Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has landed his country in major international embarrassment by large-scale use of high technology weapons while trying "to eliminate" the Hamas militants during the 11-day war between Israel and the Palestinians that ended on May 21.

His actions during the war have led to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, stating that Israel’s recent attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip, killing more than 200 Palestinians and destroying at least 1500 targets, including a large number of high-rise civilian buildings, may constitute “war crimes” if they are found to be disproportionate.

Bachelet’s comments came as she opened a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. The UN senior official said she did not come across evidence to prove that civilian buildings in Gaza hit by Israeli fighter jets were being used for military purposes.

According to the UN, "War crimes are those violations of international humanitarian law (treaty or customary law) that incur individual criminal responsibility under international law. As a result, and in contrast to the crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity, war crimes must always take place in the context of an armed conflict, either international or non-international."

Highlighting the scale of the destruction in Gaza, Bachelet, a former Chilean President, asserted, “Although reportedly targeting members of armed groups and their military infrastructure, the Israeli attacks resulted in extensive civilian deaths and injuries as well as large-scale destruction and damage to civilian objects.” Israeli fighter jets targeted government buildings, civilian homes,international humanitarian organisations, medical facilities and media offices in the enclave of two million people described by the UN as  “the world’s largest open-air prison" called Gaza.

She made these assertions during a debate on a draft resolution at the Council's meeting to launch a broad, international investigation into not only the law violations in Gaza but also of “systematic” abuses in the Palestinian territories and inside Israel.

The war resulted in at least 253 Palestinian deaths, including the killing of 66 children and wounding more than 1,900 people. Twelve people, including three foreign workers and two children, were killed in Israel by 4,340 rockets fired by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad inside Israel. While most of the rockets fired from Gaza were destroyed in mid-air by Israeli forces, Israel's attacks on Gaza went on unchallenged.

According to an assessment carried in Forbes magazine, Israel used F-16 and F-35 fighter planes with precision-guided bombs. What its fighter jets did was damaging 53 school buildings, 11 health centres and six hospitals, including Gaza’s only Covid testing and vaccination centre, and a Red Crescent building. Also, the leader of Gaza’s Covid-19 campaign was killed along with dozens of civilians.

In all, the Israeli attacks on Gaza reportedly damaged 17,000 residential and commercial units and destroyed 1000 residential units,including five residential towers, rendering homeless at least 72,000 Palestinians.

Will then Netanyahu be really hauled up for committing "war crimes"?There is apparently no possibility because of the US support he enjoys. He may find himself in the dock only if there is an uproar from all corners of the world, not observed till now.

The US at this stage is interested only in launching a process of rebuilding Gaza as also helping Israel in carrying out repair work toenable the affected people to lead a normal life. Primacy, of course,has to be given to rebuilding Gaza, and this humanitarian objective will hopefully be achieved soon as it happened after the 2014 Israeli-Palestinian hostilities. But innocent families which have lost their near and dear ones on both sides will continue to feel thepain of what happened to them for no fault of theirs.If the world community seriously wants that the region does not experience a war again, it needs to get overactive to find a lasting solution to the festering crisis. There is, in fact, an urgent need to revive the stalled peace process to ensure that the people in Israel and the Palestinian National Authority areas, including Gaza and the West Bank, live in peace without the periodic armed conflicts as has been the case so far.

In any peace initiative, there is always the possibility of two specific ideas being discussed these days: a two-state proposal for Israel and a Palestinian homeland to exist side by side, and a single-state solution for both Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Experts believe that the single-state idea may never be acceptable to the Israelis as it may be considered suicidal for the Jews, who fought for and got a homeland for them in accordance with what their religious scripture says.

A joint homeland for both the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs will render the Jews a minority and, therefore, they may not be able to ensure that any Jew living anywhere in the world can become a citizen of this country as the situation exists in today's Israel.There are certain other things too with which the Jews have an emotional attachment and which may become unachievable for them.

The Israelis can accept, though after a lot of persuasion, the idea of two states, one for the Jews and the other for the Arab Palestinians,existing side by side, even if this will mean abandoning the Jewish settlements that have come up in the West Bank and other Palestinian-dominated areas, which would be a Palestinian territory once the Palestinians get a separate homeland for them.

This arrangement will be in accordance with the land-for-peace theory which most Israelis have been favouring willy-nilly. The Palestinians may also accept the two-state idea if they are able to make East Jerusalem as their capital and the occupied territories are returned to them.The extremist movements like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, which advocate that Israel has no right to exist in the Arab world, may be persuaded to accept this reality.

However, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, assigned by President Joe Biden the task of doing the ground work for an eventual resumption of the long-stalled peace talks, has expressed the view in the course of an interview with the CNN that time is not ripe for such a course of action. In his opinion, at this stage, steps can only be taken to repair the massive damage caused by the Israeli air strikes in Gaza.

Both sides are in a celebratory mood as both have claimed victory after the ceasefire, agreed to with Egyptian intervention. Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Hamas leadership may have their own reasons to consider themselves as gainers, not losers, after the intense fighting for 11 days. But the masses on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide are definitely the losers, as they are the victims of "war crimes". Both Netanyahu and the Hamas leadership must be brought to book for the untold suffering caused to the people through their indiscriminate targeting of civilians.