The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, announced that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Galant bear responsibility for crimes against humanity in Gaza and the use of the weapon of starvation against the Palestinians.
Khan’s announcement was preceded by reports that investigators had begun listening to witnesses from medical teams in Gaza that worked to recover the bodies of victims from mass graves found in hospitals in the Strip.
These testimonies documented the presence of traces of torture and signs of field executions, according to the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, which documented the presence of mass graves in the two largest medical complexes, which are the Shifa and Nasser hospitals in the cities of Gaza and Khan Yunis, after they were besieged and then stormed by the Israeli occupation army.
According to an Tel Aviv Tribune investigation prepared by journalist Salam Khader, the number of graves inside the Gaza Strip’s hospitals reached 9 burial sites, and medical teams recovered more than 400 bodies, some of whose owners were not identified.
According to the investigation, medical teams in Gaza found dozens of bodies inside two sites in the Shifa Medical Complex, and they were buried at varying depths after the Israeli army withdrew following its second attack on the complex last March.
Certificates for the island
Moatasem Nasser, a member of the Emergency Committee in Gaza, says that two mass graves were found inside the Al-Shifa Complex, the first in front of the Reception and Emergency Department, and the other in front of the Dialysis Department.
Nasser added that these people were executed inside the complex, and some of them were employees, according to the apparent examination of the bodies.
However, pictures of the medical complex taken after the Israeli army withdrew showed that the two sites that the member of the Emergency Committee in Gaza spoke about were different from a site inside the complex used by the families who fled to the hospital during the first Israeli attack in mid-November, where civilians who were killed due to the bombing of buildings were buried. The hospital before the army stormed.
In turn, Gaza Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal described the condition of the bodies after they were exhumed from mass graves as some of them belonging to people without clothes and others being fed with medical solutions.
Speaking to Tel Aviv Tribune, Basal noted that some of the bodies were people with their hands and feet shackled, in addition to “people who appeared to have been killed in a brutal manner even though they were carrying medical files.”
The role of forensic medicine
Regarding the role of forensic medicine in determining the causes of death, forensic physician Fathallah Fattouh told Tel Aviv Tribune that it is difficult in the case of mass graves to rely on clinical signs because the bodies have been buried for a while.
In his interview with Tel Aviv Tribune, Fattouh stressed that there is an essential role for anatomy, the use of x-rays, and the discrepancy between the presence of fractures or the presence of blood in the muscles.
Commenting on the fact that most of the bodies had their hands and feet tied, he warned that the army would not waste time tying their hands and feet, suggesting that they might have been tortured and buried before they died.
He explained, “The lung must be dissected. If we find sand and dirt, this is strong evidence that they were buried alive. If we do not find dirt, this means that they were buried after death.”
Strong evidence
In turn, Geoffrey Nice – a human rights lawyer – said that mass graves are very important evidence, as there are suspicions that war crimes were committed, pointing out the importance of having eyewitnesses to the burial of bodies or the shooting and how it was carried out, in addition to the presence of traces of torture.
Speaking to Tel Aviv Tribune, Nice added that these are all factors that can be examined, and could also provide very important evidence for the prosecution at the International Criminal Court.
He pointed out the importance of Netanyahu rushing to cooperate with the International Court after the Palestinian government in 2015 placed the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, with no Israeli dealings with it since that date.