Right up with Adam Horowitz’s analysis of the Goldstone reconsideration last Saturday, this is one of the best pieces yet published on the Goldstone reconsideration: South African John Dugard, a former UN rapporteur for the occupied territories, writing at the New Statesman blog yesterday. Excerpt:
Goldstone expresses “confidence” that the officer responsible for perhaps the gravest atrocity of Operation Cast Lead (Israel’s code name for its assault on Gaza) – the killing of 29 members of the al-Samouni family – will be punished properly by Israel, even though the McGowan Davis report [the UN Committee of Independent Experts, assessing progress on internal investigations] provides a critical assessment of Israel’s handling of the investigation into this killing.
Finally he claims that the McGowan Davis report finds that Israel has carried out investigations “to a significant degree”, but in fact this report paints a very different picture of Israel’s investigations of 400 incidents, which have resulted in two convictions, one for theft of a credit card, resulting in a sentence of seven months’ imprisonment, and another for using a Palestinian child as a human shield, which resulted in a suspended sentence of three months.
In short, there are no new facts that exonerate Israel and that could possibly have led Goldstone to change his mind. What made him change his mind therefore remains a closely guarded secret.
The Goldstone report was not the only fact-finding report on Operation Cast Lead. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the League of Arab States (whose mission I chaired) all produced thorough reports on the conflict.
In all the reports, including the Goldstone report, there were accounts of the killings of civilians by Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in a cold, calculated and deliberate manner. But the principal accusation levelled at Israel was that during its assault on Gaza, it used force indiscriminately in densely populated areas and was reckless about the foreseeable consequences of its actions, which resulted in at least 900 civilian deaths and 5,000 wounded.
In terms of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, it is a war crime t direct attackso intentionally against a civilian population (Article 8(2)(b)(i)). Such an intention need not be premeditated: it suffices if the person engaging in such action meant to cause the consequence of his action, or “is aware that it will occur in the ordinary course of events” (Article 30).
Goldstone’s op-ed may be interpreted to mean that he is now satisfied (though there is no evidence to support this) that Israel did not as a matter of policy deliberately and in a premeditated manner target civilians, and that where the calculated killing of civilians occurred this was without the blessing of the Israeli military and political leadership.
But he could not possibly have meant that Israel did not “intentionally target civilians as a matter of policy” in the legal sense of intention. That Israel’s assault was conducted in an indiscriminate manner with full knowledge that its consequences would be the killing and wounding of civilians is a matter of public record fully substantiated by the Goldstone report and other, equally credible findings.
