WASHINGTON: South African jurist Richard Goldstone said Tuesday that he did not plan to seek nullification of his highly critical UN report on Israel's 2008-2009 offensive in the Gaza Strip and asserted that claims to the contrary by Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai were false. The 2009 Goldstone report initially concluded that both Israel and Hamas had committed potential war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during three weeks of fighting. The findings that Israeli forces had intentionally fired at Palestinian civilians triggered outrage in Israel and a personal campaign against Goldstone, who is Jewish. In an interview with The Associated Press, Goldstone said that Yishai had called him on Monday to thank him for an op-ed piece published Friday in The Washington Post in which the judge wrote that new information had come to light that made him rethink his central conclusions. Goldstone said, however, that he never discussed the report with Yishai in the telephone conversation. Israeli leaders have called for the report to be retracted since it was issued in 2009. “There was absolutely no discussion about the Goldstone report on the call,” the jurist said in a telephone interview from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Yishai spokesman Roi Lachmanovitch said Wednesday that the minister “didn't speak with the required clarity”. Lachmanovitch said Yishai had told Goldstone that if he had toured southern Isreal and seen the suffering there, “then this report would not have been written”. Goldstone said he thanked Yishai for calling and “stated that my concern was to work for truth, justice and human rights.” The Geneva-based Human Rights Council has said it will continue to treat the report as a legitimate working document. Spokesman Cedric Sapey told the AP on Monday that Goldstone would have to submit a formal request for the report to be withdrawn. Last month, a majority of the council's 47 members voted to pass the report up to the General Assembly, recommending the powerful UN Security Council be asked to submit it to prosecutors at the International Criminal Court.
