UN endorses Goldstone report 5Nov09 November 6, 2009
Aljazeera - 5 November 2009
The United Nations General Assembly has adopted a UN-sponsored report which says Israel committed war crimes during last winter’s military assault on the Gaza Strip.
The Goldstone report, which accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes, has already been endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council, which sponsored the fact-finding commission.
The General Assembly on Thursday voted by a margin of 114 to 18 to adopt the report after debating it for two days.
Forty-four member-nations abstained from voting.
The report calls on both Israel and the Palestinians to investigate accusations of human-rights violations during the 22-day conflict in December and January.
The debate at the General Assembly, which began on Wednesday, was called for by the Arab UN group, with the backing of the 118-member Non-Aligned Movement (Nam).
Offensive conduct
| In depth |
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Most of criticism in the report, compiled by a fact-finding panel led by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge, was directed towards Israel’s conduct during the offensive, in which human rights organisations say about 1,400 Palestinians – many of them women and children – were killed.Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, were killed over the course of the war.
Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey, reporting from the UN in New York, said on Wednesday: ”The Palestinians put forward this resolution with several co-sponsors knowing that they have the support to have it passed in the General Assembly.
“This is really an attempt to keep the Goldstone report alive. The resolution endorses the report and also attempts to force it upon the Security Council, by getting the secretary-general involved.”
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian observer to the UN, said the report concluded that the Israeli military onslaught “was planned in all of its phases as a deliberately disproportionate and systematic attack aimed at punishing, humiliating and terrorise the Palestinian civilian population”.
‘One-sided mandate’
Mansour warned that efforts by Israel and its supporters to discredit the UN report and its authors would not deter Arab states from following up the recommendations “in all relevant international forums, including the Security Council and the International Criminal Court, until the realisation of justice with the accountability of the perpetrators of these crimes and violations”.
Gabriela Shalev, Israel’s UN ambassador to the UN, hammered Wednesday’s debate at the UN as “yet another campaign against the victims of terrorism, the people of Israel”.
“The Goldstone report and this debate do not promote peace. They damage any effort to revitalise negotiations in our region. They deny Israel’s right of self-defence,” she told the assembly.
“From its inception in a one-sided mandate, the Gaza fact-finding mission was a politicised body with predetermined conclusions,” she added.
US House vote
The US House of Representatives on Tuesday dismissed the report as being “irredeemably biased” against Israel.
The house voted in favour of a non-binding resolution calling on Barack Obama, the US president, to maintain his opposition to the report.
Goldstone last week sent a letter to the US House of Representatives saying that the text of the US resolution had “factual inaccuracies and instances where information and statements are taken grossly out of context”.
He offered several rejections and clarifications of the ideas expressed in the resolution.
In response to Goldstone’s criticism, three parts of the resolution were amended on Tuesday to clarify that Goldstone had sought an expansion to the commission’s mandate so that his team could investigate claims that Hamas had violated international law during the Gaza war.
The Goldstone report accused Israel of using “disproportionate force” and of deliberately targeting civilians.
The report called for cases to be referred to the ICC in The Hague if Israel and Hamas do not investigate the war crimes allegations against them within six months.
Hamas has agreed to hold such an investigation, but Israel has not.
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Reader Comments
I wrote the following to Stephen Smith given Australia’s vote against the report.
Dear Minister,
I am deeply saddened that Australia has voted against the Goldstone Report.
http://www.un.org/News/Press/d.....83.doc.htm
I had previously written to you on 10 October about the importance of this report and I urged you to indicate what Australia’s position was. I received no reply. When I rang your office I was told my letter was information only.
Minister I am at a loss to understand why your representative at the UN would say the Goldstone report was “deeply flawed”.
How is a report that calls all sides to account flawed? How is a report that acknowledges the trauma created by rockets on Sderot and the trauma created by Israel’s military forces flawed?
Minister, I am deeply dissatisfied with the Labour Government’s disinterest in bringing about meaningful change to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Our Government has presented obstacles rather than fostering an environment suitable for new possibilities.
Richard Goldstone has defended his report time and again. He of all people would not have submitted the report if he felt it was flawed.
Australia again has missed an opportunity for change.
I pray that the misery that is felt by both Palestinians and Israelis will end; but this can only happen when states are held accountable for their actions – that is what the Goldstone report called for. Sadly noone reads his report and just falsify it’s contents based on their own prejudice or political opportunism.
Minister I am deeply distressed by Australia’s rejection of the Goldstone Report, I hope some time soon Australia can foster a balanced relationship with both Israelis and Palestinians; and I hope in future questions of importance can be responded to promptly.
Yours Sincerely,
Stewart Mills
We are in full agreement with the message sent by Stewart Mills to Minister Stephen Smith.