From WJC, 10 August 2010:
Israel has threatened to pull out of a UN inquiry into the IDF raid on the Gaza-bound ‘Freedom Flotilla’ after the UN secretary-general said there was no agreement that the panel would refrain from calling Israeli soldiers to testify. Last week, Jerusalem agreed to participate in the UN probe. Officials said Israel's agreement was conditional on the panel relying on reports from Israel's own military inquiry, not direct testimony from IDF soldiers.
However, at a press conference at UN headquarters on Monday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was asked whether he agreed not to call Israeli soldiers before the panel. "No, there was no such agreement behind the scenes," he replied.
In response, the Netanyahu’s office issued a harsh statement. "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes it absolutely clear that Israel will not cooperate with, and will not take part in, any panel that seeks to interrogate Israeli soldiers.”
The government had appointed the retired senior diplomat Joseph Ciechanover to join the UN panel and was preparing for the start of its deliberations on Tuesday when Ban made his remark, throwing plans into turmoil...
1 comment:
Rather than any international peacekeeping mission, the best course is bilateral security arrangements. The Israeli experience with an international presence has been poor. UNIFIL in Lebanon has not lived up to Israeli expectations in preventing the re-armament of Hizbullah after the 2006 Second Lebanon War. For more on defensible borders to secure Israel's future, see this piece by Maj.-Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan - http://www.jcpa.org/text/security/dayan.pdf and www.defensibleborders.org.
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
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