UPDATE - Israel's 2018 crackdown could be 'war crime': UN

ADDS REMARKS BY PALESTINE PRESIDENCY

By Jeyhun Aliyev

ANKARA (AA) - Israel’s deadly 2018 crackdown on Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza "may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity", a UN investigatory commission said Thursday.

“The commission has reasonable grounds to believe that during the Great March of Return, Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law,” commission chairman Santiago Canton said in a statement.

“Some of those violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity, and must be immediately investigated by Israel,” he added.

According to the commission, 183 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli army gunfire -- including 35 children, three paramedics and two journalists -- since demonstrations along the Gaza-Israel buffer zone first began in March of last year.

Another 6,106 Palestinians were injured by live ammunition, the commission found, while a further 3,098 were hurt by shrapnel, rubber-coated bullets and/or teargas.

“Israeli security forces killed and maimed Palestinian demonstrators who did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to others… nor were they directly participating in hostilities,” reads the commission statement.

Commission member Sara Hossain is quoted as saying: “There can be no justification for killing and injuring journalists, medics and persons who pose no immediate threat of death or serious injury to those around them.”

“Particularly alarming is the targeting of children and persons with disabilities,” Hossain said.

She added: “Many young persons’ lives have been altered forever; 122 people have had a limb amputated since March 30 of last year. Twenty of these amputees are children.”

The commission, the statement continues, “has found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot at journalists, health workers, children and persons with disabilities, knowing they were clearly recognizable as such”.

The Ramallah-based Palestinian presidency, for its part, welcomed the UN commission’s findings.

"The report confirms that Israel has committed war crimes against our people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including Jerusalem," the presidency said in a statement carried by Palestine’s WAFA news agency.

The presidency went on to urge The Hague-based International Criminal Court to take “immediate action to open an investigation into these crimes”.

In May of last year, the UN Human Rights Council tasked the commission with investigating alleged violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Palestinian territories, especially as they pertained to the ongoing demonstrations along the Gaza-Israel buffer zone.

Protesters demand the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in historical Palestine, from which they were driven in 1948 to make way for the new state of Israel.

They also demand an end to Israel’s ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has gutted the coastal enclave’s economy and deprived its roughly 2 million inhabitants of many basic commodities.