United Nations Mission with broad mandate to investigate Gaza war to arrive on Monday
Marian Houk
June 01, 2009
Until the last minute, it was not clear how South Africa's Justice Richard Goldstone would arrive in the region this weekend with a mandate from the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva to begin an inquiry into the IDF's Operation Cast Lead against Gaza (27 December - 18 January), or whetherIsrael will or will not let him enter the country, if he tries to come here.
Israel -- which often prefers ambiguity -- apparently did not reply to Goldstone's request for a visa.
"So far, Israel is refusing to cooperate", said Rina Rosenberg Jabareen of Adalah, "and that means that the Goldstone mission wouldn't have access to speak to the army, to the military and the political leaders".
Justice Goldstone and his team entered Gaza via Egypt through the Rafah crossing on Monday.
They were greeted by Hamas official Ghazi Hamad, who currently works in the Gaza crossings authority. Goldstone told journalists later that "We have come here to see, to learn, to talk to people in all walks of life; ordinary people, governmental people, administrative people".
The mission's mandate is to "investigate all violations of International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after."
Goldstone himself told a UN press conference in Geneva on 3 April that "It is in the interest of all Israelis and Palestinians that the facts relevant to those allegations should be impartially investigated by an independent international mission. The findings of such a mission might be relevant in relation to possible domestic inquiries and domestic criminal or civil proceedings, and international accountability mechanisms". He added that "this is to be an independent, evenhanded and unbiased investigation".
In that press conference, Goldstone requested "the cooperation of the relevant authorities to enable the members of the Mission to visit and meet with victims both in Israel and in Gaza and in the Occupied Territories to examine the context and consequences of military actions in Gaza. It is my earnest wish that all relevant parties and administrations assist and cooperate with the Mission. I need hardly add that submissions, whether of fact or law, would be sought by the Mission from all relevant persons and will be taken into account by the Mission in the formulation of its report and its recommendations. It is my hope that such a report will make a meaningful contribution to the peace process in the Middle East and to delivering justice to the victims".
At the time in early April that Goldstone was named to head this mission, Barbara Crossette, a former New York Times correspondent at the UNHQ/NY who now writes for the American publication, The Nation, reported that "Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who was chief prosecutor for war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, was selected by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate allegations that Israel violated international laws in its assault on Gaza. The Human Rights Council is a body of nations not controlled by either the UN secretary general or the UN's high commissioner for human rights. The secretary general, the first high-ranking international official to visit Gaza after the attacks, has not tried to block what is essentially a war crimes investigation". This can be read in full here.
We reported earlier on the UN Secretary-General's trip to Gaza here.
The mission began work in Geneva on 4 May; it will visit Gaza from 1-5 June; and it is "required to submit its report within three months", according to a Public Advance Notice it issued -- unusually -- which is accessible here.
The Public Advance Notice states that "the Mission will focus on relevant violations by all parties in the entire occupied Palestinian territory, including Gaza and the West Bank, and Israel ... Pending reply from the Government of Israel, the Mission is relying on the cooperation of the Government of Egypt to facilitate entrance to Gaza through Rafah. Subsequent field visits will be announced in due time".
Anyone wishing to make contact with the Mission on any matter relevant to its mandate can do so by email to factfindinggaza@ohchr.org, according to the Public Advance Notice. In addition, it also informs us that "Anyone wishing to make contact with the Mission during its visit to Gaza may contact the Mission by telephone at: (+970) 0597 444 158 or (+970) 0597 444 159. According to the Public Advance Notice, "Measures are being taken to ensure the careful and safe handling, communication and preservation of the Missionīs records and files. The information collected by the Mission is, and will remain, the property of the United Nations. Wherever necessary, the Mission will take precautionary measures necessary to ensure the safety or protection of victims, witnesses, sources and any other persons cooperating with the Mission".
The mission also has its own UN webpage here.
The Israeli media was recently told that the government would not cooperate with this mission, despite their respect for Goldstone (who, like the UN HRC's Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, Professor Richard Falk, is Jewish -- though Falk may also be a Baha'i).
Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Yigal Palmor was unreachable by phone on Monday. He told journalists last week that "This committee has been instructed to find Israel guilty no matter what and there is no point in cooperating with such a masquerade". Israeli officials have said that the Goldstone mission is "intrinsically flawed" because its mandate is from the UN's 47-member Human Rights Council in Geneva, which has been accused of spending a disproportionate amount of time concentrating on flaws in Israel's human rights record.
