US sits out UN debate on Palestinian human rights

The US did not take the podium at the United Nation’s main human right’s council, which was discussing violations of human rights in the Palestinian territories on Monday.

“The US delegation will not be speaking about Palestine today,” an American spokesperson in Geneva told Reuters at the start of the UN Human Rights Council debate.

The move was reported by Reuters to be part of US President Barack Obama’s “reassessment” of Washington’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in light of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pre-election comments rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state.

But an Israeli Foreign Ministry source categorically denied the thrust of the Reuters report.

Spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said the American delegation was not present at the debate “at Israel’s request.” He said that Jerusalem asked its friends to stay away from such debates every year.

“Reuters took the statement by the [American] spokesperson and misinterpreted it to mean that it was a response by the Obama administration to the elections in Israel,” he said. “The report is untrue. Every year, the Americans stay away from this debate, which singles Israel out for censure, at Israel’s request.”

Israel’s delegation to the Geneva-based UN body also refused to appear at the debate about the state of human rights in the Palestinian territories.

Israel provided no immediate explanation for not being present at the session dedicated overwhelmingly to discussion of its policies and alleged abuses, but a source close to the council said its absence clearly amounted to a boycott.

The US traditionally defends Israel at the UN and its constituent bodies from international censure.

Monday’s session had originally been scheduled to discuss a probe on the 50-day war in Gaza last year, but the investigators obtained a delay after the head of the team quit under Israeli pressure.

“The process cannot be rushed,” former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis, who has taken over as head of the team, told the council.

Canadian international law expert William Schabas resigned as chair of the Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza conflict last month after Israel complained he could not be impartial because he had prepared a legal opinion for the Palestine Liberation Organization in October 2012.

Schabas strongly denied that he was 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.

AFP contributed to this report.