Report: General Assembly to discuss Gaza war report

The UN General Assembly is to discuss in early November the Goldstone Report that accuses Israel and Hamas of war crimes in Gaza, an Arab diplomat said Monday.

"The Arab group is requesting that the report... be debated in the General Assembly in early November," said Arab League representative Yahya Mahmassani, who was conveying the request, with the support of the Non-Aligned Movement, in a letter to Assembly president Ali Treki.

Treki is expected to agree to the request, and Mahmassani said discussions would definitely now go ahead "probably on November 4."

The group of Arab and Muslim countries, along with the developing countries, make up an automatic majority among the 192 member nations, and at the end of the debate, a resolution is likely to be passed against Israel.

However, General Assembly resolutions are non-binding and have no practical validity.

The Security Council is the only UN body with practical authority, and the United States and other countries oppose having the report debated by this body.

Earlier this month, the UN Human Rights Council endorsed Richard Goldstone's report on the 22-day conflict that erupted on December 27, 2008.

When the fighting ended, 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis had been killed.

Goldstone concluded that both Israel and Hamas, Gaza's rulers, committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the conflict that Israel launched in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave.

Israel objected to the endorsement of the report, and pushed forward with diplomatic efforts to try to prevent it from being further discussed.

On Friday, Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom met with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York and asked him not to allow the report to be debated further.

After the meeting, Shalom told Ynet he was "more optimistic that Ban won't pass the report on to the Security Council."