IN UNDER a week, Israel looks set to have suffered two testing legal assaults. First, on June 22nd, the UN Human Rights Council issued a report castigating it for its conduct during the 50-day war in Gaza last year. Then three days later the Palestinians, taking advantage of an enhanced status at the UN that enabled them to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague earlier this year, were expected to make their first formal submission to the court’s prosecutor, accusing Israel of breaching international law by, among other things, building Jewish settlements in the West Bank. They also charge Israel with committing war crimes in Gaza.

The ICC has already opened a “preliminary examination” against Israel; moving to a full investigation, with charges against individuals, may take years. Israel refused to co-operate with the UN inquiry, saying the council is biased against it and that it went to great lengths to minimise civilian casualties.

The UN report says that 2,251 Palestinians were killed in the war, including 1,462 civilians, of whom 299 were women and 551 children. (The Israelis put the figure at 2,125, of whom they say 36% were civilians.) Israel lost six civilians and 67 soldiers. Some 18,000 housing units were “destroyed in whole or part”, says the report, displacing 28% of Gaza’s people at the height of the battle. The report chides Israel for using explosives in densely populated areas, too.

The council’s main target is Israel, but it also criticises Hamas, the Islamist movement governing Gaza, for firing rockets indiscriminately at civilians in Israel and for executing 21 Gazans during the war for alleged collaboration with Israel. Both actions, says the report, may be classified as war crimes.

The UN document will not simply be funnelled into an ICC investigation. But its raw material may be used. And it will add to Israelis’ growing feeling that they are on their own.