NEW YORK, October 12, 2009 (WAFA)- The United Nations Security Council should demand justice for the civilian victims on both sides of the Gaza war, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said today. Breaking the climate of impunity in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a precondition for stability and lasting peace. The Security Council will meet on October 14, 2009, to discuss the Middle East.
The Security Council should implement a key recommendation of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Gaza, led by Justice Richard Goldstone, and create an independent committee of experts to monitor how Israel and Hamas conduct domestic investigations of alleged laws-of-war violations, HRW said.
'The Security Council has a historic opportunity to uphold the principle of civilian protection and promote regional peace,' said Steve Crawshaw, UN advocacy director at HRW. 'As it has in other conflicts, the council should demand that the parties to the conflict punish those responsible for serious abuses.'
The Goldstone report was presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on September 29. It documents war crimes and possible crimes against humanity by both Israel and Hamas, and notes their poor records of accountability for such crimes.
'The US missed an opportunity in Geneva to support justice for the civilian victims in Gaza and Israel,' Crawshaw said. 'Now Washington has a second chance to show that it will demand accountability for serious crimes in Gaza the same way it has elsewhere.'
Israel and the US have said that implementing the recommendations of the Goldstone report would undermine efforts at peace. But punishing forces that attack civilians will build trust and improve confidence in the peace process, Human Rights Watch said.
'President Obama should use the weight and authority of his Nobel Peace Prize to put the peace process on the right track - and that is by demanding justice for serious crimes by all sides in the Gaza war,' Crawshaw said.
Mandated to look at violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by Israel and Palestinian armed groups, the 575-page Goldstone report documents Israel's willful killings of civilians, deliberate attacks on civilian objects, wanton destruction of civilian property, indiscriminate attacks, the use of human shields, and collective punishment against Gaza's civilian population in the form of a continuing blockade. Mortar and rocket fire from Gaza by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, the report says, was deliberate and calculated to cause loss of civilian life and to terrorize Israeli civilians.
