Day of reckoning

The long-awaited UN report on the Gaza war of 2014 is out. It has blamed both Hamas and Israel for committing war crimes during the deadly conflict, which broke out last summer as Israel launched a fierce operation on Gaza, after accusing Palestinian groups of perpetrating terror across the border.

While both sides have been blamed, the figures are telling. Around 2,140 Palestinians died in the fighting, a very large percentage of them children. The bombardment of residential areas by the well-armed Israeli troops appear to be deliberately aimed at annihilating as many Palestinian civilians as was possible and causing maximum pain to people who have faced persistent persecution since the state of Israel appeared on the map in 1948. In contrast, the 73 Israelis killed were mostly soldiers. The inequality we saw during the conflict explains why this was the case as the Israelis were able to reach into the heart of Gaza and effectively tear it apart.

This is not to say that Palestinian groups, including Hamas, which Israel blames for many of the attacks on its territory, were entirely blameless either. The UN report, which is to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council at the end of June, says tunnels dug by Palestinian groups across the barricaded frontier into Israel acted as a source of terror and there were also attempts to attack Israeli civilians. But it is clear to all who study the report that Israel has a great deal to answer for. The terror inflicted on Gaza will, of course, have longer term consequences and make it more difficult to settle a conflict that has continued now for over six and a half decades. It is essential that Israel be prevented from moving ahead with further atrocities against the Palestinians and that the world comes together to work out some solution which can help prevent fighting in the future, while also giving the Palestinians the rights which were snatched away from them a very long time ago.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 25^th, 2015.

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