MIDEAST: Goldstone’s Volte-Face Gladdens Israelis, Angers Palestinians

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, Apr 4 2011 (IPS) - Israelis have breathed a national sigh of relief following the publication of an absolutely unexpected article in last Friday’s Washington Post. The column’s title and author said it all.

The author of the column, ‘Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and War Crimes’, was the South African Justice Richard Goldstone. He chaired the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which presented its report to the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Sep. 2009.

The report found that the Israeli military committed “war crimes” and “possibly crimes against humanity” during what has come to be known as the Gaza war. Also the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas was found guilty of similar crimes.

Goldstone sprung a surprise in the Washington Post article by retracting what his report stated about Israel. Though cautiously placed in the opinion pages, the commentary left little room for doubt. “If I had known then what I know now,” Goldstone wrote in the opening paragraph, “the Goldstone Report would have been a different document”.

“While the investigations published by the Israeli military (…) have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers,” Goldstone added, “they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.”

He had words of praise for Israel and those of condemnation for Hamas. Though Israel has yet to conclude investigations, Hamas had “done nothing”, and had in fact ignored the report’s recommendation that both sides do some self-examination.

Branded by many Israelis as a “self-hating Jew-hater of Israel”, a “traitor sold to the Palestinian cause”, Goldstone is suddenly finding himself trapped in an about-face, lauded by Israelis, castigated by Palestinians.

Most Israelis polled by a radio talk show interpreted the retired judge’s change of heart as an “admission of guilt”, at least of “wrongdoing”, or as an expression of “regret”, even “atonement”. They fluctuated between right-wing righteousness, centrist fatalism and left-wing affectation.

But Goldstone’s reversal has helped breathe renewed confidence into their narrative of the conflict, the proverbial ‘We told you so’, ‘Better now than never’, ‘Too little too late’, ‘Better behave like Israel than act like Hamas’, and ‘After all we’re not that bad’.

‘Much ado about nothing’, others dismissed the Goldstone post-scriptum. They retorted by pointing out that Israel’s decision-makers’ bore responsibility for the “disproportionate use of force”. In its Monday editorial, the liberal daily Haaretz asked: “Was it a matter of intentional policy, an overriding order that was translated into implementation?” The Goldstone Report assumed it was.

The 22-day air and ground assault resulted in the killing of between1,200 and1,400 Palestinians, half of them civilians, according to Hamas apparently determined to focus on its resistance. Thirteen Israelis lost their lives, most in ‘friendly fire’ between troops, official sources said.

Tens of thousands of buildings were damaged or destroyed during the Israeli invasion, including dwellings, hospitals, wells and farms, leaving hundreds of thousands of the million-and-a-half Palestinians – of whom two-thirds are U.N.-registered refugees – homeless, without running water and electricity, and with nowhere to run away.

Benjamin Netanyahu instructed his cabinet to “minimise the damage” caused by the report, a euphemism for extracting maximum diplomatic benefit from Goldstone’s retraction. The Prime Minister declared that Goldstone’s change of mind “confirmed what we all knew all along.” He demanded that the addendum “lead to the shelving of the Report once and for all.”

“We’ll make (Goldstone) face U.N. forums, speak out and explain the revision of his account,” Ehud Barak said, savouring his revenge. Defence minister during the Gaza War under Netanyahu’s predecessor Ehud Olmert, he had pressed both leaders not to cooperate with Goldstone, calling the UNHRC a “delusional forum of enemies”. But he soberly predicted, “The damage is irreversible.”

Other politicians hoped Goldstone’s volte-face would compare with the 1991 ‘historical’ revocation of the ‘infamous’ 1975 U.N. resolution equating Zionism and racism. But Haaretz reminded, “There is no procedure in place for revoking or revising the Report. Neither have the (fact-finding mission’s) other members made their voices heard.”

In the West Bank and Gaza, both Palestinian leaderships were disconcerted. A spokesman for Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas said bluntly, “Goldstone’s comments don’t change the fact that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza.” Others in Abbas’ entourage accused the judge of caving under pressure.

Abbas knows a thing or two about pressure. In 2009, the U.S. and Israel had warned him that moving the report to the U.N. Security Council would jeopardise attempts to re-launch Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

The Palestinian leader initially agreed to delaying action on the report. But, in an embarrassing turnabout due to domestic indignation, he backtracked, invoking a “misunderstanding”. The report was eventually endorsed by the non-binding General Assembly.

Still, the Gaza war kept haunting Abbas. Recently, ‘The Palestine Papers’ leaked to Al Jazeera and The Guardian corroborated U.S. State Department cables divulged by WikiLeaks, and suggested that the PA had “foreknowledge” of Israel’s plan to attack Gaza. Abbas said he had warned Hamas beforehand. Since Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza (2007), the enmity between the competing leaderships has shaped Palestinian politics.

Expectedly, the Islamist movement urged the U.N. to confirm the Goldstone Report. A spokesman noted, “It’s not Goldstone’s private property.”

But why are civilians harmed in conflicts, and does that ipso facto constitute war crimes? By grappling with that overarching question last Friday for the second time, Goldstone put his finger into the conflict’s all-too-familiar wounds.

Though, again, as in the Report, the wounds were exacerbated rather than healed, Goldstone taught Israel about the limitations of its military power; Hamas learned about the limitations of the power inherent in its own weakness.