UNifeed: GA / GOLDSTONE REPORT

GA / GOLDSTONE REPORT

The General Assembly today (5 November) endorsed the report of the United Nations investigation which found that both Israeli forces and Palestinian militants were guilty of serious human rights violations during the conflict in the Gaza Strip at the start of the year. UNTV

Duration:04:29Date:05 November 2009

Categories:

United Nations Television, POLITICAL AND LEGAL QUESTIONS, HUMAN RIGHTS, ISRAEL, TERRITORIES OCCUPIED BY ISRAEL

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Full Script

STORY:  GA / GOLDSTONE REPORT WRAP
TRT: 4.29
SOURCE: UNTV
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH/ ARABIC/ NATS

DATELINE: 5 NOVEMBER 2009, NEW YORK CITY
 
SHOTLIST:

FILE – RECENT, NEW YORK CITY

1. Tilt up, exterior UN building

5 NOVEMBER, NEW YORK CITY

2. Wide shot, General Assembly Hall
3. Wide shot, Alnafisee at the podium
4. Med shot, Palestinian Ambassador speaking to delegates
5. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Khalid A. Alnafisee, Permanent Representative of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations:
“The failure to achieve justice in light of the most serious violations committed in the war against Gaza will have terrible consequences for international justice. Mr. President, the Arab world, including the State of Palestine has exhorted all its efforts to reach a peaceful settlement. The Arab peace initiative is still on the table.”
6. Med shot, Saudi Arabian delegation
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Datuk Hamidon Ali, Permanent Representative of Malaysia to the United Nations:
“The visible destruction of houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations, and other public buildings proves that it was the deliberate aim of Israel to inflict as much damage and suffering as possible.”
8. Wide shot, Sial approaches podium
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Amjad Hussain B. Sial, Deputy Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations:
“We see the deliberations on this report as an opportunity for the international community to address the suffering of the Palestinian people and for Israel to rectify its past actions and policies. Mr. President, achieving lasting peace in the Middle East is a long held common objective of the international community, this meeting should bring us closer to this objective, as such, the overarching message of revival of the peace process with firm commitment to a two state solution must resonate from our deliberations.” 
10. Wide shot, General Assembly Hall with Sial at the podium
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Alejandro Wolf, Deputy Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations:
“As the United States made clear in Geneva, we believe that the Goldstone Report is deeply flawed, including its unbalanced focus on Israel, its sweeping conclusions of law, the excessively negative inferences it draws about Israel’s intentions and actions, its failure to deal adequately with the asymmetrical nature of the Gaza conflict, its failure to assign appropriate responsibility to Hamas, for its decision to base itself and its operations in heavily civilian populated urban areas and its many overreaching recommendations.”
12. Med shot, Palestinian delegation
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Daniel Carmon, Deputy Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations:
“The draft resolution before us endorses and legitimizes a deeply flawed, one sided and prejudiced report of the discredited Human Rights Council and its politicized work that bends both fact and law. It disregards Israel’s inherent right to defend its citizens on the face of ongoing terrorist attacks.”
14. Close up, Israeli Ambassador’s hands
15. Various shots, voting boards
16. Med shot, Palestinian delegation applauding
17. Close up, reporter’s note pad
18. SOUNDBITE (English) Maged Abdelfattah Abdelaziz ,Permanent Representative of Egypt to the United Nations:
“Hamas is not a terrorist organization, Hamas is part and parcel of the Palestinian population and we in Egypt we receive Hamas everyday for negotiations with the Palestinian Authority trying to unify the parties and to bring them into one fold to have credible negotiations on the Palestinian tract. So trying to discredit Hamas all the time is not going to help.”
19. Close up, reporters note pad
20. SOUNDBITE (English) Philip Parham, Deputy Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations:
“It is important for you to understand that the United Kingdom and its European colleagues put in a significant effort to try to achieve a resolution which we could support. And we did so because we the United Kingdom support the core practical elements of the resolution which is the call for credible and thorough investigations by both sides, but we also made clear to the proposes of the resolution that we could not support it as proposed in particular because of the effective endorsement of the Goldstone report.”
21. Med shot, Parham walks away from the microphone

STORYLINE:

After two days of debate in the Assembly, at UN Headquarters in New York, 114 Member States voted in favor of a resolution endorsing the report’s findings and its recommendations for further action. Eighteen States voted against the resolution and another 44 countries abstained.

Before the vote, Saudi Ambassador Khalid A. Alnafisee said that “the failure to achieve justice in light of the most serious violations committed in the war against Gaza will have terrible consequences for international justice.”

Malysian Ambassador Datuk Hamidon Ali said that the massive destruction of infrastructure in Gaza “proves that it was the deliberate aim of Israel to inflict as much damage and suffering as possible.”

Pakistani Ambassador Amjad Hussain B. Sial, said that “the overarching message of revival of the peace process with firm commitment to a two state solution must resonate from our deliberations.”

US Ambassador Alejandro Wolf said that “the Goldstone Report is deeply flawed”, listing a series of points the United States did not agree with.

Israeli Ambassador Daniel Carmon also called the report “deeply flawed, one sided and prejudiced”.

The probe, led by Justice Richard Goldstone, a former war crimes prosecutor at the UN war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, found that both sides committed serious war crimes and breaches of humanitarian law, possibly amounting to crimes against humanity, during the conflict in December 2008 and January 2009.

Outside the General Assembly Egyptian Ambassador Maged Abdelfattah Abdelaziz defended Hamas, saying it “is not a terrorist organization” and said “trying to discredit Hamas all the time is not going to help.”

British Ambassador Philip Parham explained his vote saying that "we could not support it as proposed in particular because of the effective endorsement of the Goldstone report.”

The four-member fact-finding team called for a number of measures, including the referral of the report to the Security Council, since neither the Israeli Government nor the responsible Palestinian authorities have so far carried out any credible investigations into alleged violations.

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