William Schabas, a professor of international law at Middlesex University London, spoke to Al Jazeera about the legal implications of the mass graves found in the Nasser Medical Complex.

He said mass graves have “always been an indication that war crimes have been committed, whether it was in the former Yugoslavia, Ukraine and now in Gaza”.

“There’s an obligation under international law to see that the dead are treated with respect and with dignity, that they’re buried according to rights, and that they can be identified by their next of kin. And none of that appears to be done. So Israel has a lot of explaining to do,” he said.

The fact that some of the bodies were apparently bound up or tied “points to summary execution” and calls for full-blown criminal investigation with a view to holding the perpetrators accountable, Schabas said.

The obvious institution to prosecute the perpetrators, he noted, is the International Criminal Court, which he said “jumped to attention” and immediately investigated the mass graves found outside Kyiv in 2022.

In the case of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the US and plenty of Western countries expressed their outrage. In contrast, the lack of outrage expressed around the mass graves found in Gaza, Schabas says, points to “double standards” that have “always been a feature of the attitude towards Israel by its supporters, the various Western governments led by the United States”.