A state committee is set to recommend enhanced civilian oversight on military probes into alleged war crimes and human rights violations, the Ha'aretz daily reported Sunday.

The Turkel Committee was originally appointed by the government to investigate an Israeli naval raid to intercept an aid flotilla to the Gaza Strip in May 2010. Nine Turkish nationals were killed and several soldiers were wounded in violent clashes aboard the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara.

The committee had submitted its conclusions on the botched operation, which sparked a firestorm of international criticism of Israel last January. It scrutinized the army's investigation of the flotilla, headed by a retired general, which largely exonerated the military and the government of any wrongdoing.

According to Ha'aretz, the second part of the committee's report focuses on the methods used by the security establishment, the military, the Shin Bet domestic security service, the police and the Israel Prison Service, to investigate complaints of alleged war crimes or human rights violations committed by members of these organizations, mainly against Palestinians.

The report, entitled "Examination of the Israeli mechanisms for examining and investigating allegations of violations of the laws of armed conflict: the investigation policy," will be submitted to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the coming weeks, and will then be made public.

The document reportedly contains harsh criticism of the defense establishment's own probes into charges of presumed war crimes, and recommends a complete overhauling of the way in which they are administered. In a bid to augment transparency, the report's authors suggest that the attorney general more closely monitor probes led by the Military Advocate General and the Shin bet.

In the course of its work, the committee collected the testimonies of former Shin Bet chief Yuval Steinitz, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, academic legal experts and representatives of human rights groups. It also reviewed upwards of 60 legal cases involving the death or injury of Palestinian civilians and complaints lodged since the flotilla incident.

In addition to greater oversight of ongoing and future probes, the committee is also expected to recommend that the attorney general be given the authority to overturn decisions by the Military Advocate General, as well as the establishment of a department of international law in the Justice Ministry that would handle complaints received from Palestinians and supervise the Military Advocate General.

The report's publication is expected to raise great interest in both Israel and abroad. Local legal experts have described the document as "unprecedented," citing the fact that the military has to date been trusted with probing itself; all the more so Shin Bet, one of the country's most powerful bodies.

Most court deliberations in which Shin Bet officials are summoned to testify regarding the so-called "administrative detention," the common practice of extending the remand of Palestinians arrested by the agency for interrogation, take place behind closed doors, and the verdicts often remain classified due to considerations of state security.

The same held true in extremely rare cases in the past in which a Palestinian detainee was injured or killed during the course of an interrogation meant to extricate information on an imminent terror attack against Israeli civilians.

Last week, military prosecutors informed a local human rights group of their decision to close an investigation into a bombing which killed 21 members of a single Palestinian family during the army's offensive in Gaza in early 2009 to quell militant rocket attacks.

The military said the probe "completely disproved" claims that officers and soldiers deliberately targeted civilians or caused death through negligence.

"The security establishment is taking the report very seriously. While the work was underway, we saw changes in methods and procedures in the Military advocate General and the Shin Bet," attorney Hoshea Gottlieb, the committee's coordinator, told Ha' aretz.

The government and the defense establishment are expected to accept the committee's recommendations or risk a "serious" damage to the credibility of the country's law enforcement agencies and Israel's international image, the report said.