Backstabbing 101

Anne Bayefsky
foxnews.com
16 June '10

Last week in response to a story by The Weekly Standard's William Kristol, the Obama administration denied it was busy stabbing Israel in the back on the issue of how to investigate the Turkish-backed campaign to break the Gaza naval blockade.

On Tuesday, however, Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian representative to the United Nations, and a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, suggested the backstabbing was indeed in high gear.

Mansour was speaking at a press stakeout at U.N. headquarters outside a Security Council session on the situation in the Middle East. He was asked about U.S. approval of a U.N.-sponsored investigation in light of Israel having launched its own investigation on Monday. Mansour responded:

“We support the Secretary General’s decision to proceed with his idea of having an international investigation under his auspices and we know that there is no objection to the effort of the S.G. in this regard inside the Security Council.”

The Secretary-General’s move to discredit the Israeli investigation was confirmed a few minutes later by Robert Serry, U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and the Secretary-General’s Personal Representative to the Palestinian Authority. Serry told reporters that the Secretary-General has not dropped the idea of launching his own investigation.

Serry released a statement which reads:

“The Secretary-General...has proposed an international panel, one that is under the aegis of a third party seen as impartial...The Secretary-General has taken note of Israel’s announcement and recognizes that a thorough Israeli investigation is important, and could be consistent with the Secretary-General’s own proposals for an international panel – the two combined would fully meet the international community’s expectation for a credible and impartial investigation. The Secretary-General’s proposal is not incompatible with domestic inquiries, in fact, the two approaches are complementary, so his proposal, accordingly, remains on the table.”

Israel’s new investigative team is unprecedented in light of its inclusion of two international observers on a subject at the heart of the country’s national security and sovereign right of self-defense. The decision to include international observers was immediately subject to internal criticism from some of Israel’s leading international law jurists.

(Read full article)

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