The United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) has started its fifteenth regular session (13 September – 1 October 2010).
The Council is set to consider the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt); including the report of the Committee of Experts (CoE), which has presented its report (A/HRC/15/50) on its assessment of the  investigations carried out by the Israeli and Palestinian authorities into violations of international law during Israel’s military operation in Gaza in the winter of 2008/2009 (codenamed Operation Cast Lead).
The CoE has determined that the investigations failed, with the minor exception on the part of the Palestinian Authority, to live up to the standards determined in the UN General Assembly (GA) resolution 64/254; including the independence, effectiveness, genuineness of these investigations with international law.
Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights has followed these investigations closely.
The Centre commends the objectivity and credibility of the CoE findings.
In light of its conclusions, Al Mezan calls on international community to effect international mechanisms of accountability and justice without any delay.
  During the above-mentioned military operation, international humanitarian and human rights laws were evidently severely violated, leaving tens of thousands of victims.
Their only hope lies in the abolition of the entrenched culture of impunity and the start of a new environment of justice.
The report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission, which investigated only 36 cases of violation of international law tantamount to war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity in Gaza, indicates the reality of both serious disregard of international law and the prevalence of impunity.
Despite the engagement by international community; especially the GA and the HRC, no sense of accountability or justice has been established until today.
As the CoE concluded, there is a clear lack of willingness to establish any sense of criminal accountability.
While this translates into leaving the victims without any sense of justice, it has also led for similar patterns of violations to continue, only making new victims.
  In light of this, and since the parties responsible for violations of international law have been given a long time to uphold their obligations without success, Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights believes that it is  time for international community to uphold its legal and moral obligations and employ the mechanisms of justice available to it without any further delay.
  Al Mezan calls on the Palestinian Authority to table at the HRC a draft resolution referring the CoE report to the GA and to seek to have the HRC and the GA to take effective and accelerated steps to ensure that justice is established in accordance with the recommendations of the Fact-Finding Mission report; including referring the file to the International Criminal Court by the Security Council or, in case of the SC failure to do so, the GA.
Under the current circumstances in oPt, failing to uphold international law means failing to provide protection for civilians under occupation, which is solidified into further loss of life and human suffering.
  Ends