The shelling of a U.N. facility in Gaza this week by the Israeli military is "totally unacceptable and totally indefensible," a White House spokesman said on Thursday.
"The shelling of a U.N. facility that is housing innocent civilians who are fleeing violence is totally unacceptable and totally indefensible," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.
This comes after the Pentagon called on Israel to do more to protect civilian life during its military operations in Gaza, saying the conflict was taking too high a toll on civilians.
"The civilian casualties in Gaza have been too high. And it's become clear that the Israelis need to do more to live up to their very high standards - their very high and very public standards - for protecting civilian life," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said at a news briefing.
Also on Thursday, the United Nations' senior human rights official said she believed Israel was deliberately defying international law in its military offensive in Gaza and that world powers should hold it accountable for possible war crimes.
Israel has attacked homes, schools, hospitals, and U.N. premises in apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions, Navi Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said.
"Therefore I would say that they appear to be defying... deliberate defiance of obligations that international law imposes on Israel," Pillay told a news briefing.
"This is why again and again I say we cannot allow impunity, we cannot allow this lack of accountability to go on."
Hamas militants in Gaza have also violated international humanitarian law by firing rockets indiscriminately into Israel, sometimes from densely-populated areas, Pillay said.
She also criticized the United States, Israel's main ally, for failing to use its influence with the Jewish state to halt the carnage.
"Many of my remarks have been directed to the United States since they are a party with influence over Israel to do much more to stop the killing, to bring the parties to the negotiating table. I've called also for an end to the blockade and an end to the occupation."
Pillay said that she was appalled at Washington consistently voting against resolutions on Israel in the Human Rights Council, General Assembly and Security Council.
"They have not only provided the heavy weaponry which is now being used by Israel in Gaza but they've also provided almost $1 billion in providing the 'Iron Domes' to protect the Israels from rocket attacks," she said. "But no such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing international alarm over a rising civilian death toll in Gaza, said on Thursday he would not accept any ceasefire that stopped Israel completing the destruction of militants' infiltration tunnels.
Gaza officials say at least 1,372 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed and nearly 7,000 wounded. Fifty-six Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza clashes and more than 400 wounded. Three civilians have been killed by Palestinian shelling in Israel.
Israel says it is acting to stop the Hamas rocket attacks.
Pillay said that as Israel prosecuted only four Israeli soldiers for its 2008/09 Operation Caste Lead, including one for alleged theft of a credit card, she did not expect it to investigate properly violations committed during its air strikes and ground assault on Gaza, now in its fourth week.
"But international law is clear that where a state is unable or unwilling to carry out investigations and prosecutions, the international (criminal justice) system applies," she said.
Previous U.N. commissions of inquiry into Israel incursions into Gaza have called for the U.N. Security Council to refer the situation to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), according to Pillay, a former U.N. war crimes judge.
"Accountability and justice cannot be expected to be achieved through (Israeli) domestic proceedings. This is evident from the lack of adequate investigations by Israel and no attempt whatsoever made by the international community to implement the recommendations made by the Gaza fact-finding mission report," Pillay said.
Israel pressed ahead with its Gaza offensive saying it was days from achieving its core goal of destroying all Islamist guerrilla cross-border attack tunnels, but a soaring Palestinian civilian toll has triggered international alarm.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel was determined, regardless of ceasefire efforts, to complete the destruction of tunnels that Palestinian militants have built under the Gaza-Israel border.
Netanyahu's security cabinet on Wednesday approved continuing the assault launched on July 8 in response to a surge of rocket attacks by Gaza's dominant Hamas Islamists. Israel also sent a delegation to Egypt, which has been trying, with Washington's blessing, to broker a ceasefire.
A military source said some 16,000 reservists were being called up at short notice in the coming hours to relieve a similar number who would be stood down.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was incensed on Wednesday at the deaths of at least 15 Palestinians among thousands sheltering at a school whose UN administrator said appeared to have been hit by Israeli artillery.
"It is outrageous. It is unjustifiable. And it demands accountability and justice," Ban said.
Israel said its forces were attacked by guerrillas near the school, in northern Jabalya, and had fired back. It did not comment immediately on another incident, in nearby Shejaia, in which Palestinian officials said 17 people were killed by Israeli shelling near a produce market.
REUTERS
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