UN Gaza war probe head quits amid Zionist anger

JERUSALEM: Israel called Tuesday for a UN inquiry into its 50-day war in Gaza last summer to be shelved as its chairman quit over Israeli accusations of conflict of interest.
Canadian international law expert William Schabas tendered his resignation on Monday after Israel complained that he had prepared a legal opinion for the Palestine Liberation Organization in October 2012, the United Nations said.
In his resignation letter, Schabas strongly denied that he was in any way beholden to the PLO but said he was reluctantly stepping down to avoid the inquiry into the July-August conflict — commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council — being compromised in any away.
“Under the circumstances and with great regret, I believe the important work of the commission is best served if I resign with immediate effect,” he wrote.
Council president Joachim Ruecker accepted the resignation, saying that “in this way even an appearance of conflict of interest is avoided, thus preserving the integrity of the process,” spokesman Rolando Gomez said.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seized on Schabas’s departure to demand the abandonment of the whole investigation, charging that the rights council was an “anti-Israel body.”
Israel has long had stormy relations with council. In January 2012, it became the first country to refuse to attend a periodic review of its human rights record. And two months later, it cut all ties with the council over its plans to probe how Jewish settlements were harming Palestinian rights.
In November, it announced that it would not cooperate with Schabas’s investigation because of the “obsessive hostility against Israel of this commission and the words of its president against Israel and its leaders.”
Gomez said the commission, which is scheduled to present its findings to the council next month, was in “the final phase of collecting evidence” and could name a new chairman as early as Tuesday.
He said the council president had stressed “the need to remain focused on the substantive work of the commission in the interest of the victims and their families on both sides.”
The rights council vowed in August that both Israel and Hamas would be “subjected to a thorough investigation.”
Hamas welcomed the inquiry but Israel has repeatedly complained to UN chief Ban Ki-moon that it is one-sided.
Israeli shelling hit several UN schools sheltering displaced Palestinians, killing scores of people.