Japan mustn't be blind to injustice in Gaza Strip

Ken Endo / Special to The Yomiuri Shimbun

Cast your mind back to the end of 2008 and you may remember that Israel launched what some have termed a unilateral attack on the Gaza Strip.

With the sun setting on the then U.S. administration of President George W. Bush and a general election looming in Israel, Israel's centrist government resorted to a hard-line option--an attack on Gaza--emphasizing national security in an effort to pull votes away from right-wing elements. As a result, an estimated 1,100 to 1,400 people lost their lives--most of them civilians, including women and children. White phosphorus grenades, which are usually used as tracer ammunition, were fired at civilians.

In mid-October 2008, the U.N. Human Rights Council, established three years ago, held a session at which a great number of countries, including Brazil, China, India and Russia, adopted a resolution that chastised Israel and called for a full-scale probe into alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Israel has fiercely resisted efforts to hold it accountable. The U.N. call also failed to win the backing of the U.S. administration of President Barack Obama, with Washington voting against the resolution out of consideration of a new Middle East peace initiative now being explored. Britain and France opted against sending a delegate to be present at the vote, while Japan was present but opted to abstain.

The report used in the compilation of the resolution was prepared by jurist Richard Goldstone, who led a fact-finding mission into the alleged war crimes in Gaza. A Jewish South African, Goldstone is a veteran of war crimes investigations. His report rapped Israel for its attacks on Gaza and noted that Israel could face allegations it committed crimes against humanity.

The report accused Israel of war crimes during the conflict with Hamas in Gaza. It gave Israel six months to conduct credible investigations or face possible prosecution at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The resolution adopted by the Human Rights Council endorsed the recommendations stated in the report.

Fatah and Hamas have, of course, long been antagonizing each other in the Palestinian territories. Gaza is now a stronghold for Hamas, which was accused of war crimes along with Israel in the report. But it is Hamas that benefits politically. Hamas is linked to Iran, which has been promoting its own nuclear development. This linkage also is looming as an issue to be tackled.

The divide in the Middle East is a fundamental and global issue that separates Arab countries from Europe and the United States, and Islam from Christianity. To preserve the fragile peace, observers have at times turned a blind eye to repeated acts of injustice. But that approach, on the other hand, contributed to the justification of the conflict and violence that occurred in the Gaza conflict.

The Human Rights Council was established to deal with large-scale, organized human rights violations, as is alleged happened in Gaza. Is it not the case that the new administrations in Japan and the United States--which have aim to elevate the importance of fraternity and human life, and have called for dialogue between the people of different races and creeds--should both have cooperated within this new human rights framework to break this chain reaction of violence and injustice?

There is another reason why Japan should not have abstained from voting at the U.N. panel. Japan has handed over a total of more than 1 billion dollars in aid for the development of the Palestinian territories. This hard-earned taxpayers' money was used to build infrastructure that was then destroyed in the conflict in Gaza.

Japan has doled out money with a smile then looked on silently from the sidelines as that which it built crumbled. It is about time Japan stopped acting this way in the diplomatic arena.

Endo, an expert in international politics, is a professor at Hokkaido University in Sapporo and a senior fellow of the European University Institute in Florence. He lives in Italy.