A Palestinian demonstrator shouts during a protest against the US embassy move to Jerusalem and ahead of the 70th anniversary of Nakba, at the Israel-Gaza border in the southern Gaza Strip. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

Tel Aviv - Asharq Al-Awsat

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has rejected the UN Human Rights Council’s decision to establish a commission of inquiry into the massacres of the Israeli occupation forces against civilians in the Return Marches in the Gaza Strip.

In order to evade its international obligations, it tasked the military police to examine the events.

A source at the Human Rights Council said that if Israel insists on its position and prevents its men from reaching the Gaza Strip via Tel Aviv airport, the council's investigators will enter Gaza from different itineraries (through Egypt).

In response to the Israeli position, Hamas stressed that the occupation’s rejection of an international commission of inquiry into the recent massacres is evidence of its involvement in a war crime.

Hamas spokesman Abdullatif al-Qanoua said in a brief press statement that its refusal emphasizes its brutality and persistence in terrorizing and killing the Palestinian people as well as flouting UN and international institutions and disregarding their decisions.

On Friday, the UN Council adopted a resolution calling for the urgent dispatch of an independent international commission to “investigate alleged violations and ill-treatment in the framework of military attacks launched during the major civil protests that began on March 30, 2018 in Gaza.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry expressed the official position of Tel Aviv, through a statement circulated to the media, which stated: “Israel completely rejects the decision of the UN Human Rights Council to form a commission of inquiry into the events of Gaza.”

It claimed that the council’s decision proves once again that it is “a body with an automatic majority hostile to Israel and dominated by hypocrisy and absurdity.”

“The results of the commission of inquiry, which the Council decided to set up, are known in advance and are reflected in the drafting of the same resolution,” the statement added.