Tel Aviv has 936 lawsuits against them for Gaza assault

Israel set for blizzard of war crimes charges

CAIRO (AlArabiya.net)

Israel was set to face an avalanche of war crimes lawsuits from Palestinian lawyers who accused Tel Aviv of dozens of crimes five months after its three week assault on the Gaza Strip, the German daily Der Spiegel reported Saturday.

A group of Palestinian lawyers filed 936 lawsuits against Israel's Defense Forces (IDF) and the cases will soon be heard in Spain's National Court under universal jurisdiction, Iyad al-Alami, head of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), said.

PCHR's attorneys are collecting evidence of human rights violations and war crimes committed against unarmed civilians.

Accusations ranged fromshooting children and women at close range to the illegal use of white phosphorus bombs on civilians as well as attacks on ambulances and razing civilians' houses.

Structural damage in Gaza was estimated at $ 1.6 billion.

Other than PCHR, there are dozens of attorneys from Britain, Norway, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Spain working on lawsuits against Israel andwhich will be filed under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which studies cases of war crimes, genocide, torture and crimes against humanity.

Six attorneys in Norway filed a lawsuit for human rights violations against Israel and are seeking a European arrest warrant against senior Israeli officials, one of whom is former prime minister Ehud Olmert.