Israel has rejected what it considers a "one-sided" report by the UN human rights investigator Richard Falk, who had claimed that the military operation in the Gaza Strip was a war crime. "Unfortunately this is a further example of the very one-sided, unbalanced and unfair attitude of the [UN] Human Rights Council," Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev told the news agency AFP. "This sort of report does the service of human rights no good whatsoever," he said. "It's a politicization of human rights."
Falk, the UN's special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, said in a report that there was "reason" to conclude that Israel's massive military offensive on Gaza in December and January was a war crime. He wrote that in order to determine if the war was legal, it was necessary to assess if the Israeli forces could differentiate between civilian and military targets in Gaza. "If it is not possible to do so, then launching the attacks is inherently unlawful, and would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law. On the basis of the preliminary evidence available, there is reason to reach this conclusion," he added, pointing out that attacks had been targeted at densely populated areas.
Regev said the Human Rights Council "has been criticized for its negative Israel fixation by two UN secretary generals, Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon." The United States also lambasted the report. State Department spokesman Robert Wood told a press briefing: “We have found the rapporteur's views to be anything but fair. We find them to be biased. We have made that very clear."
Falk had focused his report on the legal issues arising from the war, as he had been unable to enter Gaza to assess the human rights situation on the ground. He has been highly critical of Israel's policies regarding the Palestinians, saying in December 2008 that they amounted to a crime against humanity. In January he also charged that Israel's military operations in Gaza raised the "specter of systematic war crimes" and needed to be investigated. Israel launched its war in retaliation for persistent rocket fire by militants in Gaza.
