Reuters
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The UN yesterday named three experts to an international commission of inquiry into possible human rights violations and war crimes committed by both sides during Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
William Schabas, a Canadian professor of international law, will head the panel whose other members are Doudou Diene, a veteran UN human rights expert from Senegal, and Amal Alamuddin, a British-Lebanese lawyer engaged to be married to Hollywood actor George Clooney.
The independent team will investigate “all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law ... in the context of the military operations conducted since 13 June 2014”, the UN statement said.
A month of war, marked by Israeli air strikes on Gaza and rockets fired by Hamas fighters into Israel, has killed 1,938 Palestinians and 67 Israelis while devastating wide tracts of densely populated Gaza.
The panel is due to report by March 2015 to the UN Human Rights Council.
Navi Pillay, the top UN human rights official, said on July 31 she believed Israel was deliberately defying international law in its military offensive in Gaza and that world powers should hold it accountable for possible war crimes.
Israel has attacked homes, schools, hospitals, Gaza’s only power plant and UN premises in apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions, said Pillay, a former UN war crimes judge.
Meanwhile, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have resumed indirect talks mediated by Egypt on ending the war after a new 72-hour truce appears to be holding.
The Israeli military said one rocket was launched at the Tel Aviv area, in Israel’s commercial heartland, before the ceasefire began at 2100 GMT on Sunday and may have landed in the sea. The Hamas group said it had fired the missile.
A senior Israeli government official had said on Sunday Israeli negotiators, who had left Cairo on Friday hours before a previous three-day ceasefire expired, would return to Egypt to resume the talks only if the new truce held.
Hamas is demanding an end to Israeli and Egyptian blockades of the Gaza Strip and the opening of a seaport in the enclave - a project Israel says should be dealt with only in any future talks on a permanent peace deal with the Palestinians.
Aid official urges end to Gaza blockade
A senior UN aid official has warned Israel that a new conflict in Gaza is likely unless the Jewish state lifts a crippling blockade on the Palestinian enclave. James Rawley, the top UN humanitarian official for the Palestinian territories, told AFP in an interview that the international community had failed during more than a month of fighting between Israel and Hamas. “The blockade must be lifted not only to get material into Gaza in order to rebuild it but to allow Gaza to do what it was doing very well just 10 years ago, to trade with the outside world,” Rawley told AFP. “Gaza has a tremendous potential. People are very entrepreneurial, they’re well educated, they have markets abroad, in Israel and the West Bank. The blockade has to be lifted in order that Gaza can thrive.”
Rawley said Israel’s legitimate security concerns must be addressed but warned without ending the blockade that another round of fighting was “likely”. “Not only will we see very little in the way of reconstruction, but I am afraid that the conditions are in place for us to have another round of violence like we’re seeing now,” he told AFP in Gaza City.
