NEW YORK: Israeli and Palestinian rights organisations have challenged the credibility of Israel’s inquiries into the charges of Israeli military misconduct during the 2014 war in Gaza, with one group describing the internal legal process as a “facade” intended to try to stave off a war crimes investigation by the International Criminal Court, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

In a report released on Tuesday, the group, B’Tselem, a left-wing Israeli organisation that focuses on allegations of rights abuses against Palestinians in Gaza and in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, characterised the military’s system of internal investigations as a “whitewash protocol.”

“The work of the military law-enforcement system does nothing more than offer the illusion that Israel is fulfilling its obligations to investigate breaches of law,” the group said.

The sharp recriminations come two years after the ceasefire that ended 50 days of fighting in the summer of 2014 between Israel and rocket-firing militant groups in Gaza led by Hamas.

Days after the update last month, Adalah, an Arab-rights group in Israel, and the Gaza-based Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights issued a report saying they had filed joint complaints in 27 cases from the outset of the war, involving the killing of civilians and extensive damage to civilian property like hospitals and schools. They said that the military was still investigating or had yet to respond to nearly half of those complaints, and that it was working “in a sluggish and convoluted manner.”

The military says that, in all, it has received complaints relating to 360 events.

About 2,200 Palestinians were killed during the 2014 conflict, more than half of them civilians. On the Israeli side, 73 people were killed, most of them soldiers, the Times said quoting the report.

Published in Dawn, September 23rd, 2016