US ENVOY George Mitchell has extended his trip to the region and will meet Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu again tomorrow in a last-ditch effort to clinch a deal on an Israeli settlement freeze.
Mr Mitchell, who arrived in Israel on Saturday night, needs to finalise the details of a package acceptable to both sides by the weekend, to pave the way for a tripartite meeting next week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York involving President Barack Obama, Mr Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
At yesterday’s discussions, the Israeli prime minister and the US envoy again failed to reach agreement on the scope and duration of a settlement freeze. The Palestinians have made it clear they will only be willing to resume peace talks, suspended since December, if Israel commits to a moratorium on all building in West Bank settlements and Palestinian neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem.
Mr Netanyahu said he was willing to agree to a limited construction freeze that excluded building already under way and projects in Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, in the wake of Tuesday’s damning UN report on Israel’s three-week military offensive in Gaza last December and January, Jerusalem is working to prevent the possibility of officials or military officers being charged at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The report concluded that both Israel and Palestinian militants committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.
The UN team was headed by South African justice Richard Goldstone, who presided over war crimes trials in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, and included Col Desmond Travers, a former Irish Army officer and board member of the Institute for International Criminal Investigations; Prof Christine Chinkin, professor of international law at the London School of Economics, and Hina Jilani, advocate of the supreme court of Pakistan.
While blaming Hamas, which rules Gaza, for permitting the firing of missiles into Israel, the report condemned Israel’s 22-day offensive as “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population” and argued that some Israelis should face “individual criminal responsibility”.
The report recommended that if Israel and Hamas did not initiate independent inquiries on the conduct of the war, the UN Security Council should, within six months, refer the evidence contained in the report to the International Criminal Court.
Mr Netanyahu has already been briefed by senior legal advisers on how to prevent the possibility of international arrest warrants being issued against Israeli officials.
As a first step in what is viewed as a protracted campaign, Israeli leaders are contacting their counterparts around the world urging them to reject the findings and the anticipated diplomatic onslaught led by Arab states.
The US, the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council and European Union states are being prioritised in Israel’s campaign of damage limitation. Jerusalem is stressing that if Israel is isolated in this diplomatic and legal struggle, it will make it more difficult for any nation contemplating actions against terrorism in the future.
Arab governments are expected to press the UN Human Rights Council, which dispatched the mission, to approve the report and recommend that secretary general Ban Ki-moon formally submit it to the security council for consideration and action.
Libya, the current Arab non-permanent member of the council, and the Arab League are likely to make the case that since the International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur, Israeli politicians and military officers should be held accountable.
The report is seen by Arabs as an opportunity to disprove the long-standing Arab charge that the West practises double standards when dealing with Arabs and Israelis.
If the council fails to address the mission’s findings, the new president of the general assembly, Libya’s Ali Treki, could call on the body to do so and propose sanctions if Israel does not take action against those accused of war crimes.