BREAKING NEWS

UN report author: Israel, Palestinian groups are equal under the law

JUNE 30, 2015 02:35

International law is equally applicable to both Israel and Palestinian armed groups, Mary McGowan Davis told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday as she presented a report that said the IDF and Hamas may have committed war crimes last summer.

“Many complained about objectivity and equivalence that the Commission of Inquiry [the Gaza probe] seems to have given to both sides in the conflict,” McGowan Davis said.

The American jurist headed the two-person fact-finding mission that authored a 500- page report on last summer’s war between Gaza and Hamas.

Israel had charged that the report created an erroneous equivalence between the IDF, which was defending the country from indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza, and terrorist groups that fire at civilian areas in Israel from hospitals, schools and mosques.

McGowan Davis, however, said neither she nor her co-author, Senegalese legal expert Doudou Diène, had personally made that equivalence.

“This is the law that treats the parties in the same manner, the same standing,” said McGowan Davis, who is a former NY Supreme Court judge.

EU imposes sanctions against violent West Bank settlers

By REUTERS

04/19/2024 04:01 PM

Two IDF soldiers wounded during operation in Nur Shams in West Bank

By AMIR BOHBOT

04/19/2024 03:23 PM

UN chief appeals for end to 'dangerous cycle of retaliation' in Mideast

By REUTERS

04/19/2024 03:23 PM

Polish flag carrier LOT cancels Friday flights to Tel Aviv, Beirut