Adalah's Fatmeh el-'Ajou said that the staff accompanying Goldstone still think there is a possibility that the Israeli government may change its mind. "They didn't lose the hope", she said. The mission is already planning to make another separate trip, she said. Maybe the mission would even be allowed to enter after visiting the West Bank next weekend.
Goldstone told journalists at the press conference in Geneva in April that "it certainly came to me as quite a shock as a Jew to be invited by the President to head this mission. It is obviously an additional dimension. I've taken a deep interest in Israel in what happens in Israel and I have been associated with organizations that have worked in Israel ... [L]et me assure you it was not an easy decision. It took many days and some sleepless nights in mulling the invitation, but I decided to accept it because of my deep concern for peace in the Middle East, and my deep concern for victims in all sides in the Middle East. I think it is very important too often the victims are left off the agenda and in my view they should be on top of the agenda. Itīs certainly my hope that I can make a contribution in that regard".
Israeli human rights organizations have called on Israel "to cooperate with the investigative delegation led by South African judge Richard Goldstone into combat events in Gaza in January", and have stated that "The very existence of a balanced investigation is in Israelīs best interest", and that "It is in our best interest to cooperate with an impartial investigation". The Israeli human rights organizations who signed on to this statement are the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), BīTselem, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Yesh Din, Bimkom, Adalah, Public Committee Against Torture, Hamoked, and Gisha.
But, will Israel deny Goldstone and his team entry to the country, or even deport him if he showed up at the airport -- as they did to Falk (a U.S. citizen)?
It is unlikely. While Israel has a positive regard for Goldstone, Israel seems by contrast to have had a particular grievance against Falk, and Foreign Ministry officials have accused him of entering the country a few months earlier, though it was after he was appointed Special Rapporteur, by saying that he was coming in his personal capacity. Then, during that visit, somebody apparently introduced him in a seminar in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, as the UN Special Rapporteur. But, was that Falk's fault?
In any case, Falk was rather badly treated at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, and then deported, in what Israeli human rights groups experts have privately said was a scandalous mismanagement of the situation by the UN, who should have prevented that disastrous outcome.
We reported on this earlier, here, and also here.
Goldstone said in the Geneva press conference that "I have no doubt that it is in the interests of all parties to cooperate. As I said, and as the President has said, it is in the interests of victims. It has certainly been my experience in South Africa, in the Balkans and Rwanda that transparent, public investigations are very important; important particularly to the victims because it brings acknowledgment of what happened to them and it can be the beginning of a healing process. So, I have no doubt it is in their interests. I would hope it is in the interests of all the governmental authorities too to really be on the moral high ground in cooperating with what I hope will be seen as a substantial, if not a important, United Nations endeavor to be of assistance. What will happen if there isnīt cooperation from all parties I think is a matter the mission will have to take into account if that happens".
To enter Gaza, Goldstone has only a few limited options -- the easiest and perhaps most diplomatic (at least vis-a-vis Israel) being (1) to enter Israel after flying to Ben Gurion International Airport. But he can't do that if Israel didn't issue visas to him and the other members of the mission.
Other options would be either (2) flying to Amman, Jordan, and then (a) crossing the Allenby Bridge on the Jordan River and passing through the occupied West Bank, or (b) crossing into Israel directly from Jordan via the Sheikh Hussein bridge just to the north of the West Bank, or (c) going from Amman down to the Red Sea and crossing over into the Israeli port city of Eilat, then driving up through the Negev. In all of these cases, Goldstone and the other members of the mission would have to be given Israeli visas. Then, from Israel -- but only with Israeli military authorization -- Goldstone can enter and leave the Gaza Strip through the imposing and terrible Erez "Passenger" terminal.
Alternatively -- and this is the more likely scenario, absent a positive Israeli reply in the coming hours to his visa request -- Goldstone may enter Gaza via Egypt, then travelling four or five hours across the Sinai to the Rafah crossing which Egypt opens and closes like a water faucet, according to its own calculations. This is the only option that does not require overt Israeli agreement.
UPDATE: The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has now issued a statement saying that "the fact-finding mission will travel to the region over the weekend and ... will enter Gaza from Egypt via the Rafah crossing point".
There is a precedent: South Africa's Nobel Prize winning Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a life-long anti-Apartheid activist who established the country's post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, had to enter and leave Gaza last year via Rafah -- after being denied entry through Israel to complete his investigation of the deaths of 19 Palestinian civilians, mostly in their sleep, from an "error" in the IDF shelling of their residential compound in Beit Hanoun in November 2006.
