Israel: Refusal to cooperate with UN legal team
Geneva. Israel will not cooperate with a special commission set up by the United Nations’ highest human rights body to investigate alleged abuses against Palestinians. It called the inquiry and its chair biased against Israel on Thursday. The decision was communicated in a letter to the head of the commission, Navi Pillay. The decision further strained the already tense relationship between Israel and the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
“My country is clear, and it should be clear to any fair observer, that there is simply no reason to believe that Israel will receive reasonable, fair and non-discriminatory treatment from the Council or from this commission of inquiry,” the letter reads. signed by Meirav Eilon Shahar, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations and International Organizations in Geneva.
Israel refuses cooperation
The letter was a response to a December 29 letter from Pillay to the unlimited government, in which she had this request to “reconsider her position of non-cooperation,” which she had expressed just after the inauguration of the Commission.
The council set up the three-person investigative commission in May last year, just days after an 11-day war between Israel and militant Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip. More than 260 Palestinians, including scores of women and children, were killed in the fighting. 14 people died in Israel. At the time, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, said the individual actions, including the airstrikes on civilian areas, may constitute war crimes.
Since then, international human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), have said the incessant attacks appear to constitute war crimes. In addition, both Bachelet and HRW stated that Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket fire on any city also violated international martial law.
A “Commission of Inquiry” is the most effective tool available to the Council to investigate violations and abuses. The mandate of this commission is to investigate alleged violations of rights in Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank. It is the first commission to have an “ongoing” mandate.
Israel has long accused the United Nations, and particularly the Human Rights Council, of bias. It is the only country in the world whose human rights record is up for discussion at every Council meeting.
A growing number of human rights groups, including HRW, Amnesty International and local groups, have criticized that dealing broadly with the Palestinians, including their own Arab minority, amounts to apartheid. Israel vehemently rejects the label as anti-Semitic.
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Pillay has not publicly responded to allegations of anti-Israel bias. The commission said in an email to the AP news agency on Thursday that its members did not intend to “make any public statements nor disclose their communications between the parties concerned.” This is to prevent the integrity of their work from being compromised.
The President of the Council, the Argentine Ambassador Federico Villegas, defended the selection of the commissioners. The President attaches “the utmost importance to verifying the independence and impartiality of each member to ensure the objectivity of the body” and takes into account the ability and experience of the members when appointing them.