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USPCN Letter to the UN advocating adoption of the Goldstone Report

New York, New York 10017-3515

October 13, 2009

Dear Mr. Secretary-General:

We, the undersigned organizations, institutions, and individuals, are writing to demand the full implementation of the recommendations of the “Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict,” and to express our deepest concern and strong condemnation of the premeditated prevention of endorsing the Report at the UN Human Rights Council’s twelfth session. It is the responsibility of the UN and the international community to put an end to the excessive and ongoing violation of international law, human rights law and international humanitarian law by the Israeli government and army in Palestine, and to hold the perpetrators accountable to the fullest extent, including prosecution, trial and punishment by the International Criminal Court and international tribunals.

The report, commissioned by the President of the UN Human Rights Council on 3 April 2009, and endorsed by hundreds of human rights and civil society organizations, irrefutably documents the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli military in Gaza with a massive amount of undisputed evidence. It, furthermore, clearly identified specific and practical legally-based recommendations for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly and UN Secretary General, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, the international Community, and the Government of Israel (A/HRC/12/48: pp 545-554).

Pursuant to the text and spirit of international law, human rights law, and international humanitarian law, we demand the full implementation of the report’s recommendations including the immediate lifting of the savage and illegal siege on Gaza, the reconstruction of Gaza, and the report’s demand that the “Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court acts as expeditiously as possible” (A/HRC/12/48: p: 548). We demand that the UN Secretary General pursues and oversees the full implementation of the report’s recommendations and that each respective body identified by the report must carry out its role in implementing these recommendations.

Furthermore, the report’s own conclusion that there is no equating “the position of Israel as the occupying power with that of the occupied Palestinian population or entities representing it” (A/HRC/12/48: p: 521) is critically important. We reject any attempt to criminalize or equate the resistance of an occupied people to the institutional, state-directed, massive violence of the occupier.

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