The organization has also urged all states to suspend all transfers of arms, munitions, weapons and military equipment to Israel, Hamas and Palestinian armed groups, until substantive steps have been taken to achieve accountability for previous violations and effective mechanisms established to prevent future violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.
The Palestinian authorities should ensure that the cases documented in this report, among others, are investigated impartially and independently and that, when sufficient admissible evidence exists, suspected perpetrators are brought to justice in proceedings that fully respect international fair trial standards.
In addition, they must end the use of inherently indiscriminate weapons such as unguided rockets, denounce attacks targeting civilians and indiscriminate attacks, and make clear that Palestinian armed groups must comply with international humanitarian law.
The Israeli authorities must allow international human rights investigators, including UN appointed investigators and special rapporteurs, as well as researchers from Amnesty International and other international human rights organizations, unrestricted access to Israel and the OPT, and in particular to the Gaza Strip.
They should also provide adequate protection from rocket and mortar attacks to all Israeli citizens and residents without discrimination, which means urgently addressing the current lack of shelters in the recognized and unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev/Naqab.
To its credit, Amnesty International notes in its report that “very significant disagreements between Fatah and Hamas remain unresolved, no date for elections has been set, and the national consensus government has yet to assume most of its functions in the Gaza Strip, where the Hamas de facto administration established in June 2007 continues to control government institutions and the security forces in practice.”
Amnesty sent a letter to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, and to Minister of Justice Salim al-Saqqa, one of the four Gaza-based ministers in the “unity government”, on December 23, 2014, with questions about cases involving possible violations of international humanitarian law, including one incident in Al-Shati.
The letter “also detailed Palestine’s obligations under the international treaties it had ratified, and urged the Minister of Justice to establish an independent commission of inquiry to investigate alleged violations. As this report was finalized, no response had been received,” the agency wrote.
It is amazing that even in a report intended to document war crimes committed against Israeli citizens, Amnesty International works so hard to avoid stating the obvious: Gaza terrorists started the 2014 summer war, they intended to murder Jewish Israelis, and had Israel not been prepared to defend its citizens, they would indeed have succeeded, even at the cost of their own.
This writer strongly recommends the reader to download the report, and read it. A quick summary can be gleaned by scanning the Executive Summary and the section on International Humanitarian Law.
