If UNRWA handed rockets over to Hamas, is that a war crime? Did it have a choice?
On 22 July 2014, The Jerusalem Post interviewed Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer on the controversy surrounding the actions of the UN following the discovery of rockets in its schools.
"Going a step beyond that view, some have said while there was no technical legal prohibition for UNRWA to hand over the rockets in a way which could (maybe did) end up with Hamas, the transfer clearly violated all ethical principles of neutrality.
Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer, Israel Democracy Institute Vice President and a former top university and IDF legal official, went much further calling UNRWA's actions unambiguously a "war crime."
Kremnitzer said that any attempted defense by UNRWA that it transferred the rockets to neutral unity officials was "preposterous" because "it ignores the reality" on the ground in which the unity government "has no effective control over Gaza or Hamas."
Accordingly, said Kreminitzer, the rockets were functionally given to Hamas, a terror organization which fires rockets indiscriminately at civilians – making the transferors, UNRWA, complicit in Hamas' war crimes.
He reasoned that giving the rockets to "unity" officials was either "extremely foolish" or an "intentionally evil" act, and that he does not think UNRWA is foolish enough to be absolved of culpability.
Questioned about what else UNRWA could have done, he said that UN headquarters could have explained to them how to disarm the rockets even if they did not have that knowledge themselves and surmised that if UN headquarters asked Hamas for a temporary ceasefire to arrive at the facility to handle the issue, that might have worked.
Kremnitzer also argued that if UNRWA had informed Israel, Israel would not have attacked and holding onto the rockets could have been a way to prove later war crimes allegations against Hamas before the International Criminal Court.
He said he recognized that UNRWA was in a difficult situation, but that giving the rockets to Hamas (which is what he believes ultimately inevitably occurred) was not one of UNRWA's options if it was going to honor its neutrality obligations, and that it would have been better for UNRWA to risk their own lives trying to disarm the rockets.
Asked if UNRWA's actions could be criminally excusable (leading to a lesser punishment if prosecuted), even if they were not fully justified, Kremnitzer stated that there would be no criminal prosecution since it could never be criminally proven that the particular rockets were used.
Despite that fact, he said that he thought even in desperately hard circumstances, UNRWA's actions were inexcusable since the rockets are used to fire at civilians."