Israeli forces use excessive and intentional force without justification against Palestinian civilians in the oPt. And Israel lacks the legal mechanisms and political will to effectively investigate. That’s at the heart of this report from 3 major human rights organisations. They call for Israel to be brought, like everyone else, under the rule of international law.

Israel’s actions in Operation Protective Edge is the first subject in the inbox of Fatou Bensouda, the new Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court. In this interview she steadfastly refuses to make any generalisations about Israel or Palestine but will look only at specific acts by specific people.

We learn from cables sent by Israeli diplomats that the movement to boycott Israel has taken off in Europe and the USA, reaching people and places hitherto untouched. The JPost writers here attribute the change to the campaign to kick Israel out of FIFA, but the outrage at the 2014 onslaught on Gaza probably also played its part.

Gaza has always had to contend with great heat and drought. In recent years the people have also experienced extreme winter conditions. Their make-shift shelters offer little protection. 96,000 homes were destroyed by the IDF in 2014 and few have been rebuilt.

Tourism rises and falls according to perceived pleasures and dangers. Israel is not exempt from the sense that all of the Middle East is dangerous whatever the lure of historical sites. Since OPE Israel has not been able to promote itself as a safe destination- ‘Israel is always being mentioned in the news and not in a good way’ says one hostel manager.

The ‘right’ to kill young women seems to be most common in cousin societies – where the young are expected to marry first cousins. Breaking this tradition may be good for the health but bad for the guardians of the tradition – cousins, brothers, uncles, fathers. The oxymoron, honour killing, is a gift to all hostile to Palestine and Muslims, who should, friend Richard Silverstein included, listen to Palestinian women’s protests.

Anticipating a critical report from the UN’s Commission of Inquiry into Gaza 2014, Netanyahu collected an anonymous group of military and diplomatic figures. He announced their findings – the IDF was guilty of no war crimes. Here Jerry Haber finds that most of the group have track records as Friends of Israel.

Khuza’a is a name that will for ever be linked to the shame of the IDF. They shelled the neighbourhood, besieged the remains so nothing could get in or out, ordered the last residents to leave then shot at them as they walked along the road. And in this horrible tale, forced an injured woman and her husband to strip and lie outside in the street for several hours while they ransacked their house..

Bizarrely, Netanyahu has attributed the critical (of both Hamas and Israel) UN report to an Arab majority on the UN Human Rights Council. This doesn’t exist. But the Israeli reaction to the UN report has been almost universally one of affront and self-pity – why are they picking on us? What about Syria, Korea, Libya…entirely missing the point that the report is not about internal democracy but about the onslaught on another people.

We have posted in full the ‘Principal findings and conclusions’ of the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza Conflict. It provides a very clear account of what happened, of the body of international law regulating armed conflict and where these laws were broken by both the IDF and Palestinian armed groups. The Israeli refusal to co-operate with the inquiry seems less a response of fear and more an assertion that the state of Israel cannot be held accountable to or by any body in the world.

The Israeli establishment knows that UN enquiries are going to find Israel responsible for breaching laws of war. Amir Oren asks who, and what branch of the establishment, might be accused. Previous history shows that everyone except the Prime Minister might be found culpable. The Netanyahus are working hard to ensure this doesn’t change.

UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon has returned to the charge that was omitted from the list of states which harm children in conflict – that in its assault on Gaza in 2014 the IDF did not take steps to protect children from harm. Netanyahu has insisted that an unnamed group of senior generals has acquitted his country of all charges – and Hamas was worse, which seems an odd benchmark to use when assessing humanitarian concerns.

There is some truth in what Israel says about its Operation Protective Edge (OPE). Hamas was firing rockets at civilian areas. Three teenagers had been killed by Hamas (albeit a freelance operation). Hamas tunnels under the border were a threat to Israel. What Israel did – kill over 2000 Palestinians, most civilians, a third children, and destroy vast swaths of homes, infrastructure and amenities – was totally our of order. Knowing how OPE will be judged, the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs has published its own version of events hoping this will be the benchmark against which the forthcoming UN report will be judged.

Rela Mazali and Ghada Ageel respond to the wide coverage given to the recent record of testimonies by Breaking the Silence. They question the ‘privileged status’ given to this report when multiple testimonies by Palestinians are so often ignored. Their valid and important critique, however, does not acknowledge the importance of the soldiers’ revelations of what orders they were given.

Again, a senior officer in the IDF, Major-General Sami Turgeman of Southern Command, ignores the political rhetoric about the evil of Hamas to assert that Hamas, like Israel, wants calm, growth, prosperity – and that it’s better for Hamas to govern Gaza than either the IDF or ISIL.

In winter they are freezing, in summer sweltering – life in a shipping container is never easy, but when whole families have to squeeze into them, enduring temperatures that range from 8º to 30º C, life for the homeless in Gaza becomes insufferable. As families leave their relatives’ overcrowded homes and schools return to educational use, a metal box may be the only thing left.

In a tour round Gaza, Matthew Duss observes the mass of rubble still uncleared and probes why Fatah and Hamas cannot reach a stable and functioning agreement. Short answer – Fatah, like the US and Israel, want the complete capitulation of Hamas. Hamas argues that the Fatah non-violent approach has brought them nothing.

Over 100 soldiers have broken the silence about what they were actually told to do during Operation Protective Edge. It was little to do with careful targetting of known Hamas militants and everything to do with asserting IDF dominance over Gaza at minimal cost to Israeli soldiers regardless of Palestinian civilian deaths.

Yes, Hamas was found guilty of storing ammunition in UNRWA schools, possibly firing from the schools. The PA is urged to investigate. The IDF, says the UN’s Board of Inquiry, shelled UNRWA schools where there were many hundreds of living refugees , killing 44 of them and injuring far more. If the IDF had liaised with the UN, if it really had targeted Hamas militants and ammunition dumps and so used more accurate missiles, exchanged information with UNRWA, these deaths could have been avoided. The IDF no longer takes steps to ensure civilians are not killed.

This is a meticulous account by the UN of who caused what damage to UNRWA schools which were made available for refugees from Operation Protective Edge. One of its findings is that information provided to the IDF about the schools had no effect – they were shelled anyway. Hamas did store some ammunition in some schools – UNRWA could have acted on this had the IDF informed them. Sadly, UNRWA now needs military advisers.