Gaza, April 15: Three of the co-authors of a UN report, concluding that Israel committed war crimes during its war on Gaza, say they stand by their investigation.
Rejecting calls to retract the report, as the leading author of the document, Richard Goldstone, recently said, they insisted on Thursday that they would oppose any attempts to cancel the report’s conclusion.
They said in a statement to The Guardian newspaper in Britain that they found it “necessary to dispel any impression that subsequent developments have rendered any part of the mission’s report unsubstantiated,” AFP reported.
“We concur in our view that there is no justification for any demand or expectation for reconsideration of the report as nothing of substance has appeared that would, in any way, change the context, findings or conclusions of that report with respect to any of the parties to the Gaza conflict,” they added.
In April 2009, Goldstone, who himself is Jewish, led an independent fact-finding mission mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate reports of the international human rights and humanitarian law violations during the December 2008-2009 assault, which left more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, dead.
The 575-page report said that the Israeli operations “were carefully planned in all their phases as a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.”
But under intensive pressure from the Israelis, Goldstone on April 3 announced that he was wrong to say Israel had deliberately targeted civilians during its onslaught on the Gaza Strip at the turn of 2009.
However, Goldstone later said he has no reason to believe any part of the report needs to be reconsidered at the moment.
——–Agencies