Rights group accuses Israel of war crimes in Gaza

PARIS — The Israeli army committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during last year’s offensive in Gaza, a rights group said on Friday.

The 50-day military offensive in July and August 2014 — code-named “Operation Protective Edge” — “was marked by serious breaches of … international human rights law,” said the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH).

The Paris-based group also condemned Palestinian terrorists for “indiscriminate firing of rockets and mortars” and using civilian structures — including schools, cemeteries and places of worship — as well as booby traps and human shields.

But it said those actions did not give the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) “carte blanche” to disregard international laws.

It accused the IDF of “indiscriminate attacks on civilians and their residences; attacks on medical facilities, transport and personnel; and attacks on structures providing shelter to internally displaced populations”.

The 50-day war is said to have killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, many of them civilians, according to Palestinian sources in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip; and 72 Israelis, mostly soldiers. Israel said about half of the Palestinian dead were combatants and blames Hamas for all civilian casualties, since it embedded its war machine in residential areas.

Israel launched the operation in Gaza last summer in what it said was a mission to halt relentless rocket fire by Hamas terrorists.

Hamas seized control of Gaza in a violent coup against the Palestinian Authority in 2007. An Islamist terror group, it is committed to destroying Israel.