Israel defiant as UN rights body sets up probe into raid

Thirty-two of the council's 47 members voted for the resolution proposed by Pakistan for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and Sudan for the Arab group, and also condemned the Israeli action as outrageous. The United States, Israel's longtime ally, together with Italy and the Netherlands voted against, while nine European, African and Asian nations abstained and three more African countries did not vote.

The resolution called “for full accountability and credible independent inquiries into these [Israeli] attacks” in which Israel says nine people on one boat in the flotilla died.

The council decided to dispatch an independent, international fact-finding mission to investigate violations of international law in the attack, it said. The team would be appointed by the president of the council and Belgian diplomat Alex Van Meeuwen -- whose own country along with four other European Union members abstained in the voting.

Israel says those who were killed were resisting commandos who boarded the ships to stop them reaching Gaza. It began releasing the 682 pro-Palestinian activists it had arrested on the vessels earlier on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear when the rights council mission would be set up or who might be on it.

Israel in bid to avoid UN demand with US backing

In Jerusalem, deflecting the UN demand, Israel Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman proposed on Thursday an Israeli inquiry with the participation of outside observers into its lethal seizure of a Gaza-bound Turkish ship.

“I am in favor of an investigation. We have enough high-level legal experts ... if they want to take on observers from the outside, they can invite observers,” Lieberman said on Israel Radio, embracing a US suggestion in an effort to calm the global furor over the killings.

“I propose we use South Korea as an example,” he said, referring to an investigation launched by Seoul that included experts from the United States, Australia, Britain and Sweden, after the sinking of one of its warships in March.

The inquiry concluded that a North Korean submarine fired the torpedo that sank the Cheonan corvette, killing 46 sailors.

Israel wants any probe to focus on the legality and operational details of the commando raid rather than on its four-year-old blockade of Gaza and the humanitarian situation.

Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz told Army Radio, “There is a need for an investigation to draw lessons,” an apparent reference to the military performance in the operation.

Second Goldstone?

Israel refused to cooperate with an earlier Human Rights Council investigation led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone into Israel’s December 2008-January 2009 war in the Gaza Strip. Israel dismissed Goldstone’s report, which accused Israel and Hamas militants of war crimes, as biased and false.

The rights council, set up in 2006, is effectively controlled by developing countries among whom the OIC has strong influence, and regularly condemns Israel.

The text of the flotilla resolution differed from a statement from the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday which called for a “prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in New York he had met with diplomats from Israel, Turkey and Arab nations and Security Council members on Wednesday to consult on the best way to fulfill the demands of the statement.

“You may have to wait some time before I make any decision,” Ban said.

Most Security Council members, diplomats say, would support an independent international investigation, possibly run by the United Nations, but Washington, like Israel, is opposed to it.

In the rights body, Russia and China as well as several African and Latin American states backed the resolution, but France, Belgium, Britain, Hungary, Japan, Slovakia, Ukraine and South Korea -- together with Burkina Faso -- abstained.

In a statement to the council, US Ambassador Eileen Donahue said, “Unfortunately the resolution before us rushes to judgment on a set of facts that ... are only beginning to be discovered and understood.”

During the urgent sitting stretching over two days, not only Muslim states but others ranging from Laos to Peru and Iceland spoke out against Israel’s move.

“No impunity can be accepted from this atrocious crime,” said a Palestinian representative.

“These murderous attacks are characteristic tools used by Israel to derail every peaceful effort and silence every voice of moderation and reason,” Pakistani Ambassador Zamir Akram told the council on Tuesday on behalf of the OIC.

The representative of the Netherlands who also voted against the resolution said that the rights council’s investigation, parallel to one called for by the UN Security Council, “would not be conducive to re-launching the Middle East peace process.”

Britain and France abstained, saying they regretted that the resolution failed to reflect the language used by the Security Council which called “for a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards.”

Israeli Ambassador Aharon Leshno Yaar did not refer to the resolution when he spoke ahead of the vote, but he reiterated that the activists onboard the raided ship did not have peaceful motives. He suggested that Molotov cocktails, clubs and iron bars had been used against Israeli soldiers.