Hamas and Israel Dissatisfied with the UN Report

• 06.23.2015, 15:46
•  Near East,  World

The UN Human Rights Council's 200-page report on 2014 Gaza war this time brought the criticism of both Israel and Hamas. The statement of the Israeli Foreign Ministry called the report politically motivated, adding: "The report was commissioned by a notoriously-biased institution, given an obviously-biased mandate, and initially headed by a grossly-biased chairperson, William Schabas," The Jerusalem Post reports.

Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon in his turn announced that Israel has acted in accordance with the International law for preventing any harm to the civilians.

"Hamas and [the other] terror organizations are the ones who chose to place weapons and missile launchers in the heart of civilian areas, in mosques, hospitals, educational institutions, and other places, and in more than a few cases, IDF soldiers refrained from operating against these weapons caches out of concern of harming noncombatants,"  The Jerusalem Post quotes Ya'alon’s words.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also criticized the report, calling it biased.

As for Hamas, its senior officials condemned the Part of the UN reports, which said that Palestinian armed groups had fired rockets at Israel, considering it a war crime. Hamas claims that their rockets were targeted at Israeli military sites, not at civilians. However, Palestinian officials also praised the part of the report that fingers Israel for possible war crimes.

 "Hamas welcomes the report’s condemnation of the Zionist occupier for its war crimes during the last war against Gaza," Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip said.

The report that became the main topic of discussion for Israel and Hamas on June 22, says that Israel and Palestine have committed war crimes during 2014 Gaza war. It says that there is "substantial information pointing to serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law" by both sides, The Guardian reports.