WASHINGTON — The Obama administration sought to backtrack at presstime from news reports that it would silence a United Nations report critical of Israel’s conduct in its Gaza War earlier this year.

The mother of Rabia Tawil mourns at their house in the village of Tsur Baher, in East Jerusalem September 22, 2009. Troops shot dead Tawil, a Palestinian motorist, in Israel on Tuesday, saying he failed to stop at a border checkpoint coming from the West Bank and later drove at soldiers seeking to detain him at a fuel station. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that “The Obama administration will not allow the Goldstone Report recommendations on Israel’s conduct in the Gaza war to reach the International Criminal Court.” This was based on a call between a top White House official and Jewish leaders. It was meant to be off-the-record, but Jewish leaders spoke to a newspaper about the meeting.
The official said the United States would use its veto to prevent any United Nations action based on the report. Since this came out, the White House tried to clarify its position.

The 574-word report found that Israel violated international laws in its bombardment and invasion of Gaza from late December of last year through most of January, 2009. The attack left around 1400 Palestinians dead, the majority of them were civilians.

The report was mandated by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council and produced by a team led by the renowned South African jurist, Richard Goldstone, who is Jewish and has close ties to Israeli institutions, such as Hebrew University.

“The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly in some respects crimes against humanity, were committed by the Israel Defense Force,” Goldstone said.

When the report came out on September 15th, it, according to Nathan Guttman writing in The Forward, “caused a huge initial international stir, not only because of its findings — the bulk of them focusing on Israel — but also because of its ultimate recommendation: that the United Nations Security Council, which has binding power under international law, require Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza, to conduct their own respective independent investigations of the evidence of human rights violations cited in the report. If they do not do so within six months, the report urged the Security Council to refer their cases to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Israel mobilized against it immediately, sending its spokespeople to counter its findings.”

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said about the report, it “was born in sin. Countries with atrocious human rights records sit there and criticize Israel. It’s not just Israel that criticized the Human Rights Council. Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon have criticized its obsession with Israel.”

Rejection of the report came from across the Israeli political spectrum. An aide to Labor party figure Ehud Barak said the report “not only rewards terror it also encourages it.”

The White House official’s promise of a veto directly undermined the report’s suggestion.

After the JTA article was picked up by other media, a White House spokesperson sought to clarify the administration’s position, saying the official “misspoke” during the call. She said the statement by Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador, was reflective of the administration’s position.

Rice previously described the report’s mandate as, “unbalanced, one sided and basically unacceptable. We have very serious concerns about many of the recommendations in the report. We will expect and believe that the appropriate venue for this report to be considered is the Human Rights Council and that is our strong view.”

She did not indicate to what extent the United States would go to prevent the report from having any impact, for example, if the Gaza invasion were referred to the International Criminal Court.

Despite the attempted correction, it is likely that the United States would block any international action against Israel for its wanton destruction of Gaza. The United States has a long history of providing Israel diplomatic cover within the United Nations. It used its veto in the United Nations Security Council more than 30 times between 1970 and 1993 alone. The United States exercised its veto power on only about 70 total occasions during that period.

This weei in Atlanta, The Carter Center urged all parties to heed the recommendations of the report on hostilities in and around Gaza from December 2008 to January 2009. It said that any controversy or criticisms of the report can be minimized by Israel and the Palestinians conducting their own investigations, as requested. Leading Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations have also called for this serious and independent follow-up action. It is expected that the international community, including the United States, will respect their obligations under the Geneva Conventions, the Center added.

“The Goldstone report underscores the need for both sides to end the cycle of impunity for human rights abusers and address urgently the continued humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. “The victimization of both Israeli and Palestinian civilians must stop, as the report emphasizes. Ultimately, the only guarantee for ending the violence is a just peace in the region, for which U.S. leadership is critical.”