The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday began a debate on the report submitted by a UN-appointed investigating committee that probed alleged war crimes by Israeli forces and Hamas militants during the December-January Gaza conflict.
The debate will decide on the endorsement of a draft resolution that calls for launching independent investigations into allegations of war crimes if Israel and Hamas fails to carry out their own internal investigations into the allegations within three months. But unlike UN Security Council resolutions, the General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding.
The draft resolution being considered by the Assembly requires UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to report back to the General Assembly after three months about the progress made in the internal investigations carried out by Israel and Hamas about the conduct of their forces during the three-week war.
It also calls on Ban to forward the report to the UN Security Council for possible action if Israelis and the Palestinians fail to conduct their own investigations into alleged war crimes within three months, as recommended in the report.
The UN General Assembly debate comes a day after the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to condemn the report, which was compiled by a team of UN investigators headed by South African Judge Richard Goldstone. A non-binding resolution approved by the House described the report as "irredeemably biased".
Earlier, the UN Human Rights Council, a 47-member inter-governmental body within U.N. for protecting and promoting human rights globally, had voted on January 12 to set up the probe into the alleged human rights violations by Israeli forces against the Palestinians. Richard Goldstone was then appointed as the chief of the 15-member UN team set up to investigate alleged violations of international rules of engagement during the Gaza conflict.
Last month, the Council had endorsed the UN team's report during a two-day special session held in Geneva after Judge Goldstone presented the full version of the fact-finding probe before the UN rights body in late September. The endorsement of the report came despite warnings by the U.S. and Israel that such a move would set back Middle East peace efforts.
The UN team had concluded in their 575-page report that actions amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed by the Israeli security forces and Hamas militants during the Gaza offensive.
The report listed a series of recommendations, including the handing over of the case to an international tribunal if Israel and Hamas fail to conduct proper investigations into the alleged war crimes within six months.
Israel and Hamas had rejected the UN report earlier, describing it as biased. While Israel said that it would launch a diplomatic offensive to prevent any possible prosecutions of its soldiers by an international war crimes tribunal, Hamas criticized the UN team's findings and and described it as "political, biased and dishonest" report that put people "who resist" crimes "on the same level as those who perpetrate" them.
Israel was involved in a 22-day offensive against the Hamas in the Gaza Strip during December, in response to continued rocket fire into southern Israel by Palestinian militants in Gaza. The three-week war was finally halted on 17th January with separate unilateral cease-fire by Israel and Hamas, the group that controls Gaza Strip.
Though Palestinians claim that over 1,400 civilians in the Gaza Strip were killed in the conflict, Israeli army says its investigations revealed that only 1,116 Palestinians were killed in the three-week long offensive.
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