NYT: U.N. Says Israeli Military Actions Killed 44 Civilians in Schools in Gaza War

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/world/middleeast/un-says-israeli-military-actions-killed-44-civilians-in-schools-in-gaza-war.html

APRIL 27, 2015

U.N. Says Israeli Military Actions Killed 44 Civilians in Schools in Gaza War

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

UNITED NATIONS -- Israeli military actions killed 44 Palestinian civilians who had sought refuge in seven United Nations schools during last summer's conflict in Gaza, the United Nations said Monday in releasing findings of an internal inquiry. [1]

It also said that weapons had not been found inside those United Nations schools, but rather in three other United Nations-run schools that were vacant at the time, that were used by Hamas militants to stash arms and that were "probably" sites from which rockets were fired at Israel.

The internal inquiry [2] is the first United Nations report to come out of the 50-day Gaza conflict last summer between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants affiliated with Hamas and other groups, which devastated the Mediterranean territory of 1.8 million people.

The conflict left more than 2,200 Palestinians dead, and 72 were killed on the Israeli side, including 66 soldiers.

It sharply raised tensions between Israel and the United Nations, which is responsible for administering an array of services to Palestinians in Gaza. United Nations officials said they had repeatedly communicated the locations of facilities harboring civilians to the Israeli military.

The United Nations released a summary of the inquiry along with a letter about its findings by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the Security Council, criticizing the Israelis for attacking "inviolable" facilities of the organization in Gaza and criticizing Hamas for "unacceptable" misuse of those facilities.

Neither the summary nor Mr. Ban's letter explicitly accused the antagonists of having violated international law, emphasizing that the board of inquiry was not a court. But the finding that Israeli actions killed civilians who had taken shelter in schools may serve to buttress the Palestinian Authority's intention to hold Israel accountable at the International Criminal Court, which it officially joined this year.

Israel's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it was studying the summary and noted that it "clearly documents the exploitation by terrorist organizations of U.N. facilities in the Gaza Strip."

Only the summary of the findings from the 207-page report was made public. Mr. Ban's spokesman, Farhan Haq, said the secretary general was weighing whether the United Nations should press for "reparation for the losses that it has sustained," but declined to say whether he would seek compensation from Israel alone, or also from Palestinian militants.

Israel paid a record $10 million to the United Nations for damage to its sites in a 2009 military action in Gaza. [3] Both the death toll and the damage to United Nations sites were considerably less.

The inquiry into the 2014 conflict, led by a Dutch general, Patrick Cammaert, found that the seven schools used as emergency shelters faced in some instances a barrage of "high-explosive projectiles," mortar rounds, and in one instance a precision-guided missile that landed "five to six meters from the school gate," killing 15 people nearby.

The board looked at episodes in Gaza from July 8 to Aug. 26, 2014. In addition to the 44 killed, the United Nations found that 227 had been wounded.

The report summary said Israeli military officials informed the board that United Nations sites were not their targets and that they were instead aiming at Hamas arsenals.

Mr. Ban described United Nations premises as "places of safety."

"It is a matter of the utmost gravity that those who looked to them for protection and who sought and were granted shelter there had their hopes and trust denied," he wrote.

The report also found that Hamas militants had endangered United Nations facilities by storing weapons in three empty schools that were not being used to shelter civilians. "The fact that they were used by those involved in the fighting to store their weaponry and, in two cases, probably to fire from is unacceptable," he said.

[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2068300-gaza-board-of-inquiry-report-and-cover-letter.html

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/world/middleeast/un-to-investigate-strikes-on-its-facilities-in-gaza.html

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/world/middleeast/differences-between-israel-and-un-over-gaza-episodes-go-back-years.html