Palestinian Foreign Minister asks for support for plan to discuss Goldstone report
Marian Houk
October 12, 2009
The Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki asked diplomatic representatives in Ramallah on Monday for their government's support to -- at least -- discuss the Goldstone report on last winter's war on Gaza.
Al-Maliki has been a frequent flyer in the past ten days -- he's back in Ramallah for two days from trips between UN headquarters in New York and France, then Syria, then back to New York, then Libya -- since the diplomatic fiasco at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva when Palestinian support was withdrawn for an immediate discussion of the report submitted by the Fact-Finding Mission headed by South Africa's Justice Richard Goldstone.
The Palestinian delegation in Geneva instead asked its supporters on the UN Human Rights Council to submit a motion calling for discussion of the Goldstone report in five months' time, that is, in March 2010, and this resolution was adopted on Friday, 2 October.
It is still not clear how or even why this was done. The only explanation at the time, given in the media, was that there had been strong pressure from the United States.
On Sunday, 4 October, after an outburst of criticism from almost all segments of the Palestinian people, Abbas announced that he had appointed a commission of inquiry to look into what happened -- then he travelled to Yemen.
This Sunday night, after his return from his own travels to Europe and elsewhere, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas added, in a rather late speech to his people, that the Palestinian delegation had worried that a resolution they had been working on, to support the Goldstone report and refer it to the UN General Assembly, might not get enough votes.
In his speech, Abbas confirmed that he has now authorized the Palestinian Ambassador in Geneva, Ibrahim Khreishi, to make a 180 degree turn and ask the UN Human Rights Commission to discuss the Goldstone report now, after all.
Al-Maliki said on Monday afternoon that the efforts will be running on two parallel tracks: He said that (1) the Palestinian Ambassador started this morning efforts to gather the 16 signatures necessary (from among the Human Rights Council's 47 members) to -- as a first step -- convene a special session and at the very least discuss the Goldstone report. "He's really trying his best", Al-Maliki said (suggesting that it is not going easily). "It's up to the members of the Human Rights Council to decide what to do, the Council has the full authority to decide the future steps", Al-Maliki said, "but, yes, we'd like to see the recommendations of the report accepted and approved". And, Al-Maliki said, (2) "I will leave early tomorrow morning for New York to attend the Security Council session on the 14th of October, Wednesday, which will be an open debate on the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question ... Palestine and Israel will take part ... and it will be up to UN member states to mention the Goldstone report in their statements. We are asking all UN Member States to take part".
The Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister said that "we have also been talking to the President of the UN General Assembly to see if it can also meet to discuss the Goldstone report". He noted that there are two possibilities for that: (a) to go directly to the General Assembly's Third Committee, where an item on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is already on the agenda, under which the Goldstone report can be discussed. "If there is no problem", Al-Maliki said, "then it can be passed to the UN General Assembly for discussion -- but this could take time, and there could be procedural difficulties from certain countries". Alternatively, Al-Maliki said, "we can, with the support of the non-aligned movement, the African group and others", go directly to the re-convening of the General Assembly's Tenth Special Session, which has been meeting on and off for many years to discuss the Question of Palestine. This Tenth Special Session is not closed, but merely suspended each time, because the Palestinian question is not yet resolved -- and this makes it easier to reconvene. Without saying so explicitly, Al-Maliki seemed to be suggesting that this might offer an alternative solution, in case there are difficulties in getting 16 signatures among the 47 members of the Human Rights Council now. He said that "the UN General Assembly could meet and could ask the Human Rights Council to convene to discuss the Goldstone report in a certain period of time -- we will see how things will go".
Al-Maliki said: "We're looking for the Goldstone report to be discussed, and to be given the space and time it needs, and to see how the UN General Assembly will discuss it. We are doing our best".
He suggested that in the discussion, "We'll try to look at the development of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a legal direction, and see if, after 60 years, there is a way to take an effective view at the situation and offer procedures".
He noted that "the Goldstone report not only condemns Israel, but also Hamas, and it will be difficult for Palestinians to follow up if it condemns the Palestinian side".
The Goldstone report, which was circulated to members of the UN Human Rights Council on 15 September, recommends that if either Israel or the Hamas authorities in Gaza have failed to launch independent investigations within six months' time into the findings contained in the report, then the UN Security Council should consider referring the matter to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
Al-Maliki said that he was summoned this morning by the Palestinian Investigative Committee on the Goldstone report, named by Abbas, "to answer questions and give my part of the story about how things evolved". The Investigative Committee interviewed many officials today, Al-Maliki said, and "is taking its mission very seriously to understand the background, and how the decision was taken". They will be working 'till late on Monday and in the coming days, he said.
He accused Hamas of looking to use the Goldstone report to cover their refusal of the reconciliation efforts that Egypt has been painstakingly negotiating for months. "Last night we received the last version (of the reconciliation document) from Egypt", Al-Maliki said. "We are ready to go to Egypt, and even to sign that document -- it seems that Hamas will be the one absent ... Hamas wants to exert full control in Gaza", he added.
The Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister said that he had been present during the trilateral meeting convened by the U.S. President Barack Obama between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And, in that meeting, according to Al-Maliki, "Netanyahu raised a question about the legitmacy of the Palestinian partner, and wondered if there were a Palestinian partner".
Al-Maliki was not upbeat about the prospects for resuming negotiations. He said that the latest effort of U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell, who was in the region this past weekend, "didn't produce much, and there has been no change in the Israeli position".
Al-Maliki reported that that on a recent day when there had been a demonstration in Ramallah in support of the Palestinian position on East Jerusalem, and the Old City's Al-Aqsa Mosque -- and, he said, the Israelis had been informed that the demonstration would take place in the center of Ramallah -- some 16 Israeli military jeeps "entered the city, raided the city, and got to the center of the city ... after six months of their absence".
Israel's YNet news reported this evening that in the opening of the winter session of the Israeli parliament (Knesset) today, Israel's former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who now leads the opposition because her political party (Kadima) beat Netanyahu's (Likud) by the narrowest of margins in Israeli elections last February, but she was not asked to form the new government, "accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being responsible for the uproar created by the United Nations report into the Israeli operation in Gaza. She hinted that Israel was the one who revealed that the Palestinians had deferred a Human Rights Council vote on the report, because the prime minister 'had to boast of his performance ... You have caused Israel to be in the corner and lost more and more strongholds of support and understanding every day, but who's counting? You have managed to beat the president of the United States, Israel's greatest friend, or at least this is the impression you and your people tried to convey after the meeting. You have managed to humiliate the only partner for a peace settlement Israel has. In short: We have beaten America, humiliated the Palestinians, [and] isolated ourselves". This story can be read in full here.
In response, Netanyahu said in the Knesset meeting that "We will not let Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak, who sent our sons to war, reach the Hague International Criminal Court". He reportedly said that Israel intended to block UN Human Rights Council consideration of the Goldstone report.
Meanwhile, an official in the Palestinian Ministry of Information confirmed that Palestinian Authority Economy Minister Basem Khoury, who had reportedly resigned because of the withdrawal of Palestinian support for the Human Rights Council's consideration of the Goldstone report, had changed his mind. According to the official, Khoury sent an SMS to Prime Minister Salam Fayyad saying that he preferred to resign in the circumstances, but he was later told there would be an Investigative Committee and asked to withdraw his resignation -- which he did. Despite his refusal to confirm this to media outlets including the Ma'an News Agency in Bethlehem, he reportedly did make the confirmation in a letter sent recently to the Deputy Minister of Information, the ministry official said. Khoury has recently been in Europe to work on re-convening the Human Rights Council -- but it is not clear how, exactly, he was given this mandate, or by whom.
Al-Maliki has been a frequent flyer in the past ten days -- he's back in Ramallah for two days from trips between UN headquarters in New York and France, then Syria, then back to New York, then Libya -- since the diplomatic fiasco at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva when Palestinian support was withdrawn for an immediate discussion of the report submitted by the Fact-Finding Mission headed by South Africa's Justice Richard Goldstone.
The Palestinian delegation in Geneva instead asked its supporters on the UN Human Rights Council to submit a motion calling for discussion of the Goldstone report in five months' time, that is, in March 2010, and this resolution was adopted on Friday, 2 October.
It is still not clear how or even why this was done. The only explanation at the time, given in the media, was that there had been strong pressure from the United States.
On Sunday, 4 October, after an outburst of criticism from almost all segments of the Palestinian people, Abbas announced that he had appointed a commission of inquiry to look into what happened -- then he travelled to Yemen.
This Sunday night, after his return from his own travels to Europe and elsewhere, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas added, in a rather late speech to his people, that the Palestinian delegation had worried that a resolution they had been working on, to support the Goldstone report and refer it to the UN General Assembly, might not get enough votes.
In his speech, Abbas confirmed that he has now authorized the Palestinian Ambassador in Geneva, Ibrahim Khreishi, to make a 180 degree turn and ask the UN Human Rights Commission to discuss the Goldstone report now, after all.
Al-Maliki said on Monday afternoon that the efforts will be running on two parallel tracks: He said that (1) the Palestinian Ambassador started this morning efforts to gather the 16 signatures necessary (from among the Human Rights Council's 47 members) to -- as a first step -- convene a special session and at the very least discuss the Goldstone report. "He's really trying his best", Al-Maliki said (suggesting that it is not going easily). "It's up to the members of the Human Rights Council to decide what to do, the Council has the full authority to decide the future steps", Al-Maliki said, "but, yes, we'd like to see the recommendations of the report accepted and approved". And, Al-Maliki said, (2) "I will leave early tomorrow morning for New York to attend the Security Council session on the 14th of October, Wednesday, which will be an open debate on the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question ... Palestine and Israel will take part ... and it will be up to UN member states to mention the Goldstone report in their statements. We are asking all UN Member States to take part".
The Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister said that "we have also been talking to the President of the UN General Assembly to see if it can also meet to discuss the Goldstone report". He noted that there are two possibilities for that: (a) to go directly to the General Assembly's Third Committee, where an item on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is already on the agenda, under which the Goldstone report can be discussed. "If there is no problem", Al-Maliki said, "then it can be passed to the UN General Assembly for discussion -- but this could take time, and there could be procedural difficulties from certain countries". Alternatively, Al-Maliki said, "we can, with the support of the non-aligned movement, the African group and others", go directly to the re-convening of the General Assembly's Tenth Special Session, which has been meeting on and off for many years to discuss the Question of Palestine. This Tenth Special Session is not closed, but merely suspended each time, because the Palestinian question is not yet resolved -- and this makes it easier to reconvene. Without saying so explicitly, Al-Maliki seemed to be suggesting that this might offer an alternative solution, in case there are difficulties in getting 16 signatures among the 47 members of the Human Rights Council now. He said that "the UN General Assembly could meet and could ask the Human Rights Council to convene to discuss the Goldstone report in a certain period of time -- we will see how things will go".
Al-Maliki said: "We're looking for the Goldstone report to be discussed, and to be given the space and time it needs, and to see how the UN General Assembly will discuss it. We are doing our best".
He suggested that in the discussion, "We'll try to look at the development of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a legal direction, and see if, after 60 years, there is a way to take an effective view at the situation and offer procedures".
He noted that "the Goldstone report not only condemns Israel, but also Hamas, and it will be difficult for Palestinians to follow up if it condemns the Palestinian side".
The Goldstone report, which was circulated to members of the UN Human Rights Council on 15 September, recommends that if either Israel or the Hamas authorities in Gaza have failed to launch independent investigations within six months' time into the findings contained in the report, then the UN Security Council should consider referring the matter to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
Al-Maliki said that he was summoned this morning by the Palestinian Investigative Committee on the Goldstone report, named by Abbas, "to answer questions and give my part of the story about how things evolved". The Investigative Committee interviewed many officials today, Al-Maliki said, and "is taking its mission very seriously to understand the background, and how the decision was taken". They will be working 'till late on Monday and in the coming days, he said.
He accused Hamas of looking to use the Goldstone report to cover their refusal of the reconciliation efforts that Egypt has been painstakingly negotiating for months. "Last night we received the last version (of the reconciliation document) from Egypt", Al-Maliki said. "We are ready to go to Egypt, and even to sign that document -- it seems that Hamas will be the one absent ... Hamas wants to exert full control in Gaza", he added.
The Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister said that he had been present during the trilateral meeting convened by the U.S. President Barack Obama between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And, in that meeting, according to Al-Maliki, "Netanyahu raised a question about the legitmacy of the Palestinian partner, and wondered if there were a Palestinian partner".
Al-Maliki was not upbeat about the prospects for resuming negotiations. He said that the latest effort of U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell, who was in the region this past weekend, "didn't produce much, and there has been no change in the Israeli position".
Al-Maliki reported that that on a recent day when there had been a demonstration in Ramallah in support of the Palestinian position on East Jerusalem, and the Old City's Al-Aqsa Mosque -- and, he said, the Israelis had been informed that the demonstration would take place in the center of Ramallah -- some 16 Israeli military jeeps "entered the city, raided the city, and got to the center of the city ... after six months of their absence".
Israel's YNet news reported this evening that in the opening of the winter session of the Israeli parliament (Knesset) today, Israel's former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who now leads the opposition because her political party (Kadima) beat Netanyahu's (Likud) by the narrowest of margins in Israeli elections last February, but she was not asked to form the new government, "accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being responsible for the uproar created by the United Nations report into the Israeli operation in Gaza. She hinted that Israel was the one who revealed that the Palestinians had deferred a Human Rights Council vote on the report, because the prime minister 'had to boast of his performance ... You have caused Israel to be in the corner and lost more and more strongholds of support and understanding every day, but who's counting? You have managed to beat the president of the United States, Israel's greatest friend, or at least this is the impression you and your people tried to convey after the meeting. You have managed to humiliate the only partner for a peace settlement Israel has. In short: We have beaten America, humiliated the Palestinians, [and] isolated ourselves". This story can be read in full here.
In response, Netanyahu said in the Knesset meeting that "We will not let Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak, who sent our sons to war, reach the Hague International Criminal Court". He reportedly said that Israel intended to block UN Human Rights Council consideration of the Goldstone report.
Meanwhile, an official in the Palestinian Ministry of Information confirmed that Palestinian Authority Economy Minister Basem Khoury, who had reportedly resigned because of the withdrawal of Palestinian support for the Human Rights Council's consideration of the Goldstone report, had changed his mind. According to the official, Khoury sent an SMS to Prime Minister Salam Fayyad saying that he preferred to resign in the circumstances, but he was later told there would be an Investigative Committee and asked to withdraw his resignation -- which he did. Despite his refusal to confirm this to media outlets including the Ma'an News Agency in Bethlehem, he reportedly did make the confirmation in a letter sent recently to the Deputy Minister of Information, the ministry official said. Khoury has recently been in Europe to work on re-convening the Human Rights Council -- but it is not clear how, exactly, he was given this mandate, or by whom.