I believe it is their best interest to cooperate with an UN investigation.
Israel now stands accused of war crimes in Jenin. If they refuse to
cooperate in the investigation, they cannot claim that the charges are
false. By refusing to cooperate they imply they have something to hide and
therefore must be guilty.
If they cooperate, they can be found either innocent or guilty. If they are
innocent, it will discredit their opponents and perhaps even increase
support for Israel. If they are guilty, then we can deal with it the way
our western principles dictate: bring the people responsible for the war
crimes to justice.
By refusing to cooperate, Israel is only harming itself.
Jeroen
Me:
There is an obvious assumption here. That they will receive a fair
hearing. But there is absolutely nothing in the history of the UN that
suggests that Israel is likely to receive a fair hearing from the UN.
Given that fact, why should they let in a commission one of whose members
has already been plausibly accused of anti-semitism? Let's set aside
whether the accusation is true or not - it wasn't possible for the UN to
find three people none of whom has made anti-semitic comments in a public
forum? Either that's true, which is a remarkable indictment of the UN, or
Kofi Anan just didn't care whether that was true of the commissioners,
which would also be an indictment of the UN. If they cooperate and are
unjustly found guilty - and the Palestinians themselves are now saying no
war crimes were committed, so based on the evidence that we now have, the
only way that they could be found guilty is if they were found so unjustly
- then that would do great harm to Israel. Better to use it as (yet
another) example of the UN's constant anti-Israel bias.
Gautam
