UN silence on Goldstone sends report to obscurity

The UN secretary-general released the Palestinian and Israeli replies with no specific recommendations for further action, indicating a desire to let the issue fade.

Palestinian civilians and medics run to safety during an Israeli strike on a UN school in Gaza in January of last year.

RAMALLAH // With the decision by the United Nations chief to offer no comment on the official Palestinian and Israeli responses to the Goldstone Report, the inquiry's findings on possible war crimes during Israel's attack on Gaza in 2008-2009 risk passing into obscurity, Palestinian and Israeli commentators said yesterday.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, late Wednesday released the Palestinian and Israeli replies to the Report with no specific recommendations for further action, indicating a desire to let the issue fade, according to George Giacaman, a Palestinian analyst. "The lack of comment [by Mr Ban] is a political move. As far as the Security Council is concerned, a majority wants to put the Goldstone Report behind them. This is a step in that direction."

A spokesman for Mr Ban said comment was not required of the secretary-general. Mr Ban had instead limited his presentation to the UN's General Assembly to broad comments about the importance of adhering to international law and human rights principles and expressed his hope that steps would be taken wherever there were allegations of violations. However, Mr Giacaman suggested that the decision not to comment was informed more by political, rather than any legal, considerations.

"It is very unfortunate. The fact that there is no comment about whether the [Israeli and Palestinian] responses fulfilled the requirements of being independent and impartial is significant, and indicates that absent serious pressure from outside groups, there will be no follow-up to the Goldstone Report." The 575-page Goldstone report concluded that both sides committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the Gaza war, in which 13 Israelis and almost 1,400 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians, were killed.

The release of the responses was accompanied by criticism from the UN's Human Rights Council as well as the independent Human Rights Watch, a US-based human rights group. Both were critical of the lack of response from Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza, which apparently conducted no investigation into allegations in the Goldstone Report that its fighters, along with those of other Palestinian groups in Gaza, had indiscriminately targeted Israeli civilians with rocket fire on southern Israel.

No Hamas official was available for comment yesterday, but Hamas officials have previously rejected the allegations. Palestinians, they say, have a legal right to resist occupation and that while Israeli civilians might have been in the firing line of rockets from Gaza, those weapons are not sophisticated enough to have guidance mechanisms and that the intention was always to strike at military targets.

The Palestinian response instead came from the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which stated that while Hamas had violated human rights in Gaza there could be no moral equivalence with Israel's actions, for which the numbers spoke for themselves. Israel, the PA concluded, had acted with total impunity and disregard for international law. The Goldstone Report, named after its head, the South African jurist Richard Goldstone, found that Israel used disproportionate force, deliberately targeted civilians, used Palestinians as human shields and destroyed civilian infrastructure during its three-week invasion of Gaza.

Israel's response to those allegations was also criticised by human rights organisations on Wednesday. In its response, Israel said it had conducted 150 investigations into specific allegations of war crimes. These inquiries, however, fell "far short of being thorough and impartial", said Human Rights Watch, a criticism echoed by the Human Rights Council. Such criticism is likely to be shrugged off in Israel, where both bodies are seen as "anti-Israel", in the words of Gerald Steinberg, an Israeli commentator.

"This is a familiar game. The Goldstone Report was based on political claims by organisations that have an anti-Israel agenda, such as the Human Rights Council, which is dominated by the Organisation of Islamic Conference." Mr Steinberg rejected any suggestion that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza, saying the Goldstone Report conclusions were "baseless". He accused the Human Rights Council of "double standards" for overlooking human rights violations in Arab countries, while he dismissed the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch as "ideologues".

Mr Steinberg also suggested that the Goldstone Report would now be set aside, with "the US and most European countries now able to claim that Israel has fulfilled its obligations". It is not clear yet what next for the Goldstone Report. With a US veto at the ready, the UN's Security Council is unlikely to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where it may only end up after a vote in the UN's General Assembly.

Even then it is not clear where such a step could lead, since Israel is not a signatory to the 2002 Rome Treaty that established the court. @Email:[e-mail]