World / Middle East ‘Nobody has been made safer’ by Israel’s actions, UN human rights chief says BL PREMIUM

Geneva — On Friday, the UN human rights chief criticised Israel’s deadly reaction to protests along the Gaza border as "wholly disproportionate", backing calls for an international investigation. Addressing a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on the violence, which has claimed more than 100 Gazan lives in six weeks, Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein warned that "killing resulting from the unlawful use of force by an occupying power may also constitute wilful killings, a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention". Violations of the Geneva Conventions adopted in 1949 following the Second World War are commonly called "war crimes" although Zeid did not explicitly use that word. He pointed out though that while 60 Palestinians were killed and thousands injured in a single day of protests that coincided with Monday’s move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, "on the Israeli side, one soldier was reportedly wounded, slightly, by a stone". "The stark contrast in casualties on ...