United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict
The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, also known as the Goldstone Report, was a United Nations fact-finding mission established in April 2009 pursuant to Resolution A/HRC/RES/S-9/1 of the United Nations Human Rights Council of 12 January 2009, following the Gaza War as an independent international fact-finding mission "to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression". South African jurist Richard Goldstone was appointed to head the mission. The other co-authors of the Report were Hina Jilani, Christine Chinkin and Desmond Travers.
The Goldstone Report accused both the Israel Defense Forces and the Palestinian militants of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. It recommended that each side openly investigate its own conduct, and to bring the allegations to the International Criminal Court if they failed to do so. The government of Israel rejected the report as prejudiced and full of errors, and also sharply rejected the charge that it had a policy of deliberately targeting civilians. The militant Islamic group Hamas initially rejected some of the report's findings, but then urged world powers to embrace it. Goldstone stated that the mission was not a judicial investigation, it was a fact-finding mission; the findings were "reasonable on weighing the evidence" but did not amount to "the criminal standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt". The allegations were "a useful road map" for independent investigations by Israel and the Palestinians.
The report received wide support among countries in the United Nations, while Western countries were split between supporters and opponents of the resolutions endorsing the report. Critics of the report stated that it contained methodological failings, legal and factual errors, and falsehoods, and devoted insufficient attention to the allegations that Hamas was deliberately operating in heavily populated areas of Gaza.
The Report described the three weeks comprising the Gaza War as:
a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.On 1 April 2011, Goldstone stated that recent Israeli investigations indicated that it was not Israeli government policy to deliberately target citizens. On 14 April 2011 the three other co-authors of the Report, Hina Jilani, Christine Chinkin and Desmond Travers, jointly criticized Goldstone's recantation. They all agreed that the report was valid and that Israel and Hamas had failed to investigate alleged war crimes satisfactorily.
Mandate of mission
On 3 January 2009, in response to the Gaza War, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference's executive committee asked UNHRC to send a fact-finding mission to Gaza. On 12 January, UNHRC adopted Resolution S-9/1:Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, was asked by UNHRC President Martin Uhomoibhi to lead the Mission but expressed disappointment with the mandate and refused to head the Mission for that reason. She stated that the UNHRC resolution was one-sided and "guided not by human rights but by politics". She later expressed full support for the report.
Richard Goldstone initially refused the appointment for the same reason, calling the mandate "biased" and "uneven-handed". In January 2011, Goldstone said that UNHRC "repeatedly rush to pass condemnatory resolutions in the face of alleged violations of human rights law by Israel but fail to take similar action in the face of even more serious violations by other States. Until the Gaza Report they failed to condemn the firing of rockets and mortars at Israeli civilian centers". Following Goldstone's objection, the mandate was informally widened to cover activities by Palestinian militants as well, and the revised mandate, as quoted by the final report, became:
Speaking at Brandeis University, Goldstone noted that the widened mandate was presented by UNHRC President to a plenary session, where it did not encounter a single objection. He later described as "tiresome and inept" allegations made by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the mandate had not been broadened to cover violations by all parties. Despite Uhomoibhi's verbal commitment that there was no objection to the revised mandate, UNHRC never voted to revise the mandate, and resolution S-9/1 remained unchanged.
Mission members
According to the mission's report, "The President appointed Justice Richard Goldstone, former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, to head the Mission. The other three appointed members were: Christine Chinkin, Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, who took part in a fact-finding mission to Beit Hanoun in 2008; Hina Jilani, Advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and a member of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur in 2004; and Desmond Travers, a former colonel in the Irish Defence Forces and member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for International Criminal Investigations."Human Rights Watch applauded the selection of Goldstone to head the mission, saying, "Justice Goldstone's reputation for fairness and integrity is unmatched, and his investigation provides the best opportunity to address alleged violations by both Hamas and Israel." Goldstone was a board member of HRW at that time, which HRW noted in its article. Gerald Steinberg of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor and journalist Melanie Phillips said that even though Goldstone resigned from HRW after the inquiry began, his impartiality was compromised by his link to an organization that accused Israel of war crimes.
In March 2009, Goldstone, Travers and Jilani signed an open letter to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the United Nations Security Council, calling for those who perpetrated "gross violations of the laws of war", "gross violations of international humanitarian law" and "targeting of civilians" to be brought to account. The letter concluded: "The events in Gaza have shocked us to the core. Relief and reconstruction are desperately needed but, for the real wounds to heal, we must also establish the truth about crimes perpetuated against civilians on both sides." The chief rabbi of South Africa Warren Goldstein and Melanie Phillips asserted that this statement, made before the work of the mission has begun, violated provisions for impartiality of the fact-finding missions. Mary Robinson called Goldstone "a dedicated and unimpeachable human rights lawyer and advocate" who "was able to work with the Council's president to secure an agreement that he felt confident would permit the mandate to be interpreted in such a way as to allow his team to address the actions taken by both parties to the conflict".
