Jerusalem--Israel called Tuesday for a UN inquiry into its 50-day war in Gaza last summer to be shelved as its chairman quit over Israeli accusations of conflict of interest.
Canadian international law expert William Schabas tendered his resignation on Monday after Israel complained that he had prepared a legal opinion for the Palestine Liberation Organisation in October 2012, the United Nations said.
In his resignation letter, Schabas strongly denied that he was in any way beholden to the PLO but said he was reluctantly stepping down to avoid the inquiry into the July-August conflict -- commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council -- being compromised in any away.
"Under the circumstances and with great regret, I believe the important work of the commission is best served if I resign with immediate effect," he wrote.
Council president Joachim Ruecker accepted the resignation, saying that "in this way even an appearance of conflict of interest is avoided, thus preserving the integrity of the process," spokesman Rolando Gomez said.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seized on Schabas's departure to demand the abandonment of the whole investigation, charging that the rights council was an "anti-Israel body".
"After the resignation of the committee chairman who was biased against Israel, the report that was written at the behest of the UN Human Rights Council -- an anti-Israel body, the decisions of which prove it has nothing to do with human rights -- needs to be shelved," Netanyahu said.
"This is the same council that in 2014 made more decisions against Israel than against Iran, Syria and North Korea combined."
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Schabas's resignation would make little difference to the inquiry's outcome.
"It won't change the committee's report's conclusions, which were biased in advance in accordance with the body that formed the committee, whose sole purpose is attacking and harming Israel," he said.
- Stormy relations -
Israel has long had stormy relations with council.
In January 2012, it became the first country to refuse to attend a periodic review of its human rights record. And two months later, it cut all ties with the council over its plans to probe how Jewish settlements were harming Palestinian rights.
In November, it announced that it would not cooperate with Schabas's investigation because of the "obsessive hostility against Israel of this commission and the words of its president against Israel and its leaders."
Gomez said the commission, which is scheduled to present its findings to the council next month, was in "the final phase of collecting evidence" and could name a new chairman as early as Tuesday.
He said the council president had stressed "the need to remain focused on the substantive work of the commission in the interest of the victims and their families on both sides."
The Gaza conflict ended with a truce between Israel and the territory's Islamist de facto rulers Hamas on August 26 after the deaths of more than 2,140 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and 73 people on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers.
The rights council vowed in August that both Israel and Hamas would be "subjected to a thorough investigation."
Hamas welcomed the inquiry but Israel has repeatedly complained to UN chief Ban Ki-moon that it is one-sided.
Israel has accused Hamas of firing rockets from densely populated civilian areas during the war and from UN schools, and the army released videos it says proves such claims.
The UN itself condemned Gaza militants for storing rockets in a school early in the conflict.
AFP
