Palestinians Drop Effort to Pressurize Israel at UN, For Now

In an unexpected move late Thursday, the Palestinian Authority withdrew its backing for a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council that sought to endorse in full a report accusing Israel of war crimes.

Hours earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had warned that adoption of the report would kill the Mideast “peace process.” It would also jeopardize the war against terrorism and severely damage the U.N.’s reputation, he said.

The P.A. decision followed strong lobbying by the United States, which is trying to restart stalled Israeli-P.A. negotiations. It will likely mean that the HRC, on its last day of a month-long session in Geneva Friday, will vote on a compromise resolution that defers the matter, at least until the council next meets in March 2010.

The closing days of the current session have been dominated by the so-called Goldstone report, a 575-page document compiled by a HRC-mandated fact finding mission examining Israel’s military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip last winter.

Among its recommendations, the report says the U.N. Security Council should refer allegations of war crimes by Israel and Hamas to International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors if the Israelis and Palestinians do not launch independent investigations into the charges within six months.

The mission head, South African judge Richard Goldstone, presented his report to the council on Tuesday. Israel, which refused to cooperate with the mission, repudiated the document, saying it had ignored Israel’s “right to self-defense” in the face of thousands of rocket attacks from Gaza over a number of years.

The U.S. led calls to have the matter handled by the HRC alone, rather than be referred to parties outside the body, including the Security Council and ICC.

It called the report “deeply flawed,” noted that Israel already has criminal inquiries underway, and said it should be encouraged to probe and address the allegations through credible domestic processes, while the Palestinians should also investigate allegations of Hamas abuses.

But the P.A., with the backing of Islamic, Arab, African and “non-aligned” member states, wanted the council to adopt a resolution endorsing the report “in full” – an outcome that would effectively have started the clock on the six month period set by Goldstone.

Late Thursday, however, Israeli media reported that the P.A. envoy to the HRC had told his Israeli counterpart that he would on Friday withdraw P.A. support for the draft resolution.


By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor
CNSNEWS
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