By Thalif Deen
"UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16 (IPS) - The 47-member Human Rights Council (HRC) approved a resolution Friday endorsing war crimes charges against Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, as spelled out in a report by a four-member international fact-finding mission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone. As expected, the United States threw a protective arm around Israel and voted against the resolution, along with some members of the European Union (EU): Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovakia, as well as Ukraine.......
It is unfortunate that on the question of war crimes against innocent civilians in Gaza, the United States is continuing its longstanding pattern of Israeli exceptionalism, said Bennis, author of 'Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer.'
Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies said Washington also must take into account its own complicity and potential liability in war crimes during Operation Cast Lead, the code-named for the 22-day Israeli military attacks on Gaza last December.
Violations of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, which narrowly constrains Israel's use of U.S.-supplied weapons and military equipment, must be investigated thoroughly and violators held accountable, she added.
"The significance of the Goldstone report overall is not because it exposed war crimes that had not been known before; the significance lies in the comprehensiveness of the assessment, certainly, but most of all in the breadth of the recommendations," Bennis said. She said it is almost unprecedented for a U.N. human rights report to move so broadly to identify obligations and responsibilities under international law - not only for the alleged perpetrators, but as well for virtually all relevant United nations agencies, as well as for individual governments.
It was particularly so in invoking universal jurisdiction, and most especially in defining obligations and recommendations for global civil society.
She said the reversal of the earlier withdrawal of the report from consideration at the Human Rights Council reflects the significance of the issue not only among Palestinians inside the Occupied Territory, inside Israel and among the diaspora, but as well in international civil society. "It was that pressure that forced the Palestinian Authority to reverse its wrong-headed rejection of the report," Bennis added.
Naseer Aruri said the government of Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, whose term of office expired long ago, had succumbed to pressure being exerted by Israel and the United States to defer all discussion of the Goldstone report until next March.
Nearly two weeks later, however, Abbas succumbed to a different kind of pressure, this time exerted by Palestinians, Arabs, and various members of the U.N. Human Rights Council.
A broad coalition succeeded in getting Abbas to rescind his earlier position.
Undoubtedly, Abbas - who was widely condemned in Palestinian circles, including being accused of treason - could not withstand the pressure, especially that which included credible calls on him to resign, Aruri added......"
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