UN Human Rights Council endorses Goldstone report on Gaza. Israel threatens withdrawal from peace process.

Israel has already ensured that there will be no peace negotiations for some time by refusing to freeze settlement building. Mitchell the US envoy has already gone home after having gone to the Mid-East nine times. However Israel has made further threats as well. Although the US as well as Israel managed to pressure Abbas into originally agreeing to defer consideration of the report this was to be in return for starting the peace process anew. Since this was impossible and Abbas was subject to a storm of criticism as a sell out not only from Hamas but from his own Fatah, Abbas switched course and brought the report to the UNHRC. Israel has only itself to blame for this. There will be a plethora of Israeli apologists spouting there usual apoplectic apologetics. Israel worries that some its own may end up faced with war crimes trials.

""""UNHRC endorses Goldstone report, angers Israel


The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has adopted a resolution, endorsing the Goldstone report on the Gaza war, despite efforts by Israeli leaders to block the motion.

On Friday, 25 member-states of the council voted for the resolution, six voted against and 11 abstained. The "draft resolution ... is therefore adopted," UNHRC President Alex Van Meeuwen said in Geneva.

The resolution urges the endorsement of the recommendations mentioned in Goldstone's Gaza report, and "calls upon all concerned parties including United Nations bodies, to ensure their implementation."

The reports recommends referring its conclusions to the International Criminal Court prosecutor in The Hague, if the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the conflict fail to conduct credible investigations within six months.

Tel Aviv worries that the resolution would open the door to lodging war crime charges in international courts against its senior politicians and army officials involved in the weeks-long onslaught against the blockaded Palestinian territory.

Far more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed during three weeks of Israel's land, sea and air assault in the impoverished coastal sliver, which remains under a crippling Israeli siege, in place since June 2007 ""