Some aspects of the resolution and Goldstone’s letter cannot be reconciled. The resolution says that “Hamas was able to significantly shape the findings of the investigation mission’s report by selecting and pre-screening some of the witnesses and intimidating others.” Goldstone replied that the allegation is “devoid of truth and I challenge anyone to produce evidence in support of it.”

For a thorough and judicious reading of both the resolution and Goldstone’s letter, see this Ron Kampeas post.

The Ros-Lehtinen/Berman resolution currently has 124 co-sponsors, and unless something changes before close of business today, it should come up for debate on Tuesday. Weil said, “Chairman Berman expects to issue a complete response to Judge Goldstone” before the House considers the resolution.

Update: This item has been changed. I misunderstood Weil to say that the staffers were discussing prospective changes to the resolution text based on Goldstone; in fact, they’re just discussing the letter, and anything beyond that is premature. My apologies to Weil.

The resolution — drafted by Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Dan Burton (R-Ind.), Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.)  — which condemns Goldstone’s work in very harsh terms, is sure to generate controversy in Congress, within the Obama administration and among peace watchers.

Full text of the resolution after the jump.

111th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. RES. 867

Calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose
unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the `Report
of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ in
multilateral fora.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

October 23, 2009

Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN (for herself, Mr. BERMAN, Mr. BURTON of Indiana, and
Mr. ACKERMAN) submitted the following resolution; which was referred
to the Committee on Foreign Affairs

________________________________

RESOLUTION

Calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose
unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the `Report
of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ in
multilateral fora.

Whereas, on January 12, 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council
passed Resolution A/HRC/S-9/L.1, which authorized a `fact-finding
mission’ regarding Israel’s conduct of Operation Cast Lead against
violent militants in the Gaza Strip between December 27, 2008, and
January 18, 2009;

Whereas the resolution pre-judged the outcome of its investigation, by
one-sidedly mandating the `fact-finding mission’ to `investigate all
violations of international human rights law and International
Humanitarian Law by . . . Israel, against the Palestinian people . . .
particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current
aggression’;

Whereas the mandate of the `fact-finding mission’ makes no mention of
the relentless rocket and mortar attacks, which numbered in the
thousands and spanned a period of eight years, by Hamas and other
violent militant groups in Gaza against civilian targets in Israel,
that necessitated Israel’s defensive measures;

Whereas the `fact-finding mission’ included a member who, before
joining the mission, had already declared Israel guilty of committing
atrocities in Operation Cast Lead by signing a public letter on
January 11, 2009, published in the Sunday Times, that called Israel’s
actions `war crimes’;

Whereas the mission’s flawed and biased mandate gave serious concern
to many United Nations Human Rights Council Member States which
refused to support it, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon,
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the Republic
of Korea, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland;

Whereas the mission’s flawed and biased mandate troubled many
distinguished individuals who refused invitations to head the mission;

Whereas, on September 15, 2009, the `United Nations Fact Finding
Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ released its report;

Whereas the report repeatedly made sweeping and unsubstantiated
determinations that the Israeli military had deliberately attacked
civilians during Operation Cast Lead;

Whereas the authors of the report, in the body of the report itself,
admit that `we did not deal with the issues . . . regarding the
problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas and
second-guessing decisions made by soldiers and their commanding
officers `in the fog of war.’;

Whereas in the October 16th edition of the Jewish Daily Forward,
Richard Goldstone, the head of the `United Nations Fact Finding
Mission on the Gaza Conflict’, is quoted as saying, with respect to
the mission’s evidence-collection methods, `If this was a court of
law, there would have been nothing proven.’;

Whereas the report, in effect, denied the State of Israel the right to
self-defense, and never noted the fact that Israel had the right to
defend its citizens from the repeated violent attacks committed
against civilian targets in southern Israel by Hamas and other Foreign
Terrorist Organizations operating from Gaza;

Whereas the report largely ignored the culpability of the Government
of Iran and the Government of Syria, both of whom sponsor Hamas and
other Foreign Terrorist Organizations;

Whereas the report usually considered public statements made by
Israeli officials not to be credible, while frequently giving
uncritical credence to statements taken from what it called the `Gaza
authorities’, i.e. the Gaza leadership of Hamas;

Whereas, notwithstanding a great body of evidence that Hamas and other
violent Islamist groups committed war crimes by using civilians and
civilian institutions, such as mosques, schools, and hospitals, as
shields, the report repeatedly downplayed or cast doubt upon that
claim;

