GENEVA — Israel has pursued a creeping annexation of the Palestinian territories through the creation of Jewish settlements and committed multiple violations of international law, possibly including war crimes, a U.N. panel said Thursday, calling for an immediate halt to all settlement activity and the withdrawal of all settlers.
Presenting their findings in Geneva after a nearly sixmonth inquiry for the U.N. Human Rights Council, a panel of three judges, led by Christine Chanet of France, said Israel’s settlements had clearly violated the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit a state from transferring its own civilian population into territory it has occupied.
Asked if Israel’s actions constituted war crimes, Chanet replied that its offenses fell under Article 8 of the International Criminal Court statute.
“Article 8 of the ICC statuteis in the chapter of war crimes,” she said at a news conference. “That is the answer.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the report as “counterproductive and unfortunate” and said it provided a reminder of the Human Rights Council’s “systematically one-sided and biased approach towards Israel.”
Israel “must cease all settlement activities without preconditions” and start withdrawing all settlers from the occupied territories, the judges state in their report, which is due to be debated in the Human Rights Council in March.
The panel drew on 67 submissions from a cross section of academics, diplomats, Israeli civilian organizations and Palestinians, Chanet said.
The council’s decision in March to investigate the effect of Jewish settlements on Palestinian rights prompted Israel to break off cooperation with the council, castigating it as a political platform used “to bash and demonize Israel.”
The panel’s report cametwo days after Israel boycotted a council review of its human rights, becoming the first country to withhold cooperation from a process in which all 193 U.N. member states have previously engaged.
The United States has condemned Israel’s settlement policy as unhelpful and an obstacle to achieving a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue, but it also opposed the creation of the fact-finding mission, saying at the time that it was an example of the council’s bias against Israel, that it did not “advance the cause of peace” and that it would “distract the parties from efforts to resolve the issues that divide them.”
Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said that the council “systematically gives Israel a raw deal”and that the conclusions of the report were predictable. Defending Israel’s decision not to cooperate with the fact-finding mission, he said, “If the cards are marked, are we expected to play anyway ?”
Front Section, Pages 3 on 02/01/2013