The 575-page report, to be discussed at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) tomorrow, is based on 188 interviews, 10,000 pages of documentation, 1,200 photographs and satellite imagery. The Israeli government had boycotted the panel and refused it entry into Israel. Panelists entered Gaza via Egypt for interviews and investigations, met in Jordan with Palestinian Authority officials from the West Bank, and heard testimonies from Israelis, including some victims of Hamas attacks, by flying them to Geneva. The report accused Palestinian groups of rocketing civilian areas in Israel but made its harshest judgments against Israel. The Israeli attack was “directed at the people of Gaza as a whole,” not just at Hamas militants, as Israel claimed. It concluded that Israeli operations were “carefully planned in all their phases as a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.” According to the panel, Israel was pursuing its Dahiya Doctrine, which is “the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations.”
Upon releasing the report Justice Richard Goldstone, South African Supreme Court and Constitutional Court judge and former chief prosecutor with the war crimes tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, who presided over the fact-finding mission, said: “As a Jew with a long-standing affiliation with Israel, it's obviously a great disappointment to me, to put it mildly, that Israel behaved as described in the report.” In response to the smear campaign against the report conducted by Israel and its defenders Goldstone said that “it is grossly wrong to label … a report critical of Israel as being anti-Israel,” and urged “fair-minded people” to read the report (available at the UN Web site) for themselves.
The panel recommended that the UN Security Council ask both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities to conduct transparent investigations and prosecutions with regard to the violations identified in the report. It further recommended that the Security Council set up a body of independent experts to report to it on the progress. If the experts do not indicate within six months that proceedings are taking place in good faith, the Security Council should refer the matter to the International Criminal Court prosecutor.
In his address to the UN General Assembly last Thursday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said: “I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the aggression against Gaza at the end of 2008 rapidly transformed into a human tragedy. Due to phosphorus mortar bombs dropped on Gaza nearly 1,400 people, children and women, died, and more than 5,000 were injured. The infrastructure of Gaza was totally destroyed. Not even the United Nations buildings could escape the destruction. Mr. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has personally observed this destruction and expressed his reaction to it. …
“I am sorry to say that the human tragedy in Gaza is still continuing today. People are living in tents, cannot find even drinking water. … Are we fulfilling our human duty towards these people? What can the United Nations or the Security Council do about this situation? Has it the power to do something or not? We should not fail to ask these questions. ...
“The Palestinian problem cannot be solved on the basis of considering the demands of only one side. The security of the Palestinian people is as important as that of Israel. The Palestinian people's demand for freedom and peace is as legitimate as Israel's demand for stability. ... We, as the Turkish government, have repeatedly said that we cannot close our eyes to the tragic human condition in Gaza, and will continue to do so. The ending of the human drama and establishment of permanent peace in Gaza is a conscientious responsibility. … We are calling on all parties concerned not to remain indifferent to the situation, and not to condone continued suffering. …”
I fully agree with Prime Minister Erdoğan's remarks, and thus call on the government of Turkey, currently a member of the Security Council, to lend its full support to the Goldstone recommendations. If Prime Minister Erdoğan really means what he says, what could be a better way of proving it than backing the Goldstone recommendations that there be a full investigation of war crimes committed on both sides, and those responsible be brought to justice.
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