THE UNITED States yesterday called on Israel to hold investigations into the conduct of its forces in Gaza after a United Nations report blamed them for widespread atrocities.
Michael Posner, US assistant secretary of state, said the report, debated yesterday by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, made it essential for Israel to hold its forces to account.
“We encourage Israel to utilise appropriate domestic review and meaningful accountability mechanisms to investigate and follow up on credible allegations,” said Mr Posner.
His call came as a British court delayed a decision on an appeal by local pro-Palestinian groups to issue a war crimes arrest warrant against visiting Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak.
Mr Posner, speaking in Geneva, also called on Hamas to launch a similar inquiry into the firing of rockets into Israel during fighting in January. The US hopes its support for Israeli investigations will head off calls for international war crimes trials over the Gaza conflict which has widespread support on the Human Rights Council.
Some US diplomats fear that war crimes trials along the lines of those held for the Balkans and Rwanda would stall hopes of a new Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Justice Goldstone welcomed America’s call for investigations, saying: “I think that’s important support.“ He said a “crisis point” had been reached because of a lack of accountability for war crimes committed in the Middle East. “A culture of impunity in the region has existed for too long.”
Sara Darehshori, author of a recent report by New York-based Human Rights Watch on the part war crimes trials play in peace-making, backed Justice Goldstone. “This conflict is an example of what happens when you have ongoing impunity,” she said. “Our experience has been that deciding to ignore atrocities and reinforce a culture of impunity has carried a high price.”
In London, Westminster magistrates’ court deferred until further notice an appeal by a group of Palestinians for the arrest of Mr Barak. It is not clear whether the court will hear the case while he is still in Britain.
According to the London-based Daily Telegraph, the British foreign ministry recommended to the court that it treat the appeal as it did when a similar appeal was issued in 2004 against Israel's then defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, granting him immunity as a diplomat.
The appeal in Britain comes with similar actions being launched by human rights groups in the Netherlands, South Africa and Spain, all hoping to take advantage of “universal jurisdiction” laws that allow war criminals to be prosecuted irrespective of where the alleged crimes took place.
Mr Barak was due to speak at Britain’s Labour Party annual conference yesterday, at a fringe event. He was also set to meet Britain’s prime minister, Gordon Brown, and foreign secretary, David Miliband. Sources close to Mr Barak said it was too early to know whether the British court had followed foreign ministry advice.
In June, Spain’s national court decided to shelve an investigation launched by one of its judges into a July 2002 air strike by the Israel defence forces on a Hamas target in the Gaza Strip. Britain’s law lords made history 10 years ago when they ruled that former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet could be extradited to face trial in Spain on a universal jurisdiction warrant for crimes committed in Chile, before allowing him home on health grounds.