Whereas in one notable instance, the report stated that it did not
consider the admission of a Hamas official that Hamas often `created a
human shield of women, children, the elderly and the mujahideen,
against [the Israeli military]‘ specifically to `constitute evidence
that Hamas forced Palestinian civilians to shield military objectives
against attack.’;

Whereas Hamas was able to significantly shape the findings of the
investigation mission’s report by selecting and prescreening some of
the witnesses and intimidating others, as the report acknowledges when
it notes that `those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak
about the presence of or conduct of hostilities by the Palestinian
armed groups . . . from a fear of reprisals’;

Whereas even though Israel is a vibrant democracy with a vigorous and
free press, the report of the `fact-finding mission’ erroneously
asserts that `actions of the Israeli government . . . have contributed
significantly to a political climate in which dissent with the
government and its actions . . . is not tolerated’;

Whereas the report recommended that the United Nations Human Rights
Council endorse its recommendations, implement them, review their
implementation, and refer the report to the United Nations Security
Council, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and the
United Nations General Assembly for further action;

Whereas the report recommended that the United Nations Security Council–

(1) require the Government of Israel to launch further investigations
of its conduct during Operation Cast Lead and report back to the
Security Council within six months;

(2) simultaneously appoint an `independent committee of experts’ to
monitor and report on any domestic legal or other proceedings
undertaken by the Government of Israel within that six-month period;
and

(3) refer the case to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal
Court after that six-month period;

Whereas the report recommended that the United Nations General
Assembly consider further action on the report and establish an escrow
fund, to be funded entirely by the State of Israel, to `pay adequate
compensation to Palestinians who have suffered loss and damage’ during
Operation Cast Lead;

Whereas the report ignored the issue of compensation to Israelis who
have been killed or wounded, or suffered other loss and damage, as a
result of years of past and continuing rocket and mortar attacks by
Hamas and other violent militant groups in Gaza against civilian
targets in southern Israel;

Whereas the report recommended `that States Parties to the Geneva
Conventions of 1949 start criminal investigations [of Operation Cast
Lead] in national courts, using universal jurisdiction’ and that
`following investigation, alleged perpetrators should be arrested and
prosecuted’;

Whereas the concept of `universal jurisdiction’ has frequently been
used in attempts to detain, charge, and prosecute Israeli and United
States officials and former officials in connection with unfounded
allegations of war crimes and has often unfairly impeded the travel of
those individuals;

Whereas the State of Israel, like many other free democracies, has an
independent judicial system with a robust investigatory capacity and
has already launched numerous investigations, many of which remain
ongoing, of Operation Cast Lead and individual incidents therein;

Whereas Libya and others have indicated that they intend to further
pursue consideration of the report and implementation of its
recommendations by the United Nations Security Council, the United
Nations General Assembly, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and
other multilateral fora;

Whereas the President instructed the United States Mission to the
United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva to vote
against resolution A-HRC-S-12-1, which endorsed the report and
condemned Israel, at the special session of the Human Rights Council
held on October 15-16, 2009;

Whereas, on September 30, 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
described the mandate for the report as `one-sided’;

Whereas, on September 17, 2009, Ambassador Susan Rice, United States
Permanent Representative to the United Nations, expressed the United
States’ `very serious concern with the mandate’ and noted that the
United States views the mandate `as unbalanced, one-sided and
basically unacceptable’;

Whereas the `Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the
Gaza Conflict’ reflects the longstanding, historic bias at the United
Nations against the democratic, Jewish State of Israel;

Whereas the `Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the
Gaza Conflict’ is being exploited by Israel’s enemies to excuse the
actions of violent militant groups and their state sponsors, and to
justify isolation of and punitive measures against the democratic,
Jewish State of Israel;

Whereas, on October 16, 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council
voted 25-6 (with 11 states abstaining and 5 not voting) to adopt
resolution A-HRC-S-12-1, which endorsed the `Report of the United
Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ and condemned
Israel, without mentioning Hamas, other such violent militant groups,
or their state sponsors; and

Whereas efforts to delegitimize the democratic State of Israel and
deny it the right to defend its citizens and its existence can be used
to delegitimize other democracies and deny them the same right: Now,
therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

(1) considers the `Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission
on the Gaza Conflict’ to be irredeemably biased and unworthy of
further consideration or legitimacy;

(2) supports the Administration’s efforts to combat anti-Israel bias
at the United Nations, its characterization of the `Report of the
United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ as
`unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable’, and its opposition
to the resolution on the report;

(3) calls on the President and the Secretary of State to continue to
strongly and unequivocally oppose any endorsement of the `Report of
the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ in
multilateral fora;

(4) calls on the President and the Secretary of State to strongly and
unequivocally oppose any further consideration of the `Report of the
United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ and any
other measures stemming from this report in multilateral fora; and

(5) reaffirms its support for the democratic, Jewish State of Israel,
for Israel’s security and right to self-defense, and, specifically,
for Israel’s right to defend its citizens from violent militant groups
and their state sponsors.

