Israel rejects appeal for new probe into killing of Gaza children

Israel’s top court has rejected a petition to reopen an investigation into the death of four Palestinian children killed in an Israeli airstrike during the regime’s war on the besieged Gaza Strip in 2014.

The ruling on Sunday was approved unanimously. The court upheld earlier decisions by Israeli military investigators, describing the incident as a tragic mistake.

“With all of the sorrow and heartache over the tragic and difficult outcome of the event in this petition, I did not find that the petitioners pointed to a flaw in the decision of the attorney general,” the judge's ruling said.  

The appeal was filed in 2020 on behalf of the victims’ parents by the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, al-Mizan Center for Human Rights and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. They were seeking a criminal investigation into the incident.

The petitioners demanded the opening of a criminal probe that will lead to the prosecution of those responsible for the killing. They argued the investigative materials show the Israeli military intentionally opened deadly fire at the children in violation of the laws of war.

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Reacting to the ruling, the groups said in a joint statement that the decision “is further evidence that Israel is unable and unwilling to investigate and prosecute soldiers and commanders for war crimes against Palestinian civilians.”

The bombing claimed the lives of four members of the Bakr family on July 16 that year. They were playing soccer on the beach when they were killed. Images showed the children desperately running away from a jetty as a missile falls, and then the boys falling to the ground one after another.

Critics and international human rights groups have long accused Israel and its military of whitewashing wrongdoing by its troops.

Last year, the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) opened an investigation into reported Israeli crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories, including actions during the 2014 war on Gaza. Bakr family members delivered testimony to the court during a preliminary inquiry.

In March, the Arab League Ministerial Council called on the ICC to proceed with its investigation into the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli regime against the defenseless Palestinian people.

Palestine was accepted as an ICC member in 2015, three years after signing the court's founding Rome Statute, based on its “observer state” status at the United Nations.

Both Israel and the United States have refused to sign up to the ICC, which was set up in 2002 to be the only global tribunal trying the world's worst crimes, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

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