UNGA draft urges action on Gaza war crimes

UNITED NATIONS - Arab UN delegates agreed Monday to ask the United Nations General Assembly to set a three-month deadline for Israel and Hamas to investigate allegations of war crimes during Israels military deadly offensive in the Gaza Strip.
The 22-member Arab group finalised a draft resolution they will submit to the General Assembly on Nov 4. It would endorse a UN-backed panels findings that Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during the December-January conflict and ask both sides to conduct investigations. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon would be asked to transmit the report to the Security Council.
The Security Council would consider further action at the end of the three months in the event the sides didnt follow through, according to the draft. The panel, headed by former UN war crimes prosecutor and South African judge Richard Goldstone, recommended referral to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for possible prosecution of war crimes.
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations broke down in December when Israel began the military incursion in Gaza and the Obama Administrations high-profile efforts have failed to bring the two sides together again.
The Arabs rejected a set of European proposals to soften the language of their draft resolution. The EU amendments didnt specifically mention Israel or Hamas, and didnt include any referral of the matter to the Security Council.
The US, in support of Israel, opposes involvement of the Security Council with the Goldstone report, which heavily criticized the deadly Israeli bombing of Gaza in January. More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed and thousands more were injured.