Despite Israel and America's best efforts, the Goldstone Report refuses to go away, writes Graham Usher at the United Nations Last week the UN General Assembly endorsed the Goldstone Report, so named after its principle author the retired and respected South African Judge Richard Goldstone. It calls on Israel and the Palestinian Authority to conduct within three months "credible, independent investigations" into the report's charges of war crimes committed by their forces during the Gaza war or face the threat of prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, the world's permanent war crimes tribunal. The three-week war in Gaza killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, says Amnesty International. Of the Palestinian fatalities, 300 were children. Of the Israeli, ten were soldiers. So far one Israeli soldier has been charged with one criminal act carried out during the war: the theft of a credit card. General Assembly resolutions are non- binding. Not only the United States but Britain, France, China and Russia have all signalled they would oppose the resolution at the Security Council, the only UN institution with the power to refer it to the ICC. The likelihood -- in other words -- of an Israeli officer or Palestinian fighter being hauled off to The Hague anytime soon is "remote", said a UN European diplomat. Yet the debate around the Goldstone Report at the UN was anything but remote. Israel launched a diplomatic blitz against the document, outraged by its central thesis that Israel's war on Gaza was not self-defence but "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population". Before the vote, it enlisted allies in the US Congress to condemn the report by 334 votes to 36 as "irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy". During the General Assembly debate, European diplomats huddled with their Arab counterparts to try to get an agreed text. The Europeans mostly supported the call for independent investigations but were alarmed by references to the Security Council and even more so by the spectre of war crime tribunals at The Hague. Most European Union countries abstained: a few voted in favour. And the Palestinians urged adoption of a report that, two months before, they had shelved under US, Israeli and Arab pressure. The reason was obvious. That deferral lit a firestorm of protest throughout the occupied territories that was one cause of Mahmoud Abbas's announcement on 5 November that he had "no desire" to seek re-election as PA president. It was also why the Palestinians refused to soften the text despite European insistence. Finally, the US voted against Goldstone because the prosecution of war crimes "hinders" the cause of peace in the Middle East and has "serious implications for conflicts in other parts of the world," said Alejandro Wolff, deputy permanent representative at the UN. Why the furore? One reason is the quality of the report. Despite Israeli and US demurrals of it being "unbalanced", Goldstone's is actually one of the most balanced reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict ever to come out of the UN: he accepted the commission only after the UN Human Rights Council widened the report's mandate to include alleged war crimes committed by Hamas- aligned fighters as well as Israeli soldiers and politicians. Spread over 575 pages -- and based on 188 interviews, 300 reports, 30 videos and 1,200 photographs -- the report unearths pretty damning evidence that Israel's aim in Gaza was not just to kill militants but collectively to "punish, humiliate and terrorise" an unarmed and captive civilian population. It also charges Hamas with violating the laws of war by rocketing civilians, torturing political opponents and abducting Israeli soldiers. "The idea Goldstone whitewashes Hamas is patently absurd," says Steve Crawshaw, UN advocacy director of Human Rights Watch. "This is a very careful report". Another reason for the disquiet is the stature of the author, admits David Benjamin, a former legal advisor to the Israeli army. "Justice Goldstone is one of the major figures of international criminal justice today and the fact that he put his signature is very significant. This report is not going to go away. Even if it doesn't get to the Security Council, there will be all kinds of efforts to get this to the ICC or to encourage individual states to exercise universal jurisdiction against Israelis." This goes to the heart of why Goldstone has so rattled not only the Israelis but also the US, Britain and many other states. By demanding that the Security Council refer his report to the ICC, Goldstone keyed into a growing legal and moral demand that where states fail to investigate charges of war crimes they must be held accountable to "higher" international justice institutions, like the ICC. However, says Goldstone, this demand is only credible if it applies not just to Sudanese militia in Darfur but equally to Israeli Generals in Gaza. The emergence of the ICC and universal jurisdiction "sends signals which simply didn't exist a decade ago: that if you commit these kinds of crimes there can be consequences", says Crawshaw. Benjamin uneasily agrees. "Some call it law- fare rather than warfare," he says. Nor is he surprised that the PA and Hamas have belatedly embraced a report that could see Palestinians arraigned before the ICC on war crimes charges. "They realise [Goldstone] is an effective weapon against Israel, more so than missiles."
