The UN human rights chief on Friday slammed Israel’s deadly reaction to protests along the Gaza border as “wholly disproportionate”, backing calls for an international investigation.
Addressing a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on the violence which has claimed more than 100 Gazan lives in six weeks, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein warned that “killing resulting from the unlawful use of force by an occupying power may also constitute wilful killings, a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention”.
Violations of the Geneva Conventions adopted in 1949 following World War II are commonly called “war crimes” although Mr. Zeid did not explicitly use that word.
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He pointed out that while 60 Palestinians were killed and thousands injured in a single day of protests that coincided with Monday’s move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, “on the Israeli side, one soldier was reportedly wounded, slightly, by a stone.”
‘Stark contrast’
“The stark contrast in casualties on both sides is ... suggestive of a wholly disproportionate response,” he told the council.
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The special UN session comes after six weeks of mass protests and clashes along the Gaza border with Palestinian refugees demanding the right to return to their homes inside what is now Israel.
Israel has justified its actions, arguing it was necessary to stop mass infiltrations from the blockaded Palestinian enclave which is run by the Islamist Hamas movement.
The council is due to consider a draft resolution calling for the urgent dispatch of “an independent, international commission of inquiry” — the UN rights council’s highest-level of investigation.
Mr. Zeid said he supported the call for an investigation “that is international, independent and impartial, in the hope the truth regarding these matters will lead to justice.”