UN Experts: Israeli Military Campaign in Jenin May Constitute War Crime

Thursday, 06 July 2023 1:46 AM 

Smoke rises amid an Israeli military operation in Jenin, in the north of the occupied West Bank, on July 4, 2023. (Photo by Reuters)

A group of United Nations experts has ruled that Israel's recent murderous and hugely destructive land and aerial military campaign against the northern West Bank city of Jenin might constitute a "war crime."

The experts sounded the warning on Wednesday, the official Palestinian Wafa news agency reported.

Nearly two days earlier, Tel Aviv deployed more than 1,000 of its military forces to Jenin as means of supposedly damaging the resistance "infrastructure" in the city and the refugee camp that it hosts.

At least 13 Palestinians died and more than 100 others were wounded as a result of the conflict.

Thousands of Palestinians have held a funeral procession for the victims of the latest Israeli onslaught on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

The experts described the campaign as the fiercest to be waged by the regime against the city in more than two decades.

"Israeli forces’ operations in the occupied West Bank, killing and seriously injuring the occupied population, destroying their homes and infrastructure, and arbitrarily displacing thousands, amount to egregious violations of international law and standards on the use of force and may constitute a war crime," they said.

They regretted the fact that some 4,000 Palestinians had been displaced by the operation. "It is heartbreaking to see thousands of Palestinian refugees originally displaced since 1947-1949, forced to march out of the camp in abject fear at the dead of night," the experts said.

They said there were no justifications for the attacks under international law, noting, "The attacks constitute collective punishment of the Palestinian population, who have been labeled a 'collective security threat' in the eyes of Israeli authorities."

The experts, meanwhile, expressed grave concern about the military weaponry and tactics that had been deployed by the occupying entity during the raids. They also highlighted multiple reports that pointed out that the Israeli forces prevented medics and ambulances from accessing the casualties of the operation.

"The impunity that Israel has enjoyed for its acts of violence over decades, only fuel and intensify the recurring cycle of violence," they said.

The United States, Israel's oldest and strongest ally, uniformly shields the regime against any accountability for its crimes against the Palestinians, by unwaveringly casting its veto power against anti-Israeli UN measures since 1948, when the regime claimed existence upon Palestinian land.

"For this relentless violence to end, Israel’s illegal occupation must end. It cannot be corrected or improved in the margins because it is wrong to the core," the UN experts concluded.