UN: Israel targeted civilians

JERUSALEM - Israel targeted "the people of Gaza as a whole" in the three-week military operation, according to a United Nations report that accuses both the Palestinians and Israelis of war crimes.

A UN fact-finding mission, led by the South African and Jewish judge Richard Goldstone, said Israel should face prosecution by the International Criminal Court, unless it opened fully independent investigations of what the report said were repeated violations of international law, "possible war crimes and crimes against humanity" during the operation, which is estimated to have killed 1300 Palestinians.

The mission also had harsh conclusions about Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups, acknowledging that rocket and mortar attacks have caused terror in southern Israel, and saying that where such attacks were launched into civilians areas they would "constitute war crimes" and "may amount to crimes against humanity".

Using the strongest language of any of the numerous reports criticising Operation Cast Lead, the UN mission says that while Israel had portrayed the war as self-defence in response to Hamas attacks, it "considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole".

"In this respect, the operations were in furtherance of an overall policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population for its resilience and for its apparent support for Hamas, and possibly with the intent of forcing a change in such support," the report said.

The 575-page document presented to yesterday's session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva was denounced by Israel. The Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the UN mission had "dealt a huge blow to Governments seeking to defend their citizens from terror" and that its conclusions were "so disconnected with realities on the ground that one cannot but wonder on which planet was the Gaza Strip they visited".

The Gaza war began on December 27 last year and ended on January 18.

The report found that the statements of military and political leaders in Israel before and during the operation indicated that they intended the use of "disproportionate force", aimed not only at the enemy, but also at the "supporting infrastructure". The mission adds: "In practice, this appears to have meant the civilian population."

The mission also condemned the extrajudicial killings, detention and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees by the Hamas regime in Gaza - and by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank - and called for the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli corporal abducted by Gaza militants in June 2006.

While the Israeli Government refused to co-operate with the inquiry on the grounds that the team would be "one-sided", Shalit's father, Noam, was among those Israeli citizens who flew to Geneva to give evidence.

That said, the greater part of the report - and its strongest language - is reserved for Israel's conduct during the operation.

Apart from the unprecedented death toll, the report says that "the destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a systematic policy by the Israeli armed forces".

The purpose was not to avert a military threat, but "to make the daily process of living and dignified living more difficult for the civilian population".

- INDEPENDENT

BLUEPRINT FOR PEACE

Jerusalem divided by a series of fences, trenches and walls. The West Bank and Gaza linked by a sunken highway. Land exchanges that would require 100,000 Jewish settlers to move.

These proposals are part of a 424-page blueprint for Mideast peace presented yesterday - the most detailed description yet of what an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal could look like.

The plan was released as a new United States diplomatic effort was under way to restart peace talks and ahead of meetings next week at the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York.

Created by teams of Israeli and Palestinian experts and former negotiators, the blueprint is meant to show it is still possible to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Its core is a Palestinian state in nearly 98 per cent of the West Bank, all of the Gaza Strip and the Arab-populated areas of Jerusalem. The blueprint highlights how complex and expensive peace will be.

It had to resort to flow charts to describe a multilayered bureaucracy of thousands of international troops and monitors.

- AP