Hamas:

Israel’s Closing of “2014 Massacre Probe” Has No Legal Value

Rasa - The Hamas Movement described the Israeli military advocate general’s decision to close the investigation into the army’s 2014 massacre in Rafah as “of no legal or political value".

News ID: 439151

Date: 18 August 2018 - 22:04

RNA - “It is not logical that the criminal becomes the judge and referee,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasem stated, Palinfo reported.

Qasem said the Israeli decision in this regard was an attempt to evade responsibility for a crime committed in broad daylight.

The spokesman urged all concerned parties to take legal action against Israel’s war criminals at the International Criminal Court, stressing that the international passivity towards Israel would encourage it to persist in its crimes against the Palestinian people.

A leading human rights group has also accused Israel of ignoring and covering up criminal activity in its investigations after the Tel Aviv regime clears its troops of any wrongdoing in an attack that claimed the lives of scores of Palestinians during the devastating 2014 Gaza war.

On Wednesday, the Israeli army announced that after what it claimed to be a comprehensive investigation, its military advocate general determined “a criminal investigation is not warranted into the incidents that occurred during the fighting”.

The probe was launched into the August 1, 2014 attack in the Southern Gaza town of Rafah, where over 150 Palestinians were killed during a daylong attack of heavy and indiscriminate shelling by Israeli forces.

Israeli Human rights group B'Tselem slammed the report, referring to it as a cover-up.

“The military advocate general proves again that no matter how high the number of Palestinians killed is, nor how arbitrary the circumstances of their killing by the military was, the Israeli whitewash mechanism he heads will find a way to bury the facts,” it said.

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas also condemned the Tel Aviv regime's statement.

“This emphasizes the unfairness of the Israeli inquiry and the need for an international investigation committee to probe Israel’s crimes in Rafah and in all the Gaza Strip and Palestinian lands,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri stated.

Israel’s seven-week-long summer war in 2014 and two other military operations over the last six years have caused economic losses close to three times the size of Gaza's gross domestic product. The latest onslaught claimed the lives of over 2,200 Palestinians and left over half a million more displaced. It also severely damaged more than 20,000 homes, 148 schools, 15 hospitals, and 45 clinics. At least 247 factories and 300 commercial centers were rendered inoperable or totally destroyed in the attack.

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