GENEVA/GAZA CITY: A UN-ordered investigation into possible war crimes in Gaza will proceed, the chief investigator said yesterday, despite Israeli objections to what it calls an “intrinsically flawed” probe. Israel has yet to give the UN investigators assurances it will let them enter its territory, and they will travel to Gaza through Egypt if necessary to begin the probe, said Richard Goldstone.
“I’m disappointed, and the members of the mission are disappointed, that we’ve had no positive response from the Israeli government,” Goldstone said. “It would have been our wish to start there, to visit southern Israel, Sderot, to go into Gaza through the front door, to go to the West Bank, which is also included in our mission.”
Israel objected to the mission ordered by the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council in January because the original instructions were only to check what Israelis did to Palestinians. But Goldstone, a Jew with close ties to Israel, only accepted the assignment if he could see what happened on both sides.
“We think that the mandate is intrinsically flawed and defective and therefore this commission will never be able to do a proper job, whatever good intentions its head may have,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said yesterday in Jerusalem.
Goldstone met yesterday with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who told The Associated Press he supported the mission and discussed it with Israel’s government. “I have not yet received a reply directly, but I am going to continue to discuss this with them,” Ban said.
Meanwhile, at least six Palestinians including a woman were wounded in a series of Israeli air raids across the Gaza Strip late Tuesday night and early yesterday morning, medical sources and witnesses said in Gaza City.
The sources said that a Palestinian man was hospitalized after being shot when the Israeli troops opened its heavy gunfire toward the civilians’ houses and farms in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday morning. Another Israeli raid targeted eastern Gaza City yesterday afternoon but there was no reports of casualties.
Earlier, Israeli warplanes bombed the smuggling tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt border resulting in the destruction of several tunnels and injuries to two civilians. The new Israeli escalation came after weeks of relative calm in the Gaza Strip.
Shortly before Tuesday midnight, Israeli warplanes also bombed a position in Al-Zitoun neighborhood in southeast Gaza city wounding two residents. Afterward, the Israeli warplanes shelled a metal workshop in the same area completely destroying it and several nearby houses were damaged.
— With input from agencies
