Netanyahu Urges UN to Cancel Goldstone Report on Gaza
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the United Nations to “immediately cancel” a report on Israel’s 2008-2009 conflict with Hamas after the panel’s head, Richard Goldstone, wrote he was reconsidering the findings.
“Everything we said has proven to be true: Israel did not intentionally harm civilians, its institutions and investigative bodies are worthy, while Hamas intentionally fired upon innocent civilians and did not examine anything,” Netanyahu said today.
The Gaza Strip conflict began in late December 2008 as Israel said it sought to stop rocket attacks from Hamas on southern Israeli communities. The Islamic militant Hamas group, which rules Gaza, is designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union.
Israel declined to cooperate with the panel led by Goldstone, a former UN prosecutor and South African judge. The commission, appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council, accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes and called on them to investigate the charges.
An Israeli probe rejected the allegations that the Jewish state committed war crimes.
“We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the UN Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report,” Goldstone wrote in an article published by the Washington Post yesterday. “If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”
He said Israel’s investigations of incidents “indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.”
The Islamic Hamas movement said 1,450 Gaza residents were killed in the 22-day conflict. Israel put the number of Palestinian deaths at 1,166 and said 13 Israelis were killed.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gwen Ackerman in Jerusalem at gackerman@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net.
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