Hamas will bring 'resolution killers' to justice

Hamas officials have vowed to bring to justice those Palestinians who supported the delaying of a UN Human Rights Council vote on a report about Israeli war crimes during the Gaza conflict.

Hamas --the democratically-elected government of Gaza-- says the Palestinian Authority, which dropped its support for a scheduled Friday vote on the report following intense lobbying from the US and Israel, has betrayed the victims of the three-week war and must be prosecuted.

"More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the Israeli war, based on demands from the families of the victims, we have decided to go ahead and prosecute those who contributed to the delaying of the UN Human Rights Council resolution; and that is because their move has dealt a heavy blow against the Palestinian people and to those in the international community trying to help Palestinians", Hamas Interior Minister Fathi Hammad told Press TV.

Hammad also believes that the controversial decision by Palestinian Authority under Acting Palestinian Chief Mahmoud Abbas proves the allegations that the Western-backed government had cooperated with Tel Aviv during its deadly offensive on Gaza.

After the Palestinian officials withdrew their support for the report, the Geneva-based body decided to delay until March 2010 a vote on the report by a fact-finding mission headed by international prosecutor Richard Goldstone.

The report reaffirmed that Israel deliberately violated international humanitarian law and used disproportionate force during its "Operation Cast Lead" against the people of Gaza at the beginning of the year.

It called for the prosecution of senior Israeli officials in the International Criminal Court if Tel Aviv fails to launch its own investigations into the Gaza war under international scrutiny.

Both Israeli and US officials dismissed the report as biased. Tel Aviv threatened to put aside resumption of the moribund peace talks with Palestinians if the Human Rights Council forwarded the report to the UN General Assembly.

The measure killed the Palestinians hope to pass a resolution against Israel in the UN Human Rights Council.

Abbas faced an unprecedented wave of condemnation and accusations of treason from other Palestinian factions even from PA officials , and ordered the establishment of a commission of inquiry into the issue.

An unnamed PA minister scoffed at Abbas' decision to establish the commission, the Jerusalem Post reported.

"What's the president [Abbas] trying to tell us? that he didn't make the decision to kill the resolution that would have seen the UN endorse the findings of the fact-finding commission into the Gaza war?" the minister asked.

"Well, if he didn't make the decision, then we want to know who's running the Palestinian Authority. If he was responsible for the [deferral] decision, then this is a very serious matter. If he knew, it's bad; if he didn't know, it's even worse," JP quoted him as saying.