United Nations Human Rights Council Debates Gaza Report

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Rights council debates Gaza report

About 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in the Gaza war

The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva is again debating the Goldstone
report on last winter's Gaza war.

Thursday's session comes at the request of the Palestinian Authority,
which two weeks ago agreed to defer a vote on the UN-sanctioned report,
but later backtracked after coming under heavy criticism.

At the opening of the meeting in Switzerland, Navi Pillay, the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights, said that all sides of the Middle East
conflict were continuing to violate international law and voiced concern
that transgressors are being left unpunished.

"A culture of impunity continues to prevail in the occupied territories
and in Israel," she told the 47-member body, calling for "impartial,
independent, prompt and effective investigations into reported
violations of human rights and humanitarian law".

The debate comes a day after the UN Security Council also discussed the
report, during which the Palestinian Authority demanded that Israel be
punished for war crimes.

Israel criticised

Palestinians are circulating a draft resolution for the human rights
council debate, which among other things, calls on Ban Ki-moon, the UN
secretary-general, to monitor whether Israel and Hamas conduct credible
investigations into the alleged abuses during the war.

The proposal "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 Christian and Islamic holy 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."

Speaking on Thursday, 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".

He said: "The resolution, as proposed, will 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, which was written by a panel led by Richard Goldstone, a
South African judge, 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.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies