UN report co-author: Hamas fired 2 rockets before Gaza op

[Behind the Aegis]

A co-author of the Goldstone report on Operation Cast Lead claims that Hamas fired only two rockets at Israel prior to last winter's conflict, according to a new report published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

The center's head, Dr. Dore Gold, former ambassador to the United Nations and an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, revealed the report at a press conference on Wednesday.

The report quoted statements in interviews made by Col. Desmond Travers, formerly a senior officer in the Irish army and the only military expert among the four members of the Goldstone Commission, and the statements included one to a Middle East affairs journal.

According to Gold's report, compiled by Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi, during all the Goldstone Commission's interviews with Palestinian civilians, neither Travers nor its other members asked the interviewees who said their houses had been blown up by the Israel Defense Forces whether they were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad or whether weapons had been stored in their homes. (The transcripts of the interviews have been posted on the UN Web site.)

When Travers interviewed two Palestinian psychologists, he asked them how Israeli soldiers could kill children in front of their parents as if it were a fact.

In an interview last week with the Middle East Monitor, Travers leveled harsh accusations at the Israel Defense Forces that do no appear in the Goldstone report. He said the IDF had used drones that could detect people inside of buildings by their body heat and did so in attacking houses in which dozens of Palestinian civilians had taken shelter. According to Travers, Israel had attacked the Gaza Strip although Hamas supposedly only fired two rockets at Israel in the month before the operation, and that Hamas had wanted to continue the cease-fire.

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