Tel Aviv, January 26: Israel told the UN chief it will not conduct an independent probe of the Gaza war as demanded by a UN report, a minister said on Tuesday, two days before Tel Aviv submits its official response to charges of war crimes.
“Israel has no intention of creating a verification commission,” Information and Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein told Israel public radio from New York a day after meeting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Edelstein, who was to present Israel’s rebuttal on Thursday, said he informed Ban of his country’s intention during the meeting late Monday.
The respected Haaretz daily said however that Israel might agree to set up a limited inquiry to deflect some of the massive international criticism over the offensive that killed 1,400 Palestinians (mainly civilians) and 13 Israelis (mainly soldiers) in three weeks just over one year ago.
Such a committee would review the Israeli army’s internal investigations and examine whether there was any basis to one of the charges of the UN report that said the war was planned as punitive action against Gaza’s civilians, the daily said.
A senior Israeli official said on condition of anonymity that a decision on whether to set up any sort of commission had not yet been taken.
“Discussions are under way on the creation of a commission of verification, but nothing has been decided yet for tactical reasons,” he said.
Since it was released in September, Israel has sought to discredit the UN report that accused it and Palestinian resistance groups of having committed war crimes in the 22-day offensive that Israel launched on December 27, 2008.
In recent days, Israeli officials have sought to discredit the 575-page report as “anti-Semitic” despite the fact it’s author — widely respected South African judge and international war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone — is Jewish and Zionist.
The UN report recommended that its conclusions be referred to the International Criminal Court prosecutor in The Hague if Israel and the democratically elected Palestinian movement Hamas fail to carry out credible investigations within six months.
In November the UN General Assembly endorsed the report and called on both sides to carry out investigations “that are independent, credible and in conformity with international standards” by February 5.
Hamas had indicated that it would comply.
—Agencies