De Israelische Terreur 849

UN retreats after Israel hits out at Gaza report

Secretary General rejects further investigation into 'reckless' military
offensive

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

Wednesday, 6 May 2009

The UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon bowed to pressure from Israel
yesterday by trying to limit the impact of a comprehensive critique
accusing its military of “recklessness or negligence” in this year’s
Gaza offensive.

The official UN report – which Mr Ban himself commissioned – criticised
the Israel Defence Forces for breaching the inviolability of UN premises,
causing deaths, injuries and damage in seven incidents involving UN
installations, and on occasions issuing untrue statements about what had
happened.

But in a covering letter attached to his own 27-page summary of the report,
leaked last night, the secretary-general bluntly rejected its
recommendations for further investigations into whether Israel had breached
international law during the offensive, including by its use of white
phosphorus.

Mr Ban’s efforts to draw a line under the report – compiled by a UN
board of inquiry headed by Ian Martin, the British former head of Amnesty
and UN envoy to East Timor – followed an intensive diplomatic effort by
Israel to minimise the damage of its findings.

The report says that the IDF was “involved in varying degrees of
negligence or recklessness with regard to United Nations premises and to
the safety of United Nations staff and other civilians within those
premises, with consequent deaths, injuries, and extensive physical damage
and loss of property”.

The incidents examined in depth by the inquiry include the mortar attack on
6 January which killed up to 40 civilians outside a UN school in Jabalya
being used as a shelter, and the devastating white phosphorus assault on
the UN’s field office compound on 15 January which caused extensive
damage.

In both cases, says Mr Ban’s summary, the UN is seeking “formal
acknowledgement” by the government of Israel that its public statements
claiming that Palestinian militants fired from the installations, were
“untrue and regretted”. The report also recommends pressing Israel for
compensation for the families of dead and injured UN personnel in the
attacks.

The report says that the co-ordinates of the Jabalya school had been given
to the IDF and that it had been notified of its planned use as a shelter
even before Operation Cast Lead began. It notes that at the time of the
rport’s drafting a claim that Hamas militants had fired mortars from
within the compound and that the school was booby trapped was still on the
Israeli foreign ministry website. It adds: “The Board found that there
was no fire from within the compound and no explosives within the
school.”

Lees verder: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/un-retreats-after-israel-hits-out-at-gaza-report-1679727.html