Israel threatens no peace talks unless Gaza report dropped - Summary

Jerusalem - Israel threatened Wednesday that it would not renew peace talks with the Palestinians unless a United Nations report accusing it of having committed war crimes during last winter's Gaza war was dropped. The threat came as Israel and the Palestinians were preparing for a diplomatic war ahead of rescheduled debate on the report of the UN Human Rights Council, brought forward to Thursday after the Palestinians had initially demanded a delay until March.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak telephoned the foreign ministers of France, Britain, Spain and Norway Wednesday, urging them not to support the Gaza report.

This recommends that Israel and the radical Islamist Hamas movement be brought before the International Criminal Court unless they launch credible investigations of their own into "strong evidence" that they both committed war crimes during the war.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki on the other hand was scheduled to address the UN Security Council and urge it to adopt the report by South African judge Richard Goldstone.

Israel is making a mammoth effort to prevent the report from being referred from the Human Rights Council in Geneva to the Security Council in New York.

Israel has called the Goldstone report "one-sided" and says that the fact-finding mission which composed it contained members who had expressed advance judgments against it, and that it was established by a Human Rights Council hostile to it.

"Our argument is that as long as the Goldstone report is on the table and everywhere they are quoting it and supporting it - also states that are considered our friends - we cannot make progress in the peace process," Israel's ambassador to the UN Gabriella Shalev said.

"We will not sit at the table and will not talk with bodies and people who accuse us of war crimes. That is simply unacceptable," she said in an interview with Israel Radio.

If the international community expected Israel to take risks for peace as when Israel unilaterally pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, it should not support the Goldstone report, which denied it of its "right to self-defense," she argued.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself had told the opening of the Israeli parliament's winter session in Jerusalem Monday that "Israel will not take risks of any kind for peace if it cannot defend itself." He called the Goldstone document a "distorted report written by a distorted committee."

At the same time, he reiterated that he was willing to revive peace negotiations with the Palestinians without pre-conditions, "and we are acting so that the joint efforts with the administration of (US) President (Barack) Obama will result in their renewal soon."

Less than two weeks ago, the 47-member council agreed to postpone until March a vote on a draft resolution endorsing the report, following a request by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who yielded to US and Israeli pressure.

Facing an unprecedented wave of criticism at home, Abbas however reversed his decision and submitted a new request, co-sponsored by 18 members, to bring forward the debate.

Since the December 27-January 18 Gaza war, launched in response to rocket fire from Gaza at southern Israel, the sides have largely observed an unspoken truce that was never formally agreed.

But Israel has responded by bombing smuggling tunnels on the border with Egypt to ongoing sporadic rocket and mortar attacks.

Israeli F-16 fighter jets bombed two more smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border early Wednesday, killing one Palestinian who was working in the tunnel, health officials said.

Another Palestinian was injured in the 0100 (2300 GMT) airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip border town of Rafah, Gaza emergency services chief Mo'aweya Hassanein told reporters in Gaza City.

An Israeli military spokesman in Tel Aviv said the tunnels hit were used for smuggling weapons into the strip.

He said the strike was retaliation for a Palestinian rocket attack into southern Israeli territory Tuesday that caused no injuries.

Some 1,400 Palestinians, most of them civilians according to human rights groups, were killed in the Gaza offensive, as well as 13 Israelis.