63% of fatalities from Israeli war on Gaza were civilians: Israeli group

An Israeli rights group says 63 percent of the Palestinian fatalities caused in Israel’s 2014 war against the Gaza Strip were civilians.

B’Tselem released the figure in a Wednesday report under the title “50 Days: More than 500 Children.”

The civilian victims, among the overall 2,202 killed in the Israeli war, were not “taking part in the hostilities at the time of their death” and were not holding “a continuous combat function,” the rights group said.

“The high number of civilian fatalities casts doubt on Israel’s claim that all the targets were legitimate and that the military adhered to the principle of proportionality.”

In the same context, it blamed the Israeli military of having “shirked” its duty to prevent large civilian casualties.

The group said 500 children were also killed in the Israeli war.

B’Tselem’s spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli, meanwhile, said the report was meant to allow “the public to gain access to this information to simply understand how many people were killed.”

Israel started its latest war on Gaza in early July 2014. The offensive ended after 50 days on August 26 that year, with a truce that took effect after indirect negotiations in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

The 2014 war and two other ones before it have also caused economic losses close to three times the size of Gaza’s gross domestic product.

Back in May, B’Tselem announced that it would stop cooperating with the Israeli military on behalf of Palestinian victims, saying it had lost all faith in the regime’s military justice system, which it said was virtually legitimizing crimes by Israeli forces.