An empty frame doorway is seen standing on the rubble of a destroyed building that was damaged in last summer's Israel-Hamas warADEL HANA/The Associated Press
A much-awaited United Nations report into the 2014 Gaza war found "serious violations of international humanitarian law" that "may amount to war crimes" on the part of both Israeli military forces and Palestinian militants.
The report leaves no doubt, however, that the authors believe the vast majority of violations were committed by Israel and they give short shrift to some of Israel's most important arguments in defence of its military actions.
In so doing, the report released Monday already has succeeded in unifying the vast majority of Israelis against even some of the most valid of the report's conclusions.
Mary McGowan Davis, the U.S. judge who led the investigation, told reporters in Geneva that the 2014 hostilities saw "a huge increase in firepower used in Gaza, with more than 6,000 air strikes by Israel and approximately 50,000 tank and artillery shells fired."
"In the 51-day operation, 1,462 Palestinian civilians were killed, a third of them children." Some 700 or more Palestinian fighters also were killed.
"The hostilities also caused immense distress and disruption to the lives of civilians in Israel," Ms. Davis acknowledged. "The indiscriminate firing of thousands of rockets and mortars at Israel appeared to have the intention of spreading terror among civilians there."
In total, six Israeli civilians were killed during the shelling, while 67 soldiers died, mostly during on-the-ground fighting inside Gaza.
The UN report painted a stark picture of the Gaza Strip without having visited the area. "Alongside the toll on civilian lives, there was enormous destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza: 18,000 housing units were destroyed in whole or in part; much of the electricity network and the water and sanitation infrastructure were incapacitated; and 73 medical facilities and many ambulances were damaged."
"The number of internally displaced persons reached 500,000, or 28 per cent of the population," the report said, relying on UN personnel on the ground and telephone interviews.
However, the report paid scant attention to Israel's claim that Hamas, in particular, used populated areas and civilian buildings as shields from attack, and thereby is responsible for the civilian casualties.
"The commission regrets," the report says, "that it was unable to verify allegations made by Israel on the use of civilian buildings by Palestinian armed groups owing to the denial by Israel of access to Gaza; fears by Palestinian witnesses of reprisal by armed groups and local authorities, in particular when providing information remotely; and challenges faced by Palestinian human rights organizations in documenting alleged violations by Palestinian armed groups."
The report states that militants "allegedly" operated from populated areas and acknowledged they put UN schools "at risk by using them to hide their arms."
"The questionable conduct of these armed groups, however, does not modify Israel's own obligations to abide by international law," the report concluded.
"Israel does not commit war crimes. Israel defends itself against a terrorist organization that calls for its destruction and carries out many war crimes," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the Knesset. "We will continue to act forcefully and determinedly against those who seek to harm our citizens and we will do this according to international law."
Leader of the opposition, Isaac Herzog, said he needed no international report to tell him that Israel has a "moral army."
"While for Hamas the killing of innocents is the prime objective, I can say from my own experience at many cabinet meetings that the question of harm to innocent bystanders is always debated and carries a lot of weight in Israel's operational decisions," Mr. Herzog said in a statement on Facebook.
Israel's Foreign Ministry said the process that led to the report was "politically motivated."
The UNHRC "has a singular obsession with Israel, passing more country specific resolutions against Israel than against Syria, Iran and North Korea combined – in fact, more than against all other countries combined."
"We are not here to deliver a guilty verdict with respect to any party," Judge Davis told reporters. The commission has simply collected testimony "in a scrupulously objective fashion" that could lay the basis for a "more thorough investigation" of what happened in Gaza and in the West Bank.
She acknowledged that the commissioners "were deeply moved by the immense suffering and resilience of the victims." And she concluded her statement by saying: "We just hope our report contributes in some small way to ending the cycle of violence."