Tel Aviv has voiced disdain over the United Nations' authority to look into Israel's three weeks of military onslaught through the Gaza Strip.
"We don't approve of the mandate the committee was given to investigate war crimes," Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak told UN's Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday, Jerusalem Post reported.
"I do not think Israel has to or will cooperate with this investigation," the minister added.
He also accused the four-member team, appointed by the UN's Human Rights Council for the purpose, would not be able to get far in investigating, what he called, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas' 'terrorist operations' - an excuse which Israel used to subject the strip to continuous land and air assaults in late 2008 and early 2009 killing more than 1,400 Palestinians.
Hamas in the meantime made clear its preparedness to cooperate with the UN "to unveil the truth and bring out all the hidden details of what took place during the war, hoping to show the entire world the truth," the movement said in a statement, the Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported.
The statement added that "the Israeli rejection of dealing with such committees proves that they committed crimes in Gaza and they want [the truth] to be hidden."
~ more... ~
No comments:
Post a Comment