Israel wants UN to shelve critical Goldstone report

South African judge Richard Goldstone faced huge criticism in Israel at the time over the report which accused both Israel and the Hamas rulers of Gaza of potential war crimes during the 22-day conflict. But he now says, he has had second thoughts.

Speaking at a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would set up a team of legal experts and diplomats to find concrete ways "to turn the clock back and try to lessen the enormous damage of this train of vilification against the state of Israel."

In an article published in the Washington Post on 1 April, Judge Goldstone said that information he had received indicated that Israel had not deliberately targeted civilians during the campaign. This was one of the key accusations in his report.

An independent UN committee headed by New York-based judge Mary McGowan Davis followed up on the Goldstone Report's recommendations.

Her committee found that Israel had investigated over 400 allegations of operational misconduct conducted by its military during the operation in Gaza. In contrast, Hamas leaders "had not conducted any investigations" into the rocket and mortar attacks against Israel that were its grounds for going to war.

In a reaction to Goldstone's comments, Israeli vice-premier Moshe Yaalon said he hoped “Judge Goldstone would send a letter to the UN Secretary General, asking him to make a review, and to withdraw the report” as well as putting a stop to procedures which were a result of the report".

But Sarit Michaeli of the Jerusalem-based B’Tselem Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories doesn’t agree. “Goldstein himself states in his article that one of the reasons that he rescinded one of his accusations is the result of the investigations that were conducted by Israel itself."

“These investigations were opened not in spite of the Goldstone report”, she says, “but because of the Goldstone report so Israel cannot now say that the investigations were conducted as a result of the report, that this report must now be rescinded or ignored, that is absolutely absurd.”

Hamas, meanwhile, said it was "surprised" by Goldstone's about-turn adding that he did not now have the right to come and change the findings.