Israel: No peace talks until furor at U.N. ends

UNITED NATIONS - Israel won't resume Middle East peace talks while Arab nations pursue a campaign at the United Nations to prosecute Israel for alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli ambassador said.

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad Malki urged the Security Council yesterday to implement the recommendations of a U.N. panel that accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during Israel's three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip last winter.

"We cannot resume the peace process as long as this is on the table, as long as we are accused of war crimes, which we completely deny," Gabriela Shalev, Israel's U.N. ambassador, told reporters.

The Arab pressure comes as the Obama administration presses the Israelis and Palestinians to resume negotiations. U.S. Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff said the debate about the Gaza incursion "would be harmful to the peace process."

The panel recommended that the Security Council require Israel to "launch appropriate" investigations of its actions during the offensive. If inquiries aren't started, the council should refer allegations of illegal acts to the International Criminal Court at the Hague, the report said.

Palestinian armed groups were urged to respect international law, halt rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza, and release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. The panel did not say what action should be taken if the groups did not comply.

Malki's remarks marked a reversal of a Palestinian Authority decision to agree to postpone such a debate. That decision, made under U.S. pressure, sparked an uproar among Palestinians.

Malki said the report from the panel led by Richard Goldstone, a former U.N. war-crimes prosecutor and South African judge, "constitutes yet another wake-up call to the international community that must not be ignored."

Arab nations plan to raise the issue today in the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, and have circulated a draft resolution calling for all U.N. bodies to implement the report's recommendations.

Sudan's ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohammad, speaking as head of the Arab group, said they also would pursue the issue in the U.N. General Assembly if the United States blocked action in the Security Council.

Israel said the Arab moves were counterproductive.

"Rather than dealing with the situation in the Middle East, and instead of encouraging the parties to move toward peace and resume negotiations, the debate in this council has been shifted to a narrative that is destructive to the peace process," Shalev said to the Security Council.

Israel says its operations in Gaza were a defensive response to eight years of rocket attacks by the extremist group Hamas, which controls the enclave.

The Goldstone panel, in its summary of the 574-page report released Sept. 15, said Israel committed "grave breaches" of international law, including "willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health and extensive destruction of property."

The panel also said Israel used human shields, which "constitutes a war crime."

The panel said Hamas rocket attacks on Israel "may amount to crimes against humanity."

Hamas, by firing rockets and mortars into Israel or at the Israeli armed forces inside Gaza, "unnecessarily exposed the civilian population of Gaza to the inherent dangers of military operations" around them and thereby violated "international humanitarian law," the panel said.

In addition, Hamas "carried out extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrest, detention and ill treatment of people, in particular political opponents, which constitute serious violations of human rights," the panel said.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party yesterday said it had accepted an Egyptian proposal to hold new presidential and legislative elections in June as part of a broad package meant to end

a bitter rivalry with the extremist group Hamas.

Fatah official Mohammed Dahlan said the party had signed the Egyptian-mediated proposal and was dispatching an envoy to Cairo today to deliver the response. It was unclear whether Hamas would accept the deal.

The Palestinians have had two rival governments since Hamas fighters ousted Abbas' security forces from the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

Hamas remains in control of Gaza, while the Western-backed Fatah governs the West Bank. Their infighting has complicated U.S.-led efforts to forge peace between Israel and

the Palestinians.

- Associated Press

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