israel demanding the special right of a double standard, as it does in its open defiance of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty:
Labour former Cabinet minister Peter Hain joined other Opposition MPs in condemning Israel's military offensive in Gaza, saying any other country would be regarded as committing war crimes. "These attacks, despite the horrendous rocket assault on Israel, despite that, and the extremism of Hamas, these attacks are not proportionate - in any other conflict they would be described as war crimes.
"That is the truth. ... And the problem also is there is no end in sight to this.
"What will happen is that a moderate Palestinian leadership having been replaced by Hamas through the failure to succeed in negotiations - Hamas, as the respected former Israeli government adviser Daniel Levy has suggested, could soon be replaced by Isis in Gaza. ... "We have to start as the West speaking the truth, acting, and persuading the Israeli government to negotiate seriously."
Sir Menzies Cambell (thanks to Lib Dem FoP for surname addition) responded to Israel's repeated assertion that any other country facing rocket fire would do the same by responding:
"Can I tell you what I would ask, indeed what I'd demand as an MP? That our government should respond in a proportionate way, consistent with international law, and with proper regard for the safety of innocent men, women and children. ... Can it really be that Israel, with all of the sophisticated military technology at its disposal, can only protect itself by the kind of operations which the secretary general of the United Nations has called atrocious?"
Labour's Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) criticised Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for claiming Hamas wants "telegenically dead" Palestinians.
Israel has defied UN orders to withdraw from illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories, and has also defied the Human Rights Council's finding that the Wall, aka The Apartheid Wall, is a violation of international law, and ordered to remove it over a decade ago. The United States has unwisely enabled these double standards by using our Security Council veto to prevent any enforcement, or consequences for these breaches.
Israel's and the United States' open defiance our worlds institutions of international law is becoming an increasing area of concern as Israel also chooses to join North Korea in not adhering to the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty.
With the tacit endorsement of the United States, in a secret deal worked out over three decades years ago, Israel allegedly has kept an illegal stockpile of nuclear warheads estimated to be between 275 and 400, along with intercontinental ballistic missals and nuclear submarines enabling Israel to strike any point on the globe with their nuclear warheads in defiance of the NPT, under a policy of "nuclear ambiguity."
Israeli has also been accused of violations of the Geneva Conventions, such as "collective punishement" (bombing entire civilian populations of Gaza for the alleged, and unproven actions of alleged criminal actions of member by Hamas such as kidnapping and firing of rockets), forced migrations, and ethnic cleansing by the destruction of Arab villages and forced removal of those populations from their homes.
Many have called for Palestine to join the International Court of Justice, by signing the Rome Statue, so these charges can be investigated and judged. One concern President Abbas is reported to have is that if he signs the Rome Statue, he would simultaneously be placing Palestine under the jurisdiction of the same laws. Israel is reported to have threatened Abbas that they will sue him and Fatah for war crimes under the same statutes for Hamas' firing of rockets into Israel.
We need to let these chips fall where they may. We all should be thankful to have an opportunity still to live by the same standards of international rule-of-law, before the world follows our leads and degenerates into the ongoing violence and thuggery implicit in a reversion to the "might-makes-right" standard.
My opinion is that Palestine should sign the Rome Statute, and all of these issues, on both sides, should be investigated by the International Court of Justice. In my opinion international law is similar to sexual organ prowess - "if your don't use it, you lose it."
We (the U.S.) were wrong to pressure the Spanish judge to drop the war crimes charges against the Bush-Cheney administration.
The rule-of-law has been a fundamental improvement over the competing standard of "might-makes-right." Even though the United States, Israel, the Fatah, and Hamas have had the power to largely override, or evade the enforcement of the rule-of-law up to this point, we would all be wiser in the long-term to voluntarily bring ourselves back into compliance with this standard, and support the establishment of a new precedent of its wider use.
While in the short-term this could mean embarrassment for all parties including Hamas, the PLO, Fatah, Abbas, Israel, Netanyahu, the United States, etc, in the longer-term we will all be better off by resolving issues with law rather than violence and sheer power.
For example, with the advent of inexpensive, easily accessible biological weapons, all modern countries should be espousing rule-of-law standards with all of our might. The NPT, and repudiation of terrorism are other examples where even countries like the U.S. and Israel who now have the power to flaunt international law, will soon be very glad if we choose it now over the "might-makes-right" standard which will empower any country, corporation, criminal gang, or others who obtain bio-weapons to demand an equal seat at the table of power.
We should renounce our last decades of acting as if those with power can operate by our own set of rules, because soon others will be just as powerful, in many ways and wouldn't it suck if they treated us the way we've treated everyone else for the last half century? Israel, Hamas, Fatah, and all others would be just as wise to do the same.
Also, as an incentive to encourage the precedent of abiding by the rule-of-law, we all could encourage judges to be more lenient in these first cases keeping our goals focused on the creation of future peace, the rule-of-law standard, and world stability, rather than retribution and punishment.
Maybe we could work out a plea bargain such that all of us who plead guilty in these first cases, for good cause of creating a better world, could get be sentenced to something more akin to the South African Truth and Reconciliation process rather than more severe sentences.
10:49 AM PT: Thanks to Timeaus for letting us know Navi Pillay is the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,
10:52 AM PT: Thanks also to cryonaut for clarifying the role of the United Nations Human Rights Council's role in the broader panoply of our institutions of international law.
I should also have mentioned that the International Commission on the Red Cross is the guardian organization for the Geneva Conventions.