In January 2009, before her appointment to the mission, Christine Chinkin co-signed a letter published in the Sunday Times describing Israel's military offensive in Gaza as "an act of aggression". The letter also stated that the firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel and suicide bombings are "contrary to international humanitarian law and are war crimes". Critics, among them Howard L. Berman, said that Chinkin should have been disqualified to preserve the impartiality of the mission. In August 2009, NGO UN Watch submitted a petition to the UN, calling for Chinkin's disqualification. In May 2009, Chinkin denied the charges, saying that her statement only addressed jus ad bellum, and not jus in bello."
The inquiry members said that the mission investigated whether Israel, Hamas or the Palestinian Authority had unnecessarily harmed innocent civilians, stating "On those issues the letter co-signed by Chinkin expressed no view at all." The members wrote that the fact-finding mission was not a judicial or even a quasi-judicial proceeding. Hillel Neuer, director of UN Watch, said that the basic standards for international fact-finding missions had been ignored. Goldstone agreed that the letter could have been the grounds for disqualification if the mission had been a judicial inquiry. Two groups, a group of UK lawyers and academics, and a group of Canadian lawyers, said they supported the UN Watch request that Chinkin be disqualified and expressed disappointment that it was rejected.
Investigation
The mission convened on 4 May in Geneva and during a week-long session held meetings with UN Member States, NGOs and representatives of the UN. By the end of the session, the mission established its methodology and a three-month program of work. The mission issued a press release on 8 May describing the mandate, progress and plans. Goldstone stated that the focus of the investigation would be on "an objective and impartial analysis of compliance of the parties to the conflict with their obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law, especially their responsibility to ensure the protection of civilians and non-combatants," adding "I believe that an objective assessment of the issues is in the interests of all parties, will promote a culture of accountability and could serve to promote greater peace and security in the region."On 8 June, the mission invited "all interested persons and organizations to submit relevant information and documentation that will assist in the implementation of the Mission's mandate". Submissions were to focus on "events and conduct that occurred in the context of the armed conflict that took place between 27 December 2008 and 19 January 2009" and that "for the purposes of its mandate, events since June 2008 are particularly relevant to the conflict."
The mission conducted two field visits to Gaza, entering through the Rafah Border Crossing from Egypt after access through Israel was denied. The first visit, on 1–5 June 2009, included a tour of the sites and interviews with victims and witnesses. Investigations continued during the second visit, from 26 June to 1 July, with public hearings. In the course of the investigation, the committee conducted 188 interviews, reviewed 10,000 pages of documents and inspected 1,200 photographs.
Israel refused to cooperate with the investigation, citing anti-Israel bias in the UNHRC and the mission's one-sided founding resolution. Israel also stated that the mission would be unable to question Palestinian militants who fired rockets at Israel. The team was denied access to military sources, and entrance to Gaza via Israel.
According to Western media reports, Hamas was very cooperative; nevertheless, Goldstone pointed out that in some areas of information the committee did not receive full cooperation from the Palestinians. It was also reported that the team had been escorted by Hamas minders who could have intimidated witnesses. Goldstone dismissed these allegations as "baseless".
At the end of a four-day trip, the head of the team expressed shock at the scale of destruction. Goldstone announced that the team would hold public hearings with the war's victims later in June, in Gaza and Geneva. Alex Whiting, a professor at Harvard law school, said cases like the one being probed by the UN inquiry team are hard to investigate, especially without military records.
In the morning session of 6 July, Israeli witnesses and representatives testified in front of the committee, describing years of living under rocket attack. The last to take the floor during the session was Noam Shalit, father of the Israeli captive soldier Gilad Shalit who at that time had been imprisoned in Gaza for three years, with no visit by the Red Cross permitted. Later that day, pro-Palestinian witnesses and experts from Israel and the West Bank testified. The next day, a military expert testified on weapons use by Hamas and Israel and an international law expert testified at Goldstone's Gaza hearings. Following the two-day session, Goldstone said that the investigation entered its final phase, but that it was too soon to conclude that war crimes were committed.
Israeli lawyer Charles Abelsohn criticized the objectivity of the committee members, citing Travers who said during the public hearings that "there have been instances of the shooting of children in front of their parents. As an ex-soldier I find that kind of action to be very, very strange and very unique", asking the witness to comment on those insights.
The commission's report states that during and after the investigation, several Palestinians cooperating with the Mission were detained by Israeli security forces. One of them was Muhammad Srour, a member of the Popular Committee Against the Wall in Nilin, who testified before the Mission in Geneva; en route back to West Bank he was arrested. After UN intervention, he was released. Israeli security sources said that Sruor was detained for questioning on suspicion that he was involved in terror activity and that his visit to Geneva had no bearing on the arrest. Another witness, Shawan Jabarin, General Director of the Palestinian human-rights organisation Al Haq, had to be heard by videoconference, as he has been subject to a travel ban by Israel since 2006 preventing him from leaving the West Bank on the grounds that he is a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.