GENEVA: The United Nations put off taking action on Friday on a UN report that accuses both Israel and Palestinian fighters of war crimes in Gaza, after US pressure aimed at getting the peace process back on track.
The move is an early result of the administration of US President Barack Obama’s engagement in the Human Rights Council, which Washington joined in June.
The forum had been expected to adopt a resolution that would have condemned Israel’s failure to cooperate with a UN war crimes investigation led by Richard Goldstone and forwarded his report to the Security Council.
Goldstone recommended that the Security Council refer the matter to the International Criminal Court if the two sides fail to conduct credible domestic investigations within six months.
But Pakistan, speaking for Arab, Islamic and African sponsors of a resolution, formally asked the forum to defer action on their text until the next regular session in March.
This would “give more time for a broad-based and comprehensive consideration” of the report, Pakistan’s envoy, Zamir Akram, told the 47-member-state forum.
A diplomatic source said the move had followed intense lobbying by the United States, which is seeking to restart peace negotiations in the Middle East. “There is agreement to defer given immense pressure from the United States,” he said.
Hamas official Fawzi Barhoum accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of trying to rescue Israel from seeing its leaders, who launched a military offensive on the Gaza Strip in December-January, brought before international courts.
“We insist that leaders of the occupation must be brought before international courts as war criminals and anyone who sought to prevent that from happening would be seen as partner in the crime,” he said. The investigation by Goldstone, a former UN war crimes prosecutor, found that both the Israeli armed forces and Hamas fighters committed war crimes during the December-January war.
A Palestinian rights group says 1,417 Palestinians, including 926 civilians, were killed in the Gaza war. Israel has said 709 Palestinian combatants were killed along with 295 civilians and 162 people whose status it was unable to clarify.
