JERUSALEM — Israeli and Palestinian rights organizations have challenged the credibility of Israel’s inquiries into possible military misconduct during the 2014 war in Gaza, with one group describing the internal legal process as a “facade’’ intended to try to stave off a war crimes investigation by the International Criminal Court.
In a report released Tuesday, the group, B’Tselem, a left-wing Israeli organization that focuses on allegations of rights abuses against Palestinians in Gaza and in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, characterized the military’s system of internal investigations as a “whitewash protocol.’’
“The work of the military law enforcement system does nothing more than offer the illusion that Israel is fulfilling its obligations to investigate breaches of law,’’ the group said.
The sharp recriminations come two years after the cease-fire that ended 50 days of fighting in the summer of 2014 between Israel and rocket-firing militant groups in Gaza led by Hamas.
In a sign of persistent tensions, the Israeli military said Tuesday that its air force had intercepted a Hamas drone just off the coast of Gaza.
The Israeli military rejected B’Tselem’s report, describing it as “unprofessional and rife with bias.’’ In a statement, the military accused the group of “waging a delegitimization campaign against Israel’s justice system, and especially against Israel’s military justice system.’’
In an update late last month, the office of the Military Advocate General of Israel, which supervises law enforcement in the armed forces, announced the closing of seven investigations of possible misconduct during the 2014 conflict, without charges. Several more inquiries into what the Israeli military calls “exceptional incidents’’ had already been closed, while other cases are pending.
So far, the Military Advocate General has issued indictments against three soldiers accused of looting and of aiding and abetting looting, and legal proceedings in the cases are in progress.
Days after the update last month, Adalah, an Arab-rights group in Israel, and the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights issued a report saying they had filed joint complaints in 27 cases from the outset of the war, involving the killing of civilians and extensive damage to civilian property such as hospitals and schools. They said that the military was still investigating or had yet to respond to nearly half of those complaints and that it was conducting the probes “in a sluggish and convoluted manner.’’ The military says that, in all, it has received complaints relating to 360 events.
About 2,200 Palestinians were killed during the 2014 conflict, more than half of them civilians. On the Israeli side, 73 people were killed, most of them soldiers. A United Nations Commission of Inquiry found that both Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants had been responsible for violations of international law that could amount to war crimes.
New York Times
