United Nations Radio

The overall ratio of deaths among Palestinians and Israelis as a result of Israel's military incursion into Gaza provides a basis for challenging the legality of initiating a military assault with modern weaponry against an essentially defenseless society.

Richard Falk

That's what UN expert on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories Richard Falk told the Human Rights Council Monday in Geneva.
Falk says the fact that six times more Palestinian civilians than combatants were killed strongly suggests a failure on the part of Israel to respect the fundamental legal obligation to conduct military operations allowing the distinction between military and civilian targets.

"This indictment of Israeli tactics is strongly reinforced by a feature of the military operations that is unique in contemporary warfare: namely, coercively confining the Gazan civilian population to the combat zone during the Israeli military operations.   This effectively denied to all Palestinians in Gaza the option of becoming refugees. Such a war policy should be treated as a distinct and new crime against humanity, and should be formally recognized as such and explicitly prohibited."

Falk says to the extent that the combat zone was so densely populated by civilians, it meant that, with the type of weaponry relied upon, there was no lawful way to carry out the Israeli military operations.

This is Donn Bobb reporting for United Nations Radio.

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