Report: Palestinians bow to pressure on Goldstone Report

A surprising report in Haaretz on Thursday night: Israel is now off the hook at the United Nations, because ” The Palestinian Authority on Thursday decided to drop its draft resolution condemning Israel’s conduct during the Gaza Strip offensive, in effect deferring its adoption of the Goldstone’s Commission report accusing both sides of war crimes. The PA had originally planned to present to the Human Rights Council for a vote in Geneva on Friday. The decision not to pursue the resolution means that any similar effort will have to wait until at least March, a political source in Jerusalem said. The source added that the decision appears to be based on pressure from the Obama administration, exerted by way of U.S. representatives in Geneva, as well as through contacts between Washington and Ramallah. The Obama administration has told the Palestinians that a renewal of the peace process must come before any diplomatic initiatives based on the Goldstone report, or any other initiatives that could stifle efforts to renew Israel-PA negotiations. This Haaretz report can be read in full here .

(Maybe PA officials also had their own reasons to drop their support for the Goldstone report — maybe somebody in Ramallah finally actually read the report, and discovered that the Goldstone mission also concluded that there have been violations of human rights, by all sides, all over the occupied Palestinian territory.)

The same Haaretz report noted South Africa’s Justice Richard Goldstone told journalists at a press conference in Washington this afternoon that “Both sides failed to make crucial distinction between the civilian population and combatants”. A message on Twitter from the Jewish Voice for Peace added that in the same press conference, said that “based on my experience the dehumanization on both sides is obstaclec for true peace”.

The PA draft resolution would, if adopted, have forwarded the Goldstone report to the UN General Assembly, and endorsed its conclusions (which recommended that the UN Security Council take up the findings in the report). Also in the conclusions is the recommendation that if either Israel or the authorities in Gaza (and the PA as well?) did not conduct their own impartial investigations of the findings withing six months, the UN Security Council should take the matter to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Just hours earlier, Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu told his cabinet ministers in fateful terms that “In the next 24 hours, a vote will take place in Geneva in the framework of the council known as the United Nations Human Rights Council. I remind you that in recent years, this council has made more decisions against Israel than against all other 180 counties in the world. Today, if it should decide to forward what is known as the Goldstone report, it will strike a severe blow to three things:
First of all, it will strike a severe blow to the war against terrorism since it will afford total legitimization to terrorists who fire upon civilians and who hide behind civilians. To those who – from international platforms, and using international law – attack and condemn the victim who legitimately defends himself, this is a mortal blow to the war on terrorism.
Secondly, it will strike a mortal blow to the stature of the United Nations. It will return it to its darkest days, in which it could make the most absurd decisions, which would empty it of all substance and significance.
Thirdly, and perhaps the most immediate and obvious of all, forwarding the decision of what is known as the Goldstone report, would strike a fatal blow to the peace process. Because Israel will no longer be able to take additional steps and take risks for peace if its right to self-defense is denied”.
This statement was received by email from the Israeli Government Press Office.

Now, according to the Haaretz report, this will not happen, the mortal danger is past, and the peace process will live for another day…

Another Haaretz article says that while “Various prominent Israelis have therefore argued that the only way to quash the report is to set up an inquiry commission headed by an internationally respected jurist like former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak. But Netanyahu, who held two meetings on the subject on Wednesday, believes a more effective way of blocking the report would be to make it clear to the international community that referral to the ICC would sound the death knell of the peace process. And while Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Wednesday that Defense Minister Ehud Barak favors the inquiry commission route, Barak himself denied the report yesterday. His office confirmed that he has asked Aharon Barak to contribute to the legal battle against the report, but said he opposes an inquiry commission. Netanyahu also denied the Yedioth report, and his associates said the government has never seriously considered such a commission. The prime minister, they explained, fears that setting up an inquiry commission would imply that the probes now being conducted by the Israel Defense Forces are untrustworthy. In contrast, Foreign Ministry sources said Israeli representatives overseas have been flooded with messages from friendly governments urging the establishment of an inquiry commission as the best way to block the report. The defense minister’s office said the government will therefore try to find some kind of compromise mechanism, headed by a senior legal figure such as Aharon Barak, that would show the international community Israel has stepped up its efforts to investigate the allegations”. This Haaretz report is posted here.

Meanwhile, the Ma’an News Agency reports that Hamas official Ahmad Yousef said in an interview at his home in Rafah, the Gaza Strip, that Hamas will “try to do our best” to investigate the allegations in the Goldstone report:
Question: What was your reaction to the conclusions of the Goldstone commission report that came out recently?
Ahmad Yousef: “It depends on how you look at the report. If you look at the report from a moral and political perspective you shouldn’t blame Hamas or the groups that were defending Gaza against aggression. The Israelis started the war, and they used the most advanced military technology known to man to cause that kind of large-scale destruction. So the groups are going to use whatever is necessarily and whatever is in their hands to defend the people. The report tried to equate in one way or another between the aggressors and the victims. That is actually where we are not satisfied totally with the report. But in general the report highlighted Israeli crimes against humanity, and they recommended that the United Nations, also, pressure the Israeli authorities to conduct more investigations to bring the criminals to justice. Blaming the Palestinians, one way or another, this is where we have some reservations. From a realpolitik standpoint, you can say the report, it’s quiet fair, because it highlighted the Israeli crimes against the Palestinians”.
Question: The report did also call for investigations into what are alleged violations by the Palestinian side. Do you accept that recommendation?
Ahmad Yousef: “We will try to do our best, also. They mentioned that three Israelis have also been killed. That’s fine. Hamas has said all the time that they were targeting military bases. Maybe because these are primitive weapons – the rockets, because they’re homemade – maybe some of these rockets missed their targets, some of them fell short. Again, because these are primitive weapons – to compare it with 6,000 injured and 1,400 killed – I think it’s unfair to make that comparison. And to compare the Israeli high-tech weapons, smart bombs and F16s and Apaches to the homemade Qassams and the mortars we have, it’s like comparing the sword to the stick”. The Ma’an News Agency interview with Hamas official Ahmad Yousef in Gaza can be read in full here.