Hamas: Intl. community must recognize Israeli officials as 'war criminals'

The Hamas resistance movement has welcomed a report by a special United Nations commission tasked with investigating Israel’s practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, calling on the international community to recognize the regime officials as "war criminals".

In a statement on Sunday, the Gaza-based resistance movement said the report, like other previous reports, reveals the "severity of the occupying regime’s violations, crimes and aggressive practices" in the Occupied Territories. 

“The report has documented crimes and violations against Palestinian lands and people, including cold-blooded killings, assassinations, systematic torture of prisoners, forcible expulsions, racial discrimination and segregation, denial of construction permits, settlement expansion, theft of Palestinian natural resources, and finally the unjust blockade on our people in the Gaza Strip,” read the statement. 

Hamas reiterated its appeal to the international community and world organizations to discharge their human and legal responsibilities, and work towards putting an end to violations and crimes committed by the Israeli regime and extremist Jewish settlers against the Palestinian people.

It also called for an end to Israel’s impunity and holding Israeli leaders to account as war criminals, emphasizing that justice must be delivered to all Palestinian people and their legitimate rights must be restored.

Earlier this month, Bank, a Geneva-based human rights group, appealed to the world body to help put an end to Israel’s policy of using lethal force against Palestinians and ensure the regime’s accountability for its extrajudicial killings.

“The official instructions received by the Israeli army in dealing with Palestinian civilians led to the systematic use of lethal force, which caused a noticeable increase in incidents amounting to extrajudicial killings in the Palestinian territories,” Euro-Med Monitor said in a letter addressed to Morris Tidball-Binz, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Summary or Arbitrary Executions.

ME