Hazel Ward

Agence France Presse

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday expressed confidence that the UN’s Gaza flotilla inquiry would satisfy global public opinion, as the panel’s Israeli and Turkish delegates were named.

“I believe this committee will direct the important opinion of the international community, and not the committee set up by the anti-Israeli body in Geneva,” the Israeli premier told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting.

Israel said last Monday it would agree to cooperate with a UN committee to probe the deadly May 31 raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship which left nine Turkish nationals dead.

But it has refused to have anything to do with another UN inquiry, launched last month by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council – a body Israel derides as having an in-built bias against it.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s four-man team will be chaired by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer, with outgoing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe as his deputy.

The other two members, a Turkish national and an Israeli, were named by the UN on Saturday as Ozdem Sanberk, former director general of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, and Joseph Ciechanover, who held the same position in Israel.

“Israel was involved in the process of setting up the committee, writing its mandate and selecting its members,” Netanyahu said, informing the Cabinet that Ciechanover would be Israel’s representative on the panel.

Ciechanover, 77, is a former senior diplomat who has spent many years on the board of big Israeli companies such as national carrier El Al and Israel Discount Bank.

In 1997, he headed an inquiry into Israel’s failed attempt to assassinate Hamas’ Khaled Meshaal in Jordan during Netanyahu’s first term as premier. The committee said Netanyahu had managed the affair in “a responsible manner.”  

His name was recently raised as a possible chairman of the internal committee to examine the flotilla raid – a position which went to former supreme court head Yaakov Tirkel.

The UN committee is due to begin work on August 10 and submit a first progress report by mid-September. It will review reports on the internal investigations by both Israel and Turkey and will draw conclusions about the facts, circumstances and context of the incident, and issue recommendations on steps to prevent a recurrence of such incidents, the UN said.    

In Israel, the Tirkel Commission began looking into the legality of the raid in June, with the five-man panel due to hear testimonies from Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Gaby Ashkenazi this week.

Turkey reportedly began its own inquiry within days of the botched raid, with prosecutors in Istanbul launching an investigation into the actions of the same three Israeli leaders with a view to charging them with murder and piracy.

Israel says its commandos used force after they were attacked as they rappelled onto the deck of the Mavi Marmara. But the activists on board say the troops opened fire as soon as they landed.