UN Experts: Israeli Operation in Jenin May Amount to "War Crime"

Two independent UN experts said that the "air strikes and ground operations" carried out by Israeli forces in the Palestinian Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank this week "could, at first glance, amount to war crimes."

The two UN rapporteurs indicated that these "attacks are the most violent in the West Bank since the destruction of the Jenin camp in 2002."

The two experts are the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, and the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Paula Gaviria Betancourt. These two experts do not express the position of the United Nations (UN).

Albanese and Betancourt stressed that "the Israeli army's operations in the occupied West Bank, which kill and inflict grievous bodily harm on its residents, destroy their homes and infrastructure, and randomly displace thousands of people, constitute flagrant violations of international law and the standards for the use of force and may amount to a war crime."