This weekend, at a literary festival in England, South Africa's Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu told the audience that it was urgent to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: "If we don't solve that problem, you can give up on all other problems. You can give up on nuclear disarmament, you can give up on ever winning a war against terror, you can give it up. You can give up any hope of our faiths ever working clearly amicably and in a friendly way together. This, this, this is THE problem, and it is in our hands".
The Guardian newspaper reported that Tutu said "things happen in Israel that never happened in apartheid South Africa, Tutu said, pointing to the 'collective punishment', which sees the home of a suspected terrorist destroyed. But Tutu was clear that he doesn't believe 'ordinary Israelis would want to have supported something of this nature if they knew the effects of [these] policies'. " The full report is posted on The Guardian's website here .
However, since Operation Cast Lead when international journalists and humanitarian aid workers were barred from Gaza, and some managed to evade the restriction by entering during rare openings from Egypt via Rafah the Israel military has said that anyone who enters Gaza via Rafah (or indeed from any other place than Israelīs Erez Terminal) will not be allowed to come into Israel from Gaza.
So, if Goldstone now enters Gaza via Rafah, how will he and the members of his mission be able to visit the Israeli city of Sderot, at the Gaza perimeter, which has perhaps suffered the most from the war crime of being indiscriminately fired upon from Gaza by rockets, mortars and missiles?
Well, it won't be as easy as dropping by Sderot while on his way in or out of Gaza via nearby Erez, as most official visitors do, not only out of real interest, but also out of the public obligation to be seen as "objective".
But Goldstone could leave Gaza via Rafah, drive to Cairo across the Sinai, fly to Amman, and then go through options (2a or b) -- or he could drive from Cairo down a good part of the length of Sinai to Taba, the cross over into the Israeli city of Eilat, and pursue option (2c), driving back up through the Negev ...
Another South African legal expert, John Dugard, who preceeded Falk as the UN Human Rights Commission's Special Rapporteur, used to enter Israel on his national passport, with the full knowledge of the Israeli government, and without any obstruction except their own passive non-cooperation. He even got some kind of assistance, according to a letter written in June 2008 by Itzhak Levanon, then Israel's Ambassador to the UN in Geneva -- despite the fact that Dugard harshly criticized Israel's actions against the Palestinians.
Levanon wrote that Israel had hosted "eight Special Rapporteurs and the High Commissioner in less than three years", between 2005 and 2008. He then added: "Of course, all of these missions were interspersed with regular, twice-yearly visits from the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, who was always provided with special documentation to facilitate his movements in our region". Here, Levanon was referring to John Dugard.
When I tried to find out what, exactly, was that "special documentation to facilitate his [Dugard's] movements in our region", I got no answer, and no explanation -- either from Ambassador Levanon's staff at the Israeli mission in Geneva, or from the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights in Geneva.
At the time, I asked: What does that mean? What kind of "special documentation"? Was it a simple letter of introduction? Or something more? But, there was no reply.
Levanon's letter, published here, was written to obtain a correction about something I wrote in one of my articles at the time, UN Says Human Rights Situation in Occupied Palestinian Territory Remains Grave, which is published here. Levanon wrote in complaint that "it is false to state that Israel has 'consistently not replied to visa requests to most UN Special Rapporteurs'." However, that is not exactly what I wrote, which was ,in fact, this: "Israel has consistently not replied to visa requests to most UN Special Rapporteurs, or special investigative missions, whose mandates it does not like [emphasis added here]. So, most of them do not come to the region". And, in my reply, published here, I noted that Ambassador Levanon's letter unfortunately, selectively gave only a part of the picture, and that while his letter provided a list of a few visits from UN Human Rights officials that Israel has facilitated, neither his letter nor the UN itself would give any indication of how many visits Israel has blocked -- mainly by not replying, rather than by outright saying "No". I also noted that it was interesting that the Israeli Mission didn't give any hint about what it would do, exactly, to facilitate the work of the new Special Rapporteur, Richard Falk. Unfortunately, we all know what happened to Professsor Falk ... Now, we shall see what will happen with Justice Goldstone.
The Goldstone mission, according to its Public Advance Notice, "intends to consult with a wide range of interlocutors who will include victims and witnesses, Palestinian, Israeli and international NGOs, United Nations and other international organizations, community organizations, human rights defenders, medical and other professionals, legal and military experts, and other sources of reliable information relevant to its mandate, within and outside Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory. The Mission will also seek consultations with relevant authorities. In the course of its work, the Mission will review reports produced by various organizations and institutions, and will be requesting submissions on matters of fact and law relevant to its inquiry ... The Mission is also planning to hold public hearings on particular issues of concern related to its mandate".
