The Palestinian reaction to the Palestinian Authority selling out Gaza on the Goldstone report has been vehement. Now, Arab News reports, Abbas is shocked, shocked over the cashiering of the report:
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, amid mounting criticisms at home over Palestinian Authority’s decision to withdraw support for a UN report on Israeli war crimes in Gaza, on Sunday formed a committee to investigate the reasons for the move.
The report by respected justice Richard Goldstone will now lie dormant for at least six months rather than be sent to the UN General Assembly with possible recommendations for action.
“Abbas, after consultations with PLO members and Prime Minister (Salam Fayyad), issued a decree to form a committee to investigate the circumstances behind postponing the vote on Goldstone report on Israeli war crimes during its aggression on Gaza Strip,” Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary-general of PLO’s executive committee, said in a press statement.
Jerry Haber has the best post on the debacle, saying that the nullification of the report has given a huge boost to the BDS movement because Palestinians have no other power in a world where international courts and systems routinely overlook the destruction of their rights. Haber:
It took about a week to finish off Richard Goldstone and his Gaza Report. You have to give a lot of credit to the Netanyahu government. They get better at killing the messenger each time they do it. This time a few days of Israeli phone calls to the European capitals, intensive public relations, and a lot of help from the US government, did the trick. Hillary bought the Israeli line that acting upon the Goldstone Report would damage a (non-existent) peace process. As if the war crimes in Gaza had anything to do with any sort of peace process…. And let’s not forget a VERY BIG winner of throwing Judge Goldstone under the bus – the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions people. For we now know that the way to get results out of the Israeli government is through public action – and that action cannot be left to government actions, especially when the governments are serial human-rights violators such as the US, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority.
As for the Obama administration, giant loser here. Paul Woodward says that Obama tried to dodge this one by sticking it to the P.A. And the result has been to demolish the PA as a credible spokesman for Palestinian interests.
A year ago had there been a similar scenario, Abbas would not have been alone in receiving well-deserved expressions of contempt. Bush and Rice would have drawn as much criticism. Let’s not pretend that Obama is an innocent bystander here.
Whichever "top White House official told Jewish organizational leaders in an off-the-record phone call" that the Goldstone report would get strangled (in a "natural conclusion") was telling the truth. [This site never bought the Obama administration’s correction of this report the next day; no, we believe in the Israel lobby]
Abbas did the inexcusable dirty work but the Obama administration made him do it.
(And just for the record, I voted for Obama.)
