An appeals court in the Netherlands ruled on Tuesday that Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz cannot be held responsible for the death of six Palestinians in an Israeli air strike on Gaza in 2014.
The ruling came in the wake of a civil case filed against Gantz and another former senior Israeli military official by Ismail Ziada.
He sought unspecified damages under Dutch universal jurisdiction rules for the deaths of his relatives in the strike. His case was thrown out by a lower Dutch court in January 2020.
Universal jurisdiction allows countries to prosecute serious offenses such as war crimes and torture no matter where they were committed. But the lower court ruled that the principles of universal jurisdiction could be applied for individual criminal responsibility, but not in civil cases.
Ziada appealed, arguing that universal jurisdiction should be applied in civil cases if the alleged conduct involved serious violations of international humanitarian law. He asked the appeals judges to reverse the decision, which effectively granted Gantz immunity from prosecution.
Gantz, a career soldier turned politician, was IDF Chief of Staff during a war against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip in 2014, when the incident took place.
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An IDF airstrike in Gaza during the fighting between Israel and Hamas last May
(Photo: Reuters)
About 2,200 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed, up to 1,500 of them civilians, in the conflict, according to UN figures. Ziada said he lost relatives when his family home in Gaza was bombed during a June 2014 Israeli airstrike. On the Israeli side, 67 soldiers and five civilians were killed.
Gaza strip is controlled by the Hamas terror group. Israel says Hamas puts civilians in harm's way by deploying fighters and weaponry inside densely populated areas of Gaza.
Human rights groups have accused both sides of war crimes in the 2014 conflict. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is currently investigating alleged war crimes committed on Palestinian territory since June 2014 by both Israeli defense forces and Palestinian armed groups.