UN council to discuss Gaza report

Many Palestinians have protested against the delay in endorsing the Goldstone report [AFP] Members of the UN Security Council will meet to discuss Libya's request for an emergency session on a report that claimed war crimes were committed by Israel during last year's offensive on Gaza. Le Luong Minh, Vietnam's ambassador who holds the council presidency this month, said that he had scheduled closed-door talks for Wednesday after receiving a request from Libya, the only Arab member on the 15-nation council. Libya circulated a letter on Tuesday on behalf of the UN Arab group urgently seeking "an emergency meeting" of the council to consider the Goldstone report, Ibrahim Dabbashi, Libya's deputy ambassador, said. The UN Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, Switzerland, postponed a vote last Friday on a resolution that would have condemned Israel's failure to co-operate with its investigation into the December-January war. Israel launched a major offensive on the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip in December 2008, saying it wanted to stop rockets fired by Hamas into its territory. At least 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died during the three-week war. Libyan initiative Ahmed Gebreel, a Libyan spokesman, said his country had requested the meeting "because of the seriousness of the report and because we think it's too long to wait until March". Palestinians, including Fatah, the party of President Mahmoud Abbas, have strongly criticised the Goldstone vote postponement, holding him responsible for the decision. But following Libya's request, the Palestinian Observer Mission at the UN expressed "full support" for the move. "We are welcoming Libya's step that they have asked the Security Council to meet to discuss the Goldstone report," Abbas told the AFP news agency in a telephone conversation from Rome, the Italian capital. "Libya's step is supporting the Palestinian people's rights." Palestine TV, the official television channel of the Palestinian Authority (PA), reported that Abbas would send Riyadh al-Malki, the Palestinian foreign minister, to New York to assist in the Libyan bid to have the council address the report. The Security Council session, however, may not be enough to limit the political damage suffered by Abbas, and by extension Fatah. Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said that the controversy surrounding the Goldstone report could affect the Palestinian reconciliation deal which Egypt has said will be signed later this month. "All the Palestinian factions, including Hamas, are angry at the [Palestinian] Authority after what happened with the Goldstone report and this could affect the arrangements for the [reconciliation] dialogue," he said on Wednesday. "According to Egyptian arrangements up to now, the delegations are due to go to Cairo ... and Egypt is to fix the date of the signing of the deal." Telltale videotape The diplomatic and political developments came a day after a Palestinian news agency, Shahab, reported that PA representatives at a meeting in the US initially rejected Israel's request not to endorse the Goldstone report. But, then, Brigadier Eli Avraham, an Israeli representative, played a videotape showing a meeting between Abbas and Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister during the Gaza war, in which Tzipi Livni, Israel's former foreign minister, was also present. The tape showed Abbas trying to convince Barak to continue the offensive, according to Shahab.Avraham also played an audiotape of a telephone call between Dov Weissglass, a senior Israeli official, and al-Tayyib Abdul Rahim, secretary-general of the Palestinian president's office. In the conversation, Abdul Rahim noted that circumstances were suitable for entry of the Israeli army into Jabalya and al-Shatea refugee camps, and said that the fall of these two camps would end Hamas's rule in Gaza Strip, Shahab said. Weissglass then told Abdul Rahim that such an army operation would lead to the deaths of thousands of civilians, but, according to Shahab, Abdul Rahim said: "They have all elected Hamas, so they are the ones who have chosen their fate, not us." The Israeli delegation warned the PA representatives that it would present the recorded material to the UN and news organisations, forcing the Palestinians to accede to Israel's demand to delay the vote on the Goldstone report, Shahab said. The Palestinian news agency's report on alleged Israeli arm-twisting appeared on the same day that a senior Qatari foreign ministry official said the Palestinians missed a rare chance by delaying the UNHRC vote. Sheikh Khaled bin Jassem al-Thani, head of ministry's human rights department, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that the Palestinian representative to the council had requested a delay until the next meeting in March. "The Palestinian decision was based on their wishes ... and member states could not take unilateral measures contrary to the wishes of the Palestinian Authority," he said. "There were many countries that supported [the report and a vote] ... it could have been adopted, but I think that an opportunity was missed and it may not come back."