JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Obama: Goldstone not going anywhere; and the story behind the housing starts-UPDATE

By Ron Kampeas · September 23, 2009

UPDATE: Now the White House is saying the official "misspoke." Key grafs from the updated brief:

Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, called JTA later to say the official "misspoke" and that administration policy on the Goldstone report remains as articulated last week by Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador.

Rice described the UNHRC mandate as "unbalanced, one sided and basically unacceptable. We have very serious concerns about many of the recommendations in the report. We will expect and believe that the appropriate venue for this report to be considered is the Human Rights Council and that is our strong view."

She did not mention what the United States would do were the report to be referred to the ICC.

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We're in website hell, with ours going up and down all day.

Meantime, we posted this brief not long ago:

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The Obama administration will not allow the Goldstone report recommendations on Israel's conduct in the Gaza war to reach the International Criminal Court.

A top White House official told Jewish organizational leaders in an off-the-record phone call Wednesday that the U.S. strategy was to "quickly" bring the report -- commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council and carried out by former South African Judge Richard Goldstone -- to its "natural conclusion" within the Human Rights Council and not to allow it to go further, Jewish participants in the call told JTA.

The report said the U.N. fact-finding mission investigating Israel's conduct during the January 2