RAMALLAH, West Bank, Feb 7, (AP): Israel has failed to show it will conduct an impartial investigation of allegations that it committed war crimes during its Gaza offensive last year, an international human rights group said Sunday.
UN investigators leveled the war crimes allegations against Israel in an official report submitted last year. In its response last week, the Jewish state told the UN its current system of internal military probes with legal oversight is sufficient.
However, the New York-based Human Rights Watch rejected that argument, saying internal inquiries by Israel’s military have largely focused on possible wrongdoing by individual soldiers without looking into high-level decisions that led to large numbers of civilian casualties, such as artillery fire into populated areas.
Israeli investigators missed an important piece of evidence in one of the most contested incidents of the war, in which Gaza’s only flour mill was severely damaged by Israeli fire, said Human Rights Watch, which discussed the ongoing investigations with Israeli military lawyers last week.
“Israel claims it is conducting credible and impartial investigations, but it has so far failed to make that case,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director for Human Rights Watch. “An independent investigation is crucial to understand why so many civilians died and to bring justice for the victims of unlawful attacks.”
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor dismissed the group’s findings, saying that the military is investigating “in full transparency everything that needs to be investigated.”
Israeli human rights groups have also called for an independent probe. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far given no indication that he plans to authorize such an investigation.
Also Sunday, Palestinian security officials in the West Bank said they arrested six alleged Islamic militants inspired by al-Qaeda and who hoped to carry out an attack and win acceptance from the terror network.
The suspects stored weapons and assembled homemade explosives, but had not yet selected a target, a senior investigator said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case.
The official said the six are current or former students at the American University in the West Bank town of Jenin, and had no direct ties to al-Qaeda.
Despite the key role of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in al-Qaeda rhetoric, the network is not believed to have a formal foothold in the Palestinian territories.