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United Nations: The UN human
rights chief has endorsed the Goldstone report on Israel's war on
Gaza, and called for "impartial, independent, prompt and effective
investigations" into the alleged war crimes.
Navi
Pillay said Israeli and Palestinian leaders should investigate the
reported allegations to help rebuild trust and support peace in the
region.
She said all sides
of the Middle East conflict were continuing to violate international
human rights and humanitarian law, and raised concern that
transgressors remain unpunished.
"A culture of
impunity continues to prevail in the occupied territories and in
Israel," Pillay said during the UN Human Rights Council's special
debate session on the Goldstone report on Thursday.
The Geneva debate
comes a day after the UN Security Council discussed the report,
during which the Palestinian Authority demanded that Israel be
punished for war crimes.
In the report
released last month, investigators led by South African jurist
Richard Goldstone accused both Israel and the Palestinian group
Hamas of war crimes in Gaza, but were overall more critical of
Israel than Hamas.
The Palestinian
Authority had initially agreed to defer a vote on the UN-sanctioned
report but later backtracked under heavy criticism.
Draft resolution.
The Palestinians
in a draft resolution circulated for the human rights council
debate, called on Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, to monitor
whether Israel and Hamas conduct credible investigations.
It "strongly
condemns all policies and measures taken by Israel, the occupying
power, including those limiting access of Palestinians to their
properties and holy sites" and calls on Israel to stop digging and
excavation work around the Al-Aqsa mosque as well as other Islamic
and Christian religious sites.
In her speech,
Pillay cited concern about the restrictions on Palestinians wishing
to enter Al-Aqsa and expressed "dismay" about the Israeli blockade
of Gaza that she said "severely undermines the rights and welfare of
the population there".
Israel rejected
the charges saying the resolution – drafted by the Palestinians with
Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan and Tunisia, on behalf of non-aligned,
African, Islamic and Arab nations – threatened peace efforts.
Binyamin
Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said on Thursday that his
country would not be able to take "risks for peace" if it could not
defend itself from attacks on its citizens.
"It's important
for the principle countries, outside of this automatic majority of
the United Nations, to say we are not taking part in this.
"We know we should
act otherwise," he said.
'Reward for
terror'
The Palestinians
in a draft resolution circulated for the human rights council
debate, called on Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, to monitor
whether Israel and Hamas conduct credible investigations.
It "strongly
condemns all policies and measures taken by Israel, the occupying
power, including those limiting access of Palestinians to their
properties and holy sites" and calls on Israel to stop digging and
excavation work around the Al-Aqsa mosque as well as other Islamic
and Christian religious sites.
In her speech,
Pillay cited concern about the restrictions on Palestinians wishing
to enter Al-Aqsa and expressed "dismay" about the Israeli blockade
of Gaza that she said "severely undermines the rights and welfare of
the population there".
Israel rejected
the charges saying the resolution – drafted by the Palestinians with
Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan and Tunisia, on behalf of non-aligned,
African, Islamic and Arab nations – threatened peace efforts.
Binyamin
Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said on Thursday that his
country would not be able to take "risks for peace" if it could not
defend itself from attacks on its citizens.
"It's important
for the principle countries, outside of this automatic majority of
the United Nations, to say we are not taking part in this.
"We know we should
act otherwise," he said.
Aharon
Leshno Yaar, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, said the
adoption by the council of the proposed resolution would be a
"reward for terror and will send a clear message to terrorists
everywhere".
"They will clearly
hear that this new form of warfare, as used by Hamas in Gaza, will
offer immunity as countries will be prevented from waging effective
responses.
"This strategy
will be repeated in other places, against other countries fighting
terror."
The Goldstone
report recommended that its conclusions be sent on to the
International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor in The Hague if Israel
and Hamas do not hold their own credible investigations into
allegations of war crimes within six months.
The report accused
Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It also accused
Hamas, which has de facto control of Gaza, of war crime violations,
but reserved most of its criticism for Israel.
On Wednesday, Ban
urged "all of the parties to carry out credible domestic
investigations into the conduct of the conflict without delay", Lynn
Pascoe, the UN under secretary general for political affairs, told
the UN Security Council.
'Not justifiable'
Israeli officials
have condemned the Goldstone report, saying their country had a
right to defend itself from Hamas rocket attacks.
But Desmond
Travers, a retired army colonel who worked with Goldstone on the
report, dismissed that response.
"We examined that
very carefully ... but we ruled that this was not a justifiable
argument," Travers, currently with the Institute for International
Criminal Investigations, told Al Jazeera.
"This report has
taken the world community at large one lurch forward into the whole
question of impunity," he said.
"We cannot lurch
back, and I think the world at large doesn't wish to do that."
About 1,400
Palestinians – the majority of them civilians - and 13 Israelis were
killed during Israel's three-week war on Gaza between last December
and January, which had the stated aim of stopping rocket attacks by
Palestinian fighters from the coastal territory.
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