Update, 7:52 a.m., Friday, Oct. 30: I should have seen that Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard posted link to the resolution last week, so apologies to him. Also, I’ve changed the headline to reflect that Goldstone also criticized Hamas.

This Washington Post story about the Washington debate over Iran is revealing for two reasons. First, the administration doesn’t seem to be phased by Manichean, inwardly focused arguments through analogy about why President Obama needs to intercede, rhetorically, into the Iranian opposition’s uprising. “We’re trying to promote a foreign policy that advances our interests, not that makes us feel good about ourselves,” a senior administration official told the paper’s Scott Wilson. Second, a different quote in the piece indicates the administration doesn’t want to step in the way of a phenomenon that might mean a whole lot of good things for those interests: “There is something particularly authentic about those who are carrying out these demonstrations … The more you keep this in Iranian terms, the better the chances of change.”

That matches background conversations I’ve had with administration people as well, and they typically cash this issue out in terms of the nuclear question. Just check out State Department spokesman Ian Kelly’s minuet with the press yesterday. As with all administration statements on Iran since June 12, Kelly preserves administration options on future-scope negotiations with the Iranians on their nuclear program. Even if the opposition triumphs — and I don’t think we even know what that means — it’s still unclear what that will mean for the nuclear question. Mir Hussein Moussavi’s public statemens indicate a willingness to pursue nuclear energy without weaponization,  but who knows what domestic constraints he would be under even if he miraculously becomes president under a system giving the presidency greater foreign policy authority. Still, the nuclear question is the one that really does concern the administration. I think it’s fair to say that administration officials consider a nuclear-armed Iran to be high on its list of foreign-policy disasters.

But what about Iran’s other effects? On the entire Middle East?

And here comes the irresponsible speculation. In 2004, Jordanian King Abdullah came to Washington and warned about a Shiite “Crescent” of Iranian influence spreading across the Middle East. As he saw it, Iran’s inroads into war-torn Iraq had helped ignite a spark of sectarian conflict that benefited Iranian interests and facilitated the expansion of Iranian power in the region. Hezbollah received increased weaponry and funding that aided it in provoking and then battling Israel in the 2006 war. Hamas received weaponry and funding that aided it in taking over Gaza in 2007 and then provoking and battling Israel, much less well, in this past winter’s war. Shiite political parties all types of in Iraq received funding and in some cases weaponry, as Iran opted for a bet-on-all-horses approach to the country’s politics. Syria expanded its bandwagoning relationship with Iran. The rhetoric from Iran  grew increasingly bellicose — a contributing factor was being surrounded by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan — and in 2007 Iran briefly took British sailors captive.

There’s so much we don’t know about the Iranian opposition. We don’t know what it would mean for it to take power. We don’t know what constraints on its ability to influence foreign policy would be. We don’t know what its desires for regional and global foreign policy are. We don’t know how its various factions define Iranian interests, or how those definitions conflict with each other. We don’t know what its relationships with the security apparatus would be. We don’t know what its relationship with the millions of Ahmadinejad supporters would be.

But it’s crazy to think that the rise to power of the opposition, as miraculous as that looks on June 23, wouldn’t have some effect on Iranian power in the Middle East. Various Iranian clients would have to reassess their considerations of the strengths of their ties to the regime. Some would have to ask if they’d have the same sort of client-proxy relationship they currently enjoy. Others — Hamas, probably — would wonder whether they’d have a continued relationship with a vastly changed Iran. U.S. partner regimes in the region, consequently, would ask whether Iran remains the threatening, hegemony-seeking entity that they’ve perceived for years.

Again, it’s way, way, way too early to really have an evidentiary basis for any of this. The opposition, of course, still hasn’t won yet, and things are looking bleak and tense. Hussein Ibish may be right that this is “a revolutionary situation,” and so much can happen in revolutions, as deposed revolutionary Iranian President Abolhassan Bani Sadr can attest. And the Obama administration does not see the Middle East as a canvas in the way that some Bush administration officials did. But the understandable calculus of keeping its focus on what posture is best for addressing the nuclear question shouldn’t obscure the likelihood that if the opposition wins, a significant amount of Middle Eastern politics and diplomacy will change. The direction of that change is unpredictable, but the prospect of its occurrance is fairly strong.

