Palestinians and Israelis are both guilty of war crimes, says the first comprehensive report on the 22-day Gaza conflict earlier this year.

9 Israelis and some 1,400 Palestinians – including around 300 children - were killed during the conflict.

The Amnesty International report is based on evidence gathered during a field mission to Gaza and Southern Israel during and after the conflict.

Donatella Rovera headed the research mission and authored the report.

“On the side of the Palestinian armed groups, the war crime is the indiscriminate attacks against Israeli population centres. The rocket attacks -- all of those attacks are unlawful because they are unguided projectiles and therefore indiscriminate.”

Battlefield weapons

According to the report, Israel’s war crimes consisted of using weapons meant for the battlefield – including white phosphorous mortars - in highly populated residential areas. But Israeli forces also used high precision weapons that can see their targets in detail, Rovera says.

“It is quite astonishing how many civilians – people who were very obviously civilians -- were killed in such attacks. Those are attacks carried out with hellfire missiles by helicopters, unmanned drones, tank strikes, in situations where there was no military confrontation between the Israeli army and Palestinian armed groups. These were people who were in their homes, sitting in the yard, children playing on the roof, women hanging the laundry and so on.”

'Unreliable'

Yigal Palmor is a spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He dismissed Amnesty's findings, saying the methodology of the field mission was unreliable.

"It’s not really a report, it’s a Soviet style trial. You don’t know who your judges are, you don’t know where the witnesses come from and all evidence that contradicts the official line is discarded and ignored.

You don’t know who the members of the investigative team are. You don’t know anything about the witnesses. Do they work for Hamas? You don’t know anything about their credibility.

And all the innumerable press reports and testimonies that contradict Amnesty’s line have been completely ignored because they don’t want you to have any doubts about the veracity of their official line. So this is a self-righteous report that reminds me more of a Kafka novel than a human rights work."

UN Gaza Commission
 

The report calls on Israel to cooperate with the ongoing United Nations Gaza Commission, headed by former South African judge Richard Goldstone. The investigation now offers the best means of establishing the truth about what happened during the Gaza conflict, Amnesty says.

Richard Goldstone, meanwhile, is well aware of the challenges facing the Commission:

“The middle east is such a fraught area. There’s so many different views, infighting on all sides, which makes it very difficult. Everybody’s looking at it from their particular perspective. You have to go about it and try and be as even handed and fair to all sides as possible, to take into account all relevant circumstances from whichever corner they may come. It’s difficult in the sense that, I suppose, if we do a really good job, it’s going to make everybody unhappy.”

The Gaza Commission held public hearings in Gaza City earlier this week and heard testimony from Gazan war victims.

The Commission is now heading to Geneva to hear from residents of Southern Israel affected by the conflict. Israel will not allow the inquiry to gather testimony on its territory, saying that the mandate of the commission is “inherently biased”.
 
Listen to an interview with Amnesty International's Donatella Rovera

Listen to an interview with Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Yigal Palmor

Read the Amnesty International report here