A United Nations mission to be led by South Africa’s Desmond Tutu to probe last month’s deaths of 19 civilians in Gaza under Israeli shelling has been called off because Israel did not authorise the trip, a spokesperson said on Monday.
The Nobel Peace laureate, who was asked to head the team by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, had other engagements and could not wait any longer for Israeli permission, she added.
”It has been cancelled. We were supposed to go yesterday [Sunday],” spokesperson Sonia Bakar said.
The UN’s top human rights body condemned the November 8 deaths at Beit Hanoun and last month voted to send a mission to investigate the incident.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokesperson, Miri Eisin, said Israel had investigated and acknowledged its mistakes in the incident, seeing no role for the UN mission.
”The commission was sent on the premise that Israel targets civilians and it did not take into account the daily rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians.”
Tutu on Monday sharply criticised Israel’s failure to cooperate with the mission.
Tutu confirmed that Israeli authorities had effectively thwarted the mission, which was planning to head to Israel and the Gaza Strip on Sunday, by failing to grant travel visas in time.
”It is for all these reasons and more that we find the lack of cooperation by the Israeli government very distressing, as well as its failure to allow the mission timely passage to Israel,” Tutu said in joint statement with British law professor Christine Chinkin, the other member of the mission.
”This is a time in our history that neither allows for indifference to the plight of those suffering, nor a refusal to search for a solution to the present crisis in the region,” he told a press conference. — Reuters, AFP