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| UN High Comm'r Navi Pillay |
The New York Times reports that outgoing UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Navi Pillay has "called on Israel and on Hamas, the Islamist faction that dominates the Gaza Strip, to account for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity through indiscriminate attacks on civilians."
The Israel Defence Forces' legal branch has begun work:
Lt. Col. Eran Shamir-Borer, head of the strategic affairs branch in the international law department at the Military Advocate General’s Corps, said in an interview that a recently established military committee of fact-finding teams, independent of the chain of command and made up largely of reservists, is already investigating certain cases and could have some preliminary findings as early as Friday.
Israel's 1955 Military Justice Law
gives charging power to the Military Advocate General, not commanders. One assumes Hamas is also investigating.
Amnesty International reported in 2013 that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority carried out investigations of war crimes following the Israeli Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009). Why assume that Hamas is investigating war crimes now? Does Hamas have a legal branch that requires it to do so?
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