RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) – Israel has failed to show it will conduct an impartial investigation of allegations that it committed war crimes during its Gaza offensive last year, an international human rights group said Sunday.

UN investigators leveled the war crimes allegations against Israel in an official report submitted last year. In its response last week, Israel told the UN its current system of internal military probes with legal oversight is sufficient.
However, the New York-based Human Rights Watch rejected that argument, saying internal inquiries by Israel's military have largely focused on possible wrongdoing by individual soldiers without looking into high-level decisions that led to large numbers of civilian casualties, such as artillery fire into populated areas.
Israeli investigators missed an important piece of evidence in one of the most contested incidents of the war, in which Gaza's only flour mill was severely damaged by Israeli fire, said Human Rights Watch, which discussed the ongoing investigations with Israeli military lawyers last week.
“Israel claims it is conducting credible and impartial investigations, but it has so far failed to make that case,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director for Human Rights Watch. “An independent investigation is crucial to understand why so many civilians died and to bring justice for the victims of unlawful attacks.”
A team of UN investigators, headed by veteran war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone, said last year that it found evidence that both sides violated the laws of war. The team said Israel used disproportionate force and deliberately targeted civilians, while Hamas indiscriminately fired rockets at Israeli civilians.
Last November, the UN General Assembly ordered Israel and Hamas to launch credible investigations or face possible Security Council action.
Israel and Hamas submitted reports about their efforts last week, but UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he could not determine whether the investigations were credible. It's unclear what the UN's next move will be.
Human Rights Watch said it was still reviewing the Hamas response.
Israel has said it has conducted more than 140 inquiries connected to the war, including 36 criminal investigations. One resulted in a conviction, a relatively minor case of a soldier stealing a credit card and charging $400 on it. Twenty-nine cases remain open, the military has said.
Two high-ranking officers were reprimanded for approving the firing of artillery shells toward a UN compound.
The Goldstone report alleged that Israel bombed Gaza's only flour mill from the air as part of a deliberate attempt to damage the civilian infrastructure in Gaza.
Human Rights Watch said UN mine defusing experts visited the mill two days after the strike and found the front half of a 500-pound (220-kilogram) aircraft bomb on the upper floor. Human Rights Watch also released a video, taken by the mill's owner, and said it appears to show the remains of an aerial bomb.
Photo:
In this Dec. 27, 2008, file photo, an injured Palestinian is helped from the rubble following an Israeli missile strike in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. (AP photo)
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