Israel -- which often prefers ambiguity -- apparently did not reply to Goldstone's request for a visa.
"So far, Israel is refusing to cooperate", said Rina Rosenberg Jabareen of Adalah, "and that means that the Goldstone mission wouldn't have access to speak to the army, to the military and the political leaders".
Justice Goldstone and his team entered Gaza via Egypt through the Rafah crossing on Monday.
They were greeted by Hamas official Ghazi Hamad, who currently works in the Gaza crossings authority. Goldstone told journalists later that "We have come here to see, to learn, to talk to people in all walks of life; ordinary people, governmental people, administrative people".
The mission's mandate is to "investigate all violations of International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after."
Goldstone himself told a UN press conference in Geneva on 3 April that "It is in the interest of all Israelis and Palestinians that the facts relevant to those allegations should be impartially investigated by an independent international mission. The findings of such a mission might be relevant in relation to possible domestic inquiries and domestic criminal or civil proceedings, and international accountability mechanisms". He added that "this is to be an independent, evenhanded and unbiased investigation".
In that press conference, Goldstone requested "the cooperation of the relevant authorities to enable the members of the Mission to visit and meet with victims both in Israel and in Gaza and in the Occupied Territories to examine the context and consequences of military actions in Gaza. It is my earnest wish that all relevant parties and administrations assist and cooperate with the Mission. I need hardly add that submissions, whether of fact or law, would be sought by the Mission from all relevant persons and will be taken into account by the Mission in the formulation of its report and its recommendations. It is my hope that such a report will make a meaningful contribution to the peace process in the Middle East and to delivering justice to the victims".
At the time in early April that Goldstone was named to head this mission, Barbara Crossette, a former New York Times correspondent at the UNHQ/NY who now writes for the American publication, The Nation, reported that "Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who was chief prosecutor for war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, was selected by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate allegations that Israel violated international laws in its assault on Gaza. The Human Rights Council is a body of nations not controlled by either the UN secretary general or the UN's high commissioner for human rights. The secretary general, the first high-ranking international official to visit Gaza after the attacks, has not tried to block what is essentially a war crimes investigation". This can be read in full here.
We reported earlier on the UN Secretary-General's trip to Gaza here.
The mission began work in Geneva on 4 May; it will visit Gaza from 1-5 June; and it is "required to submit its report within three months", according to a Public Advance Notice it issued -- unusually -- which is accessible here.
The Public Advance Notice states that "the Mission will focus on relevant violations by all parties in the entire occupied Palestinian territory, including Gaza and the West Bank, and Israel ... Pending reply from the Government of Israel, the Mission is relying on the cooperation of the Government of Egypt to facilitate entrance to Gaza through Rafah. Subsequent field visits will be announced in due time".
Anyone wishing to make contact with the Mission on any matter relevant to its mandate can do so by email to factfindinggaza@ohchr.org, according to the Public Advance Notice. In addition, it also informs us that "Anyone wishing to make contact with the Mission during its visit to Gaza may contact the Mission by telephone at: (+970) 0597 444 158 or (+970) 0597 444 159. According to the Public Advance Notice, "Measures are being taken to ensure the careful and safe handling, communication and preservation of the Missionīs records and files. The information collected by the Mission is, and will remain, the property of the United Nations. Wherever necessary, the Mission will take precautionary measures necessary to ensure the safety or protection of victims, witnesses, sources and any other persons cooperating with the Mission".
The mission also has its own UN webpage here.
The Israeli media was recently told that the government would not cooperate with this mission, despite their respect for Goldstone (who, like the UN HRC's Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, Professor Richard Falk, is Jewish -- though Falk may also be a Baha'i).
Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Yigal Palmor was unreachable by phone on Monday. He told journalists last week that "This committee has been instructed to find Israel guilty no matter what and there is no point in cooperating with such a masquerade". Israeli officials have said that the Goldstone mission is "intrinsically flawed" because its mandate is from the UN's 47-member Human Rights Council in Geneva, which has been accused of spending a disproportionate amount of time concentrating on flaws in Israel's human rights record.
Adalah's Fatmeh el-'Ajou said that the staff accompanying Goldstone still think there is a possibility that the Israeli government may change its mind. "They didn't lose the hope", she said. The mission is already planning to make another separate trip, she said. Maybe the mission would even be allowed to enter after visiting the West Bank next weekend.
