Gaza, October 29, 2009, (Pal Telegraph) - The United Nations General Assembly is scheduled to meet next week in a bid to consider a UN report which accuses Israel of war crimes as well as crimes against humanity during the onslaught on the Gaza Strip.
The debate on the report, written by South African war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone and three other international experts, will take place on November 4 as the General Assembly convenes a plenary meeting, according to a General Assembly spokesman, Jean Victor Nkolo.
The Geneva-based Human Rights Council endorsed the report on October 16 and recommended that the General Assembly take it up during the first week of the November session.
The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has meanwhile demanded the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to drop its support for the Goldstone Gaza report and has spared no efforts to convince his European counterparts to oppose its adoption. His attempts have, however, proved futile.
Tel Aviv is worried that charges could be lodged against the regime's politicians and army officers for war crimes committed during Israel's 22-day offensive against the blockaded Gaza Strip. Top officials who would be in the judicial cross-hairs may include former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, as well as current Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
The UN-ordered Goldstone report on Israel's offensive in Gaza details what investigators call Israeli actions "amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity." The 575-page report asserts seven incidents in which Palestinian civilians were shot while leaving their homes, trying to run for safety or waving white flags.
The report says that Israel targeted a mosque at prayer time, killing 15 people, and shelled a Gaza City house where Palestinian civilians were forced to assemble into by Israeli soldiers. These attacks constituted war crimes, the report says.
The probe also found that Israel violated international humanitarian law in several respects. Dozens of Palestinian policemen were killed at the start of the Gaza onslaught when Israel bombed their stations. The security agents were not involved in hostilities and should have been treated as civilians. Additionally, the Palestinians were forced to walk in front of the Israeli soldiers as they searched civilian neighborhoods.
More than 1,500 Palestinians were killed during Israel's land, sea and air assault, code named Operation Cast Lead , in the impoverished coastal sliver. The offensive also inflicted $ 1.6 billion damage to Gaza's economy. Since the end of the Israeli atrocities in the tightly populated strip, Gaza remains blockaded by the occupying regime.
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Thursday, 29 October 2009
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