Explosive Gaza report is back before UN Security Council

The United Nations Security Council on Wednesday takes up a report condemning Israel for actions during last winter's offensive into Gaza, in the midst of some of the highest tension between Israelis and Palestinians in recent years.

Tensions over Israeli settlement construction, riots in Jerusalem, and now fallout from the UN's Goldstone report on human rights violations in the Gaza fighting have combined to suddenly darken President Obama's prospects for progress toward Middle East peace.

"It's not been a good month," says Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The Goldstone report – named after a South African jurist, Richard Goldstone, who headed an inquiry into the Gaza war commissioned by the UN's Human Rights Council – concluded last month that Israel and Hamas both violated international law during the fighting. But it also suggests that Israel committed international war crimes and calls on the Security Council to refer the report's allegations to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague if the violating parties don't investigate the claims.

The Goldstone report arrives in the Security Council at the request of Libya, one day before it is set to be taken up anew by the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The Human Rights Council's (HRC) decision to take up the report Thursday is likely to reduce some of the explosive potential of having the Security Council, the world's premier security body, addressing issues of Israeli and Palestinian aggression and warfare.

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