Goldstone told journalists at the press conference in Geneva in April that "it certainly came to me as quite a shock as a Jew to be invited by the President to head this mission. It is obviously an additional dimension. I've taken a deep interest in Israel in what happens in Israel and I have been associated with organizations that have worked in Israel ... [L]et me assure you it was not an easy decision. It took many days and some sleepless nights in mulling the invitation, but I decided to accept it because of my deep concern for peace in the Middle East, and my deep concern for victims in all sides in the Middle East. I think it is very important too often the victims are left off the agenda and in my view they should be on top of the agenda. Itīs certainly my hope that I can make a contribution in that regard".
Israeli human rights organizations have called on Israel "to cooperate with the investigative delegation led by South African judge Richard Goldstone into combat events in Gaza in January", and have stated that "The very existence of a balanced investigation is in Israelīs best interest", and that "It is in our best interest to cooperate with an impartial investigation". The Israeli human rights organizations who signed on to this statement are the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), BīTselem, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Yesh Din, Bimkom, Adalah, Public Committee Against Torture, Hamoked, and Gisha.
But, will Israel deny Goldstone and his team entry to the country, or even deport him if he showed up at the airport -- as they did to Falk (a U.S. citizen)?
It is unlikely. While Israel has a positive regard for Goldstone, Israel seems by contrast to have had a particular grievance against Falk, and Foreign Ministry officials have accused him of entering the country a few months earlier, though it was after he was appointed Special Rapporteur, by saying that he was coming in his personal capacity. Then, during that visit, somebody apparently introduced him in a seminar in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, as the UN Special Rapporteur. But, was that Falk's fault?
In any case, Falk was rather badly treated at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, and then deported, in what Israeli human rights groups experts have privately said was a scandalous mismanagement of the situation by the UN, who should have prevented that disastrous outcome.
We reported on this earlier, here, and also here.
Goldstone said in the Geneva press conference that "I have no doubt that it is in the interests of all parties to cooperate. As I said, and as the President has said, it is in the interests of victims. It has certainly been my experience in South Africa, in the Balkans and Rwanda that transparent, public investigations are very important; important particularly to the victims because it brings acknowledgment of what happened to them and it can be the beginning of a healing process. So, I have no doubt it is in their interests. I would hope it is in the interests of all the governmental authorities too to really be on the moral high ground in cooperating with what I hope will be seen as a substantial, if not a important, United Nations endeavor to be of assistance. What will happen if there isnīt cooperation from all parties I think is a matter the mission will have to take into account if that happens".
To enter Gaza, Goldstone has only a few limited options -- the easiest and perhaps most diplomatic (at least vis-a-vis Israel) being (1) to enter Israel after flying to Ben Gurion International Airport. But he can't do that if Israel didn't issue visas to him and the other members of the mission.
Other options would be either (2) flying to Amman, Jordan, and then (a) crossing the Allenby Bridge on the Jordan River and passing through the occupied West Bank, or (b) crossing into Israel directly from Jordan via the Sheikh Hussein bridge just to the north of the West Bank, or (c) going from Amman down to the Red Sea and crossing over into the Israeli port city of Eilat, then driving up through the Negev. In all of these cases, Goldstone and the other members of the mission would have to be given Israeli visas. Then, from Israel -- but only with Israeli military authorization -- Goldstone can enter and leave the Gaza Strip through the imposing and terrible Erez "Passenger" terminal.
Alternatively -- and this is the more likely scenario, absent a positive Israeli reply in the coming hours to his visa request -- Goldstone may enter Gaza via Egypt, then travelling four or five hours across the Sinai to the Rafah crossing which Egypt opens and closes like a water faucet, according to its own calculations. This is the only option that does not require overt Israeli agreement.
UPDATE: The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has now issued a statement saying that "the fact-finding mission will travel to the region over the weekend and ... will enter Gaza from Egypt via the Rafah crossing point".
There is a precedent: South Africa's Nobel Prize winning Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a life-long anti-Apartheid activist who established the country's post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, had to enter and leave Gaza last year via Rafah -- after being denied entry through Israel to complete his investigation of the deaths of 19 Palestinian civilians, mostly in their sleep, from an "error" in the IDF shelling of their residential compound in Beit Hanoun in November 2006.
This weekend, at a literary festival in England, South Africa's Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu told the audience that it was urgent to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: "If we don't solve that problem, you can give up on all other problems. You can give up on nuclear disarmament, you can give up on ever winning a war against terror, you can give it up. You can give up any hope of our faiths ever working clearly amicably and in a friendly way together. This, this, this is THE problem, and it is in our hands".
