Hamas wants “Zionist war criminals” brought before the International Criminal Court over last year’s Israeli assault on Gaza, an official of the Islamic resistance group said on Saturday. “We ask the United Nations to transfer the matter to the ICC so that the Zionist war criminals can be brought to justice,” said Mohammed Faraj al-Ghul, justice minister in the Hamas administration of the Gaza Strip.
However, he also said he expected that the United States would block any such move. “We expect that the American administration will intervene to block these criminals being judged,” Ghul said.
More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including 420 children and over 5300 others were injured during the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip.
A UN Human Rights Council report by the respected former international prosecutor Richard Goldstone accused both Israel and Palestinian groups of committing war crimes during the devastating 22-day conflict.
On January 27, Hamas said it had investigated those allegations and absolved Palestinian armed groups of any atrocities.
The Goldstone report recommended that its findings be referred to the ICC in The Hague if Israel and Hamas failed to carry out credible, independent investigations.
Israel has rejected the report as “anti-Semitic” despite the fact Goldstone is himself Jewish, because the report accuses the Israeli military of deliberately targeting civilians and destroying vital infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Riad Mansour, expressed disappointment Friday with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s answer to the Israeli response to the Goldstone report.
“The Security Council is not showing a commitment to take care of the report,” Mansour said, adding that the International Court of Justice at the Hague was ignoring Palestinian appeals to “investigate the crimes carried out in Palestinian territory”.
Mansour told reporters at the UN Headquarters in New York that the Arab League was biding time and would respond to Ban’s answer after consulting with attorneys.
He said Ban’s decision not to criticize the Israeli document “has made our task easier, because he has not adopted the Israeli response but has also not criticized it”.
Mansour said this proves that “the paper Israel filed does not meet the council’s criteria”, however he appeared disappointed.
The UN Security Council does not intend to formally discuss the report as three nations with veto power – the US, France, and Britain – have severely criticized its foundations.
But Arab journalists blasted Ban’s response to the observations made by both sides on the Goldstone report during a press conference in which the secretary-general spoke. Ban said his job had been to give a review of the situation, and not to analyze it.
The UN secretary-general reported Thursday night he was uncertain whether Israel or the Palestinians had met UN demands to undertake “credible” investigations into allegations that they deliberately targeted civilians during last year’s Gaza offensive.
In a short preface to his 72-page report, nearly all of which is responses by Israel and the Palestinians, Ban concluded he could not ultimately determine yet whether Israel and the Palestinians had carried out honest, independent probes into their own actions.
He said he hoped the assembly’s resolution will, in fact, result in probes “that are independent, credible and in conformity with international standards.” But, he added that “no determination can be made on the implementation of the resolution by the parties concerned.”
Notes/Sources:
The article, as published by Al Jazeera, can be found at Al Jazeera entitled: “Hamas Wants ‘Zionist War Criminals’ Judged by ICC“
