Tue 25 October 2022:
Following the “unlawful attacks” carried out during Israel’s deadly assault on the Gaza Strip in August, Amnesty International urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to look into potential war crimes.
According to a new report from Amnesty International that looks into three specific attacks on civilians, Israeli forces “boasted” of the accuracy of their attacks on Gaza in August.
According to Amnesty International, victims of Israel’s “precise” attacks include a four-year-old child, a teenager visiting his mother’s grave, and a fine arts student killed by Israeli tank fire while at home drinking tea with her mother.
An attack that killed seven Palestinian civilians was also investigated, according to the organization, and appeared to be the result of an unguided rocket launched by Palestinian armed groups.
“Israel’s latest offensive on Gaza lasted only three days, but that was ample time to unleash fresh trauma and destruction on the besieged population,” Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary-general, said in a statement accompanying the report.
“The three deadly attacks we examined must be investigated as war crimes; all victims of unlawful attacks and their families deserve justice and reparations,” she said.
The August onslaught by Israeli forces was only the most recent example of indiscriminate violence against the “dominated, oppressed and segregated” population of Gaza, which has suffered under years of illegal blockade of the territory, Callamard added.
“As well as investigating war crimes committed in Gaza, the ICC should consider the crime against humanity of apartheid within its current investigation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” she said.
Thirty-one civilians were among the 49 Palestinians that the United Nations said were killed in the Gaza Strip during the three-day conflict, Amnesty said in the new report.
The fighting began on August 5 when Israel launched air raids in what it said were preemptive attacks targeting the Islamic Jihad group.
Amnesty International said it had reconstructed the circumstances surrounding three specific attacks, two of which were carried out by Israeli forces and one most likely by Palestinian armed groups, using photos of weapon fragments, satellite imagery analysis, and testimony from dozens of interviewees.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has opened an investigation into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is expected to focus on possible war crimes committed during the 2014 Gaza conflict. The Palestinian Authority supports the investigation, but Israel is not a member of the ICC and disputes its jurisdiction.
Last month, the family of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh filed an official complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) to seek justice for her death.
Abu Akleh, the “voice of Palestine” for Al Jazeera for 25 years, was shot in the head and killed by Israeli forces on May 11 while covering an army raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
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