This week, Palestinians won a moral victory. The United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) released a report highlighting the killing of peaceful Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip since March last year. The report, titled "Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry into the Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territories - A/HRC/40/74" notes that the Palestinian protests in Gaza against Israel "were civilian in nature and had clear political objectives." The UN investigators accuse Israeli soldiers of "deliberately shooting at civilians, who were not directly involved in the hostilities and did not pose an imminent threat". They warn that "these serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity."

According to the HRC, the investigation covered the period from the beginning of the protests on March 30 last year until December 31, during which 189 Palestinians were killed. "The commission found that Israeli security forces killed 183 of these protesters with live ammunition and injured 6,106 others. Another 3,098 Palestinians were injured by shrapnel bullets, rubber-coated metal bullets, or tear gas canisters. Among the dead were 35 children, three paramedics who were clearly marked, and two journalists who were also clearly marked."

Furthermore, "reasonable evidence was found to believe that Israeli snipers targeted journalists, health workers, children, and persons with disabilities, knowing that they were clearly marked as such." Of course, Israel, as usual, dismissed the report as biased and "anti-Semitic".

So what happens now?

There have been many similar reports, but Israel never backs down enough to stop committing more crimes. In 2002, for example, its soldiers attacked the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. The subsequent independent report said that "52 Palestinians were killed during the operation, of whom 22 were civilians." The report added that many of the civilians were killed "deliberately or unlawfully." The investigators also found that the IDF used Palestinian civilians as "human shields" and used excessive and indiscriminate force. "The violations we documented in Jenin are extremely serious, and in some cases appear to amount to war crimes," said Peter Brookhart, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch and a member of the investigation team.

Israel also rejected that report, accusing it of bias. Its representative to the UN Security Council said at the time that "a large amount of misinformation and confusion has been circulated regarding the mandate of the investigation team."

After announcing that it welcomed the UN Secretary-General's proposal for the investigative team and that it was "regrettable" that Israel had denied the team access, the US tried everything to prevent the passage of a resolution against Israel in the Security Council. "The representative of Cuba, however, called the US position on resolution 1405 (2002) insane, noting that it was that country that introduced the text and then blocked its implementation," UN records show. "The United States," the Cuban ambassador added, "had submitted the draft in order to obstruct the previous text submitted by the Arab Group and draw attention away from the proposal to send a multinational force to the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Council must condemn such actions by the United States, as well as its supply of aircraft and other weapons that have enabled Israel to carry out its military operations."

In 2009, the UN Human Rights Committee conducted another investigation and issued another report on "Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories", known as the Goldstone Report. The report was an investigative mission to the Gaza Strip following Israel's 2008/9 military offensive led by South African judge Richard Goldstone. The report was highly critical of Israel, and Israel pressured Goldstone to retract the report.

Another UN report, this time by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), on "Israeli practices towards the Palestinian people and the issue of apartheid" was released in 2017. Under Israeli pressure, UN Secretary-General António Guterres distanced himself from the report, saying it reflected the views of its authors and is no longer available on the ESCWA website.

ESCWA Secretary-General Rima Khalaf, a former Jordanian minister, resigned after she said the UN pressured her to withdraw the report. "We expected, of course, that Israel and its allies would put enormous pressure on the UN Secretary-General to disavow the report," she said: "And that they would ask him to withdraw it."

According to Israel's ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, the ESCWA report was "an attempt to discredit and accuse of lying against the only democracy in the Middle East by creating a false analogy which is disgusting and is an outright lie." These words were echoed this week by Benjamin Netanyahu, who claimed that the UN Human Rights Commission "is setting new records in hypocrisy and lies, motivated by pathological hatred against Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East." Of course, democracies don't shoot unarmed protesters in cold blood just because they are making legitimate demands, but Israel does, and it has been proven.

Let us hope, then, that the Palestinians not only achieve a moral victory but also that Israel is held accountable for its war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, given that the international community is dominated by Israel's strongest ally, the United States, I doubt that this will happen.
Source: Middle East Monitor