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UN Likely to Refer Goldstone Findings to The Hague
The United Nations is likely to refer the findings of the Goldstone report to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, diplomatic sources in New York told Haaretz on Saturday.
A decision to bring the report on last year's Gaza war before the court would follow a debate in the UN General Assembly over Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon's response to the document last week.
UN General Assembly president Ali Abdussalam Treki announced on Saturday that member states were drawing up a plan of action over Ban's answer to the report.
Most UN-watchers believe that Arab member states will demand a plenary session on the report, Haaretz reported.
Meanwhile, the Human Rights Watch said Israel was failing to prove it is conducting an impartial investigation into Gaza war crimes accusations.
In a response to a UN inquiry into its three-week invasion of the Gaza strip last year, Israel alleged on January 29 that it was fully investigating claims of war crimes.
The Goldstone report found that both Israel and Hamas violated the rules of war in Gaza fighting last winter.
Both denied the charges, but were told by the UN General Assembly to conduct credible investigations or face possible Security Council action.
In it’s war on Gaza last year, Israel killed and injured more than 5,000 Palestinians, most of them were children and women.
Israel was also keen to use internationally banned phosphorus bombs in civilian populated areas, causing severe burns to hundreds of Palestinian civilians.
The Israeli occupation army faces accusations of killing execution-style civilians ordered out of their homes holding white flags. There are documentations of Israeli shooting at ambulances trying to reach killed and injured Palestinians.
Israel reported that Hamas had fired hundreds of rockets into occupied territories during the war and the resistance group maintains it was in self defense.
With more than 5,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire, Israel says that there were hundreds of Israeli settlers who suffered shock from Hamas’s rockets.
Al-ManarTV
Sunday 07-02-2010
