Fatah said in a press statement that “it’s time to punish Israel’s war crimes and make Israel stop behaving as if it were above the law.”

It called on international community to pressure Israel to lift the blockade on Gaza Strip.

Israel imposed a siege on Gaza when Hamas routed pro-Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas forces and ousted Fatah in deadly clashes in June 2007. Israeli restrictions also were imposed on all banks operating in the coastal enclave, mainly money transfers, which causes severe losses to them.

On Friday, the Human Rights Council appointed a team of international experts to investigate Israel’s raid, in which nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists were killed.

The fact-finding team comprises three independent experts — Sir Desmond de Silva (Britain), Karl Hudson-Phillips (Trinidad and Tobago) an   d Mary Shanthi Dairiam (Malaysia), a UN statement said.

The UN team is expected to travel to Israel, Turkey and Gaza in August to interview witnesses and gather information before reporting back to the Council in September. The Council opens a three-week session in Geneva on Sept. 12.

For his part, the spokesman of Hamas, Sami Abu Zuhri, said it was a move in the right direction, but that “Israel must be obligated to honor the decisions of the investigation, and not be allowed to escape punishment.”

Abu Zuhri was referring to the Goldstone Commission’s which investigated the 2009 offensive on Gaza Strip.

The Hamas official said that the establishment of the commission had been a proper move in its time, “but the international community allowed Israel to evade its legal ramifications and standing trial.”

“We need to have guarantees to force Israel to honor the outcomes of this investigation,” Abu Zuhri stressed.

Meanwhile, Abu Zuhri rejected a UN call to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip through Israeli and Egyptian land crossings rather than by sea.

“The UN call is unaccepted and the international organization doesn’t have the right to specify the way to deliver the aid,” the Hamas spokesman said.

On Friday, a UN spokesman told journalists in New York that “there are established routes for supplies to enter by land. That is the way aid should be delivered to the people of Gaza.”

The UN stance was issued following an Israeli demand for an international action to prevent ships from sailing to Gaza.

Abu Zuhri said the UN is “biased to Israel and has become a tool in its hands,” describing the call to restrict maritime flotillas as “a new scandal added to the UN.”

He urged pro-Palestinian activists to continue their campaigns to break the naval blockade on Gaza.

Two Lebanese ships carrying medical supplies to Gaza are preparing to sail to Gaza.

They are the latest in a series of flotillas that have failed to dock at Gaza since the end of an Israeli offensive there in January 2009. Prior to the war, several ships, ferried by Gaza Free Movement, succeeded to reach Gaza.