JERUSALEM - Israel on Wednesday rejected UN calls to open an independent inquiry into its conduct during last winter's Gaza Strip military offensive and said it would launch a diplomatic offensive to block any attempt to bring its soldiers before an international war crimes tribunal.
The defiant tone came a day after a UN investigation accused Israel and Palestinian militants of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. While the report criticized rocket attacks by Hamas and other armed groups on Israeli towns, the bulk of the findings focused on Israeli actions.
The report, headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone, said Israel used disproportionate firepower and disregarded the likelihood of civilian deaths in the offensive, which killed hundreds of civilians and caused widespread damage to Gaza.
It said that if Israel doesn't allow an independent investigation, the case should be referred to international war crimes prosecutors.
The report provoked a furor in Israel. The Foreign Ministry said it was "appalled and disappointed," and President Shimon Peres called it a "mockery of history." Radio stations devoted heavy chunks of air time to interviews with outraged officials and critical legal experts. "Classic Anti-Semitism," blared the headline of an opinion piece in the Israel Hayom daily.
The findings of the UN investigation echoed the conclusions of a string of human rights reports released in recent months. But the UN report could carry much more weight, both because it was authored by a widely respected former war crimes prosecutor and because it could ultimately lead to charges against Israel before the International Criminal Court.
Israel is not a member of the Netherlands-based ICC, but in theory the court could still attempt to prosecute its officials. To do so, it would need an order from the U.N. Security Council, but Israel's ally the United States would likely block any such request.
Alternatively, the Palestinian Authority has sought membership in the ICC, but since it is not a state, the court has not yet determined whether to accept the request. If the Palestinians are accepted, the ICC could proceed with prosecutions of Israeli and Hamas officials without a Security Council order since the alleged crimes took place in Gaza.
The ICC prosecutors office said Wednesday it was "examining all issues related to its jurisdiction" in the Gaza case, including the validity of the Palestinian membership.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said his country would take action to protect its soldiers and commanders from prosecution abroad and denounced the suggestion of an ICC jurisdiction. He said Israeli diplomats would lobby Security Council members against further action.
"Every time a democracy will want to take measures to defend itself from terror, it will have to take into consideration a wide international legal campaign against its leaders and officials, based on the propaganda of the terrorists," he said.
Israeli officials refused to co-operate with the five-month investigation, saying it was ordered by a UN body with a clear anti-Israeli bias. Israel's military has conducted its own inquiries, but so far has cleared itself of any systematic wrongdoing.
"This report was conceived in sin and is the product of a union between propaganda and bias," government spokesman Mark Regev said. "Israel is a country with a fiercely independent judiciary ... Everything done by the military in Israel is open to judicial review by the independent judiciary."
Goldstone is a former South African judge who prosecuted war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Goldstone, who is Jewish and has close ties to Israel, was well aware that his work would draw fire. As a condition for heading the inquiry, he insisted that the panel look at the actions of Palestinian militants.
His daughter, Nicole, told Israel Army Radio in a telephone interview from her home in Canada that her father agonized over whether to take the assignment. She said her father's presence softened the report's observations on Israel.
"He thought that ... he did the best thing possible for everyone, including Israel," she said. "I have no doubt that whatever emerged would have been much worse if he had not been there." Speaking in halting Hebrew, she said she had great love for the country.
Israel launched the three-week war in late December to quash Palestinian militants in Gaza who had bombarded southern Israel for years with rocket and mortar fire.
Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the conflict, including hundreds of civilians, and thousands more were wounded. Thirteen Israelis also died, including four civilians.
Peres, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping craft an interim 1993 peace agreement with the Palestinians, said the Goldstone report "makes a mockery of history."
"It draws no distinction between the attacker and the attacked," Peres said. "The report essentially grants legitimacy to acts of terrorism, shooting and killing, and ignores the right and duty of any country to self defence, as outlined in the UN charter."
In Gaza, Hamas' prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, welcomed the report's harsh condemnation of Israel and called on the UN to charge Israeli leaders with war crimes. At the same time, he rejected the accusations that his group was guilty of war crimes for firing rockets into civilian areas in Israel.
"The Palestinian people and resistance was in self-defence," he said.
The U.N. investigators recommended the Security Council require both sides to launch credible probes into the conflict within three months, and to follow that up with action in their courts.
If either side refuses, it said the UN should refer the evidence for prosecution by the International Criminal Court, a permanent war crimes tribunal, within six months.
Even if there is no legal action, the UN report could damage Israel's public image, with people linking the state of Israel and war crimes.
Pro-Palestinian activists have sought before to try Israeli military officials outside of their homeland on war crimes charges connected to operations in Gaza. A retired general dodged a British arrest warrant in 2005 by staying on his plane at London's Heathrow airport after a tip-off that police were waiting to detain him over a deadly Israeli air strike in Gaza.
Activists also tried to take legal action in Spain and New Zealand.
