ISRAELI PRIME minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet again with US envoy George Mitchell today after the two failed to reach agreement in discussions yesterday on the details of an Israeli settlement freeze.
After months of arduous negotiations Washington is keen to wrap up a deal acceptable to both Israel and the Palestinians, paving the way for a tripartite meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session next week involving US president Barack Obama, Mr Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
Washington wants the symbolic meeting to mark the relaunch of bilateral negotiations, suspended since Israel’s military operation in Gaza last December. But both Mr Netanyahu and Mr Abbas, who met the US envoy last night in Ramallah, seem to be engaged in brinkmanship, with both hoping the other side will be willing to compromise to please the US.
The Israeli prime minister has indicated a willingness to accept a limited moratorium on building in West Bank settlements, but insists that construction that is already under way on almost 3,000 units be allowed to continue.
Washington is pushing for a one-year freeze, but Israel reportedly is only ready for a six-month commitment. Mr Netanyahu has already made it clear that Jerusalem will not be part of any moratorium.
The Palestinian position remains that peace talks can only resume after Israel commits to a halt in settlement construction.
A failure by Mr Mitchell to clinch an agreement before he leaves the region will be considered a serious blow to Mr Obama’s Middle East policy, and is likely to diminish his standing in the Arab and Muslim world.
Meanwhile, a UN investigation into the war in Gaza last December and January has concluded that both Israel and Palestinian militants committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.
The 575-page report, drawn up by a team headed by former South African judge Richard Goldstone, concluded that Israeli shelling of a house in a Gaza city neighbourhood, where soldiers had forced Palestinian civilians to assemble, amounted to war crimes.
It found that seven incidents where civilians were shot while fleeing their homes waving white flags, as well as the targeting of a mosque at prayer time, killing 15, were also war crimes. A number of Palestinian civilians told the UN investigators that the Israeli forces had used them as human shields.
On the Palestinian side, the report found that armed groups firing rockets into southern Israel from Gaza failed to distinguish between military targets and the civilian population.
Jerusalem, which refused to co-operate with the report, condemned the findings as “a declaration of war by the UN against Israel”, saying it was appalled and disappointed by the report, which compared Israel to Hamas and rewarded acts of terror.
A foreign ministry statement said “Israel does not require any external reminder to probe its just actions, especially from a radical body which is comprised of ‘moral’ nations, such as Malaysia, Syria, Pakistan and Somalia”. Israel launched the three-week offensive after daily rocket attacks on southern Israel, claiming it was an act of self defence.
The Israeli embassy in Dublin said that Israel did not co-operate with the fact-finding mission because its mandate was “one-sided” and ignored the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel that preceded the operation in Gaza.
“Both the mandate of the mission and the resolution establishing it prejudged the outcome of any investigation, gave legitimacy to the Hamas terrorist organization and disregarded the deliberate Hamas strategy of using Palestinian civilians as cover for launching terrorist attacks,” the embassy said.
“Israel will read the report carefully – as it does with all reports prepared by international and national organisations. Israel is committed to acting fully in accordance with international law and to examining any allegations of wrongdoing by its own forces.”