Maat Welcomes General Assembly vote in favor of the report of Goldstone

07\11\2009

 

The report of the Independent South African Judge Goldstone on Israeli war crimes in Gaza, is still moving from success to success, where the General Assembly of the United Nations on Thursday, November 5, 2009 adopted a resolution giving Israel and the Palestinians three months to conduct investigations described by " credible "about the serious charges contained in the report as" war crimes "and" potential crimes against humanity "were committed during the attack on the Gaza Strip last winter , this report adopted by 114 votes to 18 with 44 abstentions.

The resolution requests the Secretary-General to deliver the report to Security Council. Under the procedures applied in the United Nations, this request binds the Secretary-General to transfer the document formally to the Security Council.

The resolution refers to the desire of the General Assembly to review the extent of implementation of the resolution, after the end of three months... "With the possibility to go to other competent bodies of the United Nations, including UN Security Council". This directly means that, if Israel or the Palestinians didn’t take any investigation about the events in Gaza, the resolution would request the Security Council to move.

In the view of Maat this step represents good progress in the march of the Human Rights Council and its mechanisms which devised to protect and promote human rights in the world, and reveals that the majority of the world is still the subject of a successful bet in this regard, also reveals that the delay in presentation of the report in Human Rights Council. The error that was rectified at the last moment would be lost on the Palestinian issue a historic opportunity to gain new ground of international sympathy and bias of them due to popular pressure and appeals of civil society organizations that have adjusted the position and pushed the Arab group in the Council to take action to re-discuss the report at a special meeting.

Maat condemns the position of the countries that voted against the resolution, surpassing all international standards of justice in the blind bias of Israel without respect of any ethical and humane considerations, which does not serve the cause of peace, and fuel disinclination between peoples and deducted from the balance of the Arab people’s confidence in the governments of major countries and their directions.
The last step now remains related to Security Council of UN which would be certainly forwarded the case to it, because Israel has publicly refused to investigate in war crimes in Gaza, and the Big Five permanent members controls the council including country rejected the resolution is the United States of America USA and two abstained from voting: Britain and France, which makes us conclude that the resolution would not pass easily , because the probabilities of the Council to use its veto against any resolution still exist.

Hence, Maat calls of Arab Countries, Non-Aligned Countries as well as public civil society organizations in the rights- based field, which adopted the case, should press for putting the file in front of other alternative UN bodies to the Security Council such as the International Criminal court and use the findings of Goldstone’s repot in litigation in Some courts with international jurisdiction in some foreign countries such as Belgium.

These claims are inseparable from calling to make sufficient efforts to teach the lobbyists and citizens in major countries aligned against the resolution, the inclusion of Goldstone’s report in favor of pushing through them the governments of these countries to adopt positions more biased to the right and international justice.