The Guardian newspaper reported that Tutu said "things happen in Israel that never happened in apartheid South Africa, Tutu said, pointing to the 'collective punishment', which sees the home of a suspected terrorist destroyed. But Tutu was clear that he doesn't believe 'ordinary Israelis would want to have supported something of this nature if they knew the effects of [these] policies'. " The full report is posted on The Guardian's website here .
However, since Operation Cast Lead when international journalists and humanitarian aid workers were barred from Gaza, and some managed to evade the restriction by entering during rare openings from Egypt via Rafah the Israel military has said that anyone who enters Gaza via Rafah (or indeed from any other place than Israelīs Erez Terminal) will not be allowed to come into Israel from Gaza.
So, if Goldstone now enters Gaza via Rafah, how will he and the members of his mission be able to visit the Israeli city of Sderot, at the Gaza perimeter, which has perhaps suffered the most from the war crime of being indiscriminately fired upon from Gaza by rockets, mortars and missiles?
Well, it won't be as easy as dropping by Sderot while on his way in or out of Gaza via nearby Erez, as most official visitors do, not only out of real interest, but also out of the public obligation to be seen as "objective".
But Goldstone could leave Gaza via Rafah, drive to Cairo across the Sinai, fly to Amman, and then go through options (2a or b) -- or he could drive from Cairo down a good part of the length of Sinai to Taba, the cross over into the Israeli city of Eilat, and pursue option (2c), driving back up through the Negev ...
Another South African legal expert, John Dugard, who preceeded Falk as the UN Human Rights Commission's Special Rapporteur, used to enter Israel on his national passport, with the full knowledge of the Israeli government, and without any obstruction except their own passive non-cooperation. He even got some kind of assistance, according to a letter written in June 2008 by Itzhak Levanon, then Israel's Ambassador to the UN in Geneva -- despite the fact that Dugard harshly criticized Israel's actions against the Palestinians.
Levanon wrote that Israel had hosted "eight Special Rapporteurs and the High Commissioner in less than three years", between 2005 and 2008. He then added: "Of course, all of these missions were interspersed with regular, twice-yearly visits from the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, who was always provided with special documentation to facilitate his movements in our region". Here, Levanon was referring to John Dugard.
When I tried to find out what, exactly, was that "special documentation to facilitate his [Dugard's] movements in our region", I got no answer, and no explanation -- either from Ambassador Levanon's staff at the Israeli mission in Geneva, or from the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights in Geneva.
At the time, I asked: What does that mean? What kind of "special documentation"? Was it a simple letter of introduction? Or something more? But, there was no reply.
Levanon's letter, published here, was written to obtain a correction about something I wrote in one of my articles at the time, UN Says Human Rights Situation in Occupied Palestinian Territory Remains Grave, which is published here. Levanon wrote in complaint that "it is false to state that Israel has 'consistently not replied to visa requests to most UN Special Rapporteurs'." However, that is not exactly what I wrote, which was ,in fact, this: "Israel has consistently not replied to visa requests to most UN Special Rapporteurs, or special investigative missions, whose mandates it does not like [emphasis added here]. So, most of them do not come to the region". And, in my reply, published here, I noted that Ambassador Levanon's letter unfortunately, selectively gave only a part of the picture, and that while his letter provided a list of a few visits from UN Human Rights officials that Israel has facilitated, neither his letter nor the UN itself would give any indication of how many visits Israel has blocked -- mainly by not replying, rather than by outright saying "No". I also noted that it was interesting that the Israeli Mission didn't give any hint about what it would do, exactly, to facilitate the work of the new Special Rapporteur, Richard Falk. Unfortunately, we all know what happened to Professsor Falk ... Now, we shall see what will happen with Justice Goldstone.
The Goldstone mission, according to its Public Advance Notice, "intends to consult with a wide range of interlocutors who will include victims and witnesses, Palestinian, Israeli and international NGOs, United Nations and other international organizations, community organizations, human rights defenders, medical and other professionals, legal and military experts, and other sources of reliable information relevant to its mandate, within and outside Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory. The Mission will also seek consultations with relevant authorities. In the course of its work, the Mission will review reports produced by various organizations and institutions, and will be requesting submissions on matters of fact and law relevant to its inquiry ... The Mission is also planning to hold public hearings on particular issues of concern related to its mandate".
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