Tel Aviv urges end to UN probe into 2014 Gaza war

Israel has called for the termination of a UN inquiry into its summer 2014 war on Gaza, in the wake of the resignation of the investigation committee’s head.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for the shelving of the investigation on Tuesday, after William Schabas, the head of the UN inquiry committee, resigned a day before.

“After the resignation of the committee chairman who was biased against Israel, the report that was written at the behest of the UN Human Rights Council -- an anti-Israel body, the decisions of which prove it has nothing to do with human rights -- needs to be shelved,” Netanyahu said.

In August 2014, the UN Human Rights Council appointed Schabas, a Canadian academic, to lead a group examining war crimes committed by Israel during its military aggression against Gaza.

Schabas’ appointment had angered Israel from the beginning as he has been a strong critic of the Tel Aviv regime.

The Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman took a dim view of Schabas’ resignation, saying, “It won’t change the committee’s report’s conclusions.”

Israel claims Schabas is biased toward the Palestinians due to a legal opinion he wrote for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 2012. However, Schabas insists that consultancy work he did for the PLO was not different from advice he had given to many other governments and organizations.

“Under the circumstances and with great regret, I believe the important work of the commission is best served if I resign with immediate effect,” Schabas wrote in his resignation letter.

Schabas stated in the Monday letter to the UNHRC that he would resign so that Israel’s allegations of bias could not overshadow the preparation of the report and its findings, slated to be released in March.

“My views on Israel and Palestine as well as on many other issues were well known and very public,” he wrote in the letter, adding, “This work in defense of human rights appears to have made me a huge target for malicious attacks.”

Joachim Ruecker, the president of the UNHRC, has accepted the resignation, his spokesman, Rolando Gomez, stated, adding that “in this way even an appearance of conflict of interest is avoided, thus preserving the integrity of the process.”

Gomez further noted that the UN commission is in “the final phase of collecting evidence” and a new chairman could be named as early as Tuesday.

About 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children, were killed in the Israeli onslaught, which started in early July 2014 and ended in late August.

Some 100,000 people are still homeless in the besieged coastal sliver.

IA/HSN/SS

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