In an apparent challenge to the international community, Israel recently announced that it would not cooperate with the UN team assigned to investigate charges of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. The crimes were committed during the 22-day military onslaught on Gaza just before the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States.

A day after the arrival of a four-member UN team led by Richard Goldston, former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Yigal Palmor, spokesman of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said: "They have been instructed to prove that Israel is guilty and we will not collaborate with such a masquerade."

Goldston, who headed UN tribunals on former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, said he would go ahead with the investigation, whether Israel cooperates or not. His aides said that he had contacted with the Israeli government but did not receive any reply.

A fact-finding mission of the United Nations said it would enter Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah border-crossing in order to avoid seeking Israeli permission to enter the strip.

The latest move from the United Nations came in response to the demands of international human rights organizations that had called for an investigation into the criminal practices of Israeli forces during the war, including the massacre of innocent people and destruction of infrastructure facilities and use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium in the war.

There is nothing strange in the Israeli reaction. Ever since its occupation of Palestinian territories after driving out its original inhabitants it has been defying the United Nations by rejecting all resolutions passed by the UN Security Council. Some of these resolutions were not passed as a result of the American veto.

Here I would like to tell President Obama, who said in his historic speech in Cairo that his administration and himself were committed to the two-state solution and that it would work to realize objectives and ambitions of every state in the region. I would like to ask Obama whether he would agree with the Israeli plan to have its borders from Nile to Euphrates.

Another question is whether Obama and his administration would allow the establishment of a free and sovereign Palestinian state and force Israel to return the land it occupied to its original owners as well as to demolish the separation wall that has divided Palestine into cantons.

Mr. President, I saw you shining while delivering the speech, but you never touched the basic facts about how Israel's friends in the US try to shape the US Middle East policies. This is the truth, if one is looking for the truth!

Thanks to the UN for appointing the Goldston Commission, whatever be result.