"U.N. Rights Council Endorses Gaza Report" -- But Shame on the U.S.!

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The United Nations Human Rights Council voted Thursday to endorse a report detailing evidence of war crimes committed by Israeli forces and Palestinian militants during the Gaza war, moving the inquiry a step closer to the Security Council and possible criminal investigations.

The resolution endorsing the report, which took place after two days of debate, passed by a vote of 25 to 6, with 11 nations abstaining. The resolution, virtually identical to a Palestinian proposal introduced earlier in the week, gained a slimmer margin in the 47-member council than its backers had hoped. Both the United States and Israel have warned that any progress on the report would undermine the prospects for peace talks with the Palestinians.

Most of the developing nations on council voted for the resolution, including the Islamic majority nations of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, as well as China, India, Russia and Brazil, whose proposal for a toned-down version of the resolution did not have a significant impact on the adopted text.

Six nations, including the Netherlands, Italy and the United States, voted against the resolution, while five others, including France and Britain, both of which objected to the resolution, were officially recorded as absent and not included in the vote totals at all, according to the secretariat of the council.

“The clock on the report starts now,” said Ibrahim Khraishi, the Palestinian Authority’s United Nations ambassador in Geneva, adding that he hoped the Security Council in New York would take up the report, The Associated Press reported.

The Goldstone report on last winter’s Gaza war — so named for its lead investigator, South African jurist Richard Goldstone — found evidence that both Israeli and Palestinian actions amounted to war crimes, but it was more harshly critical of Israel.

It recommends that the Human Rights Council endorse the report and call on the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, to ask the United Nations Security Council to take up the report’s findings as a threat to the maintenance of international peace and security.

Further, it recommends that Israel and Palestinian authorities be given six months to show that they are conducting credible investigations into the allegations of war crimes. The Security Council is asked to monitor progress during those six months, and refer the charges to the International Criminal Court in the Hague if these domestic investigations are judged as inadequate.

The court’s lead prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, had no comment Friday on a possible war crimes probe into the Gaza conflict. The Palestinians have separately asked the court to take up the matter.