“This morning, the President placed phone calls to four Middle Eastern leaders: President Mubarak of Egypt, Prime Minister Olmert of Israel, King Abdullah of Jordan, and President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. He used this opportunity on his first day in office to communicate his commitment to active engagement in pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace from the beginning of his term, and to express his hope for their continued cooperation and leadership. In the aftermath of the Gaza conflict, he emphasized his determination to work to help consolidate the ceasefire by establishing an effective anti-smuggling regime to prevent Hamas from rearming, and facilitating in partnership with the Palestinian Authority a major reconstruction effort for Palestinians in Gaza. He pledged that the United States would do its part to make these efforts successful, working closely with the international community and these partners as they fulfill their responsibilities as well. The President appreciated the spirit of partnership and warm nature of these calls.”

Who knows what will come of this, but it appears to be a fairly clear signal that the new administration intends to actively engage in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process from the very beginning. It’ll be interesting to see what a “major reconstruction effort” for Gaza will mean, especially if it’s implemented by a Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority that isn’t in control of the Gaza strip.

It’ll be interesting to see what tone is struck at the meeting — who hits it off with Obama, who makes compelling arguments to Obama, and who doesn’t. Will the subject of faster-paced withdrawals from Iraq and into Afghanistan come up? If so, who will advocate them, and who will push back? Will the Petraeus-Odierno alliance on cautious withdrawals from Iraq remain in place, or will there be some divergence of views now that Petraeus is responsible for more than just Iraq?

Karen DeYoung of The Post adds a good point about Israel/Palestine, which is that Obama “is expected to name” former Sen. George Mitchell as his envoy to the Middle East. That looks something like a return to form, as Mitchell was a Mideast troubleshooter during the early days of the Bush administration. In early 2001, he put together a report assessing how the second Palestinian intifada of 2000 came to be, and issued rather even-handed recommendations for resuming the peace process that were subsequently ignored by all parties. His appointment — sorry, Dan Kurtzer — would, at the least, indicate a renewed commitment to the widely-agreed-upon-but-difficult-to-implement principles of Palestinian security reform, counterterrorism enforcement and Israeli settlement freezes.

Oh, and one really strong signal that the detentions/interrogations regime designed by the Bush administration is coming to an end: Marty Lederman, a relentless critic of the Bush administration’s legal contentions about the war on terrorism (and a blogger at Balkinization), will become deputy assistant attorney general at the Office of Legal Counsel. That’s John Yoo’s old job.

Israel hopes to pull all its troops out of the Gaza Strip by the time Barack Obama is inaugurated as president of the United States on Tuesday, Israeli officials said.

Good good good that the war in Gaza is coming to a conclusion. Unmitigated good there. But isn’t it kind of tacky to peg the withdrawal to the newly sworn in president? Doesn’t that send the message that the Gaza war was little more than a chance to take advantage of the blind eye of the Bush administration one final time? I suppose that as someone who argued for finding any pretext to end the war that I can’t complain, but this looks unseemly.

The message is “an invitation” from bin Laden to take part in “jihad to stop the aggression against Gaza.”

The terrorist leader has attempted to hijack the cause of the Palestinians before, so this was probably inevitable. What’s always been interesting is how few Palestinians there are in Al Qaeda, a point that Peter Bergen, among others, has made. Palestinians, one presumes, have problems far more close to home that preclude a fascination with global jihad. Yet In an interesting post at Wonk Room last week, Matt Duss surveyed the rise of ultra-extreme Islamist elements in Gaza — yes, more extreme than Hamas — that are competing with Hamas for power. It doesn’t appear that those are Al Qaeda elements, but just as Israel and the United States blithely squeezed Fatah and wound up with Hamas, it’s worth wondering if there’s an alternative in Gaza worse than Hamas as well.

The panel starts off with the disturbing news that rockets have been fired on Israel from Lebanon, though they’re not presumed to have come from Hezbollah. Moderator Sam Lewis says Kurtzer is “constrained” in his remarks because he’s still mentioned as a candidate for an important diplomatic position. But Kurtzer — who, if I’m not mistaken, is the only diplomat ever to serve as ambassador to Israel and Egypt — holds forth on the regional picture for peacemaking beyond the Gaza war. “What are the goals the various protagonists [in the Gaza war] are pursuing?” he asks, and he says “no one” has a good answer. Post-conflict, “there will be an unacceptable situation on the ground, no matter how this particular phase” wraps up, because Israel and Hamas are like “that Monty Python sketch with the 100-meter dash with runners for no sense of direction.” As a result of this ambiguity, Kurtzer sees little likelihood that either side will be satisfied with a ceasefire. “You have the goals and objectives of these two players moving in different directions,” making it hard to “lead to a conclusion where a mutuality of interest will emerge from it.”

So the question is whether “there is a mutuality of interest in the larger Arab-Israeli” conflict that the United States can work toward. He holds as self-evident that resolving the conflict “is a core American interest, not a favor we do for the parties.” If so, then it’s incumbent on the U.S. to bring about “a concrete end” to the conflict, not just between Israel and Palestine but between Israel and Syria. “Exploratory phases or consultative phases can probably can be telescoped” so that “parties can actually confront tough decisions” about the substance of peace — land, water, borders, etc. “The diplomatic toolbox is not a mystery anymore,” he says.

But does Palestine need to have one leadership, not split between Hamas and Fatah? Kurtzer thinks it “would be impossible to implement an agreement” if not, but “I don’t think we have fully tested the proposition” of negotiating an agreement with the Palestinian leadership — he doesn’t come out and say Fatah, but it’s probably what he means — and then subjecting it to a Palestinian national referendum. Clearly, he’s thought about working around Hamas.

“One cannot ignore the fact that this chessboard is populated by people who have to endure [this crisis] every day,” Kurtzer says, pointing out how Israel considers it absolutely unacceptable to come under constant rocket bombardment from Palestinian areas and how Palestine considers it absolutely unacceptable for Israeli reprisals to carry such “civilian cost.”

Kurtzer couches the position of the Obama administration in conditional terms, but it’s not unreasonable to interpret his remarks as saying that the incoming administration sees it this way. To stick with the Monty Python analogy, Kurtzer’s essentially going “wink-wink-nudge-nudge-knowwhatImean.”

Despite a flurry of other negotiating tracks, including talks pursued by Turkey, Cairo has become the hub of diplomacy over the Gaza war in the past few days. Egypt has served as a mediator between Israel and Hamas before, helping to broker the six-month ceasefire between the two sides, which ended last month. In the past, it has also tried to mediate between squabbling Palestinian factions, Hamas, and the U.S.-supported Fatah party.

Isn’t this a really positive development from Israel’s perspective?

The Egyptian government, if not its people, really hates Hamas. You would too, if you had to live next to this band of violent fanatics. Throughout the entire 12-day Gaza war, Egypt has kept its border crossing at Rafah shut, earning it the ire of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah. For Egypt to broker a ceasefire will mean that an ally of Hamas’ rival Fatah will be in a lead role, absorbing the brunt of regional acrimony over seeming Arab intransigence against Israel, and also allowing Israel to elide the complicated issue of negotiating with Hamas. Perhaps that all means Hamas won’t bother with the Egyptian government this time, but there isn’t really evidence of that so far.

The United States is basically abdicating, much as it did at the dawn of the Bush administration — a time of dismissive petulance toward a deteriorating Israeli-Palestinian situation, and an era that Condoleezza Rice endlessly assured us was over when she became secretary of state in 2005. Her statement on a ceasefire wasn’t really objectionable per se — she wants something “durable,” as does everyone, in principle — but she talks about a ceasefire the way most people talk about a formal peace deal:

We must find a way, with the consent and full cooperation of likeminded governments, to prevent any arms or explosives from entering Gaza, and the tunnel systems that have allowed rearmament of Hamas must be prevented from reopening.

Another approach would be to get an immediate return to the status quo ante — Rice: “The situation before the current events in Gaza was clearly not sustainable…” — and then following it up with an Egyptian-led multinational discussion on enforcing a more durable ceasefire that inches closer to a lasting peace. Rice’s position makes the perfect the enemy of the good. She’ll actually be at an event I’m covering for TWI tomorrow, so we’ll see if she makes any further statement.

But it would be in Israel’s interest to let Egypt’s Mubarak government try to sort out the Palestinian political equation on a ceasefire. Their interests are basically aligned here: both want to weaken Hamas, quiet Gaza and strengthen Fatah. And while Hezbollah hasn’t disturbed Israel’s northern border so far, it’s beginning to make more bellicose noises. If there really is no Israeli strategy at work, quitting while you’re ostensibly ahead isn’t the worst idea.