MIDEAST-ISRAEL/INVESTIGATION Israel says will not cooperate with U.N. Gaza investigation

Record ID: 398774

  • Title: MIDEAST-ISRAEL/INVESTIGATION Israel says will not cooperate with U.N. Gaza investigation
  • Date: 13th November 2014
  • Summary: THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS (FILE - MARCH 2014) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF WILLIAM SCHABAS (MAN SITTING ON RIGHT) ON SERBIA BENCH AT THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE ON FIRST DAY OF TRIAL BETWEEN CROATIA AND SERBIA / CROATIA ACCUSING SERBIA OF COMMITTING GENOCIDE IN THE CROATIAN 1991-95 INDEPENDENCE WAR TOKYO, JAPAN (FILE - 2005) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) (MUTE) DOUDOU DIENE
  • Embargoed: 28th November 2014 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Switzerland
  • Country: Switzerland
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA9GS570MRRTVBYIPS7E98188VI
  • Story Text: Israel said it would not cooperate with a United Nations Human Rights Council investigation into this year's Gaza war, dismissing the commission as "totally illegitimate," an Israel foreign ministry spokesperson said on Thursday (November 13).
    The U.N. panel, due to make its first report by March, is meant to look into the conduct of both Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza, during the 50-day conflict.
    But, the Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon dismissed the investigation as a "masquerade", accusing its chairman, Canadian academic William Schabas, of anti-Israeli bias.
    "The Schabas commission is the modern day equivalent of the KGB trials or the Star Chamber. First they shoot the arrow and then they would like to draw the aim and it is clear that the aim is to be as anti-Israeli as possible. We are talking about a commission which is totally illegitimate, which was appointed by an anti-Israeli body with a mandate which is clearly against Israel. They had no intention of really checking what happened in Gaza. Mister Schabas personally is an avowed enemy of the state of Israel, he declared on many occasions that he would like to see Israel's leaders standing trial in front of an international court, how can such a man be really considered as an objective observer? And I think that we are perfectly within our right to reject this masquerade, because it is a masquerade and nothing more, and not to accept Mister Schabas. We are totally open to honest commissions of inquiry but this is really not the case," Nahshon told Reuters from Jerusalem.
    The committee, announced by the UN in August to investigate alleged war crimes, also include Doudou Diene, a Senegalese veteran U.N. human rights expert. and Mary McGowan Davis, a former New York Supreme Court Judge
    Israel launched its Gaza offensive on July 8 with the declared aim of halting cross-border rocket salvoes by Islamist Hamas, the dominant militant group in the enclave.
    More than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed in seven weeks of fighting, according to the Gaza health ministry. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed.
    Schabas told Reuters this month he was determined to put aside any views about "things that have gone on in the past".
    On Monday (November 10), U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon named retired Dutch general Patrick Cammaert to head an inquiry into Israeli attacks on U.N. facilities in the Gaza Strip and the use of U.N. sites to store weapons.
    Israel's military opened five criminal investigations in September into its own operations in Gaza, including attacks that killed four Palestinian children on a beach and 17 people at a U.N. school.


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