Palestinian civil society is not just calling on Israel to account for its crimes (remember this next time one reads that Palestinians are only obsessed with holding Israel responsible for human rights violations)
Eleven Palestinian human rights organizations have called on the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas government in Gaza to endorse the Goldstone report by investigating Palestinian violations of international law allegedly committed during operation Cast Lead.
Acts listed by the report include Palestinian attacks on civilians in Israel and instances of internal repression, such as summary executions in the Gaza Strip and arrests and torture in the West Bank.
The calls were made in identical letters sent to Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh. The organizations asked the two leaders to launch investigations before the February 5 deadline by which the UN Secretary-General is to report to the General Assembly on compliance by Israel and the Palestinians with the assembly’s earlier resolution.
Sadly, and utterly predictably, the US-backed Palestinian Authority is so hopelessly corrupt and bought that it’s no wonder the international community loves doing business with it:
The request by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the United Nations Human Rights Council last year to postpone the vote on the Goldstone report followed a particularly tense meeting with the head of the Shin Bet security service, Haaretz has learned. At the October meeting in Ramallah, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin told Abbas that if he did not ask for a deferral of the vote on the critical report on last year’s military operation, Israel would turn the West Bank into a “second Gaza.”
Diskin, who reports directly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, threatened to revoke the easing of restrictions on movement within the West Bank that had been implemented earlier last year. He also said Israel would withdraw permission for mobile phone company Wataniya to operate in the Palestinian Authority. That would have cost the PA tens of millions of dollars in compensation payments to the company.
A PA official close to Abbas told Haaretz that Diskin came to the Muqata compound in Ramallah in October with a foreign diplomatic delegation, and that a senior Israel Defense Forces officer made similar threats to other PA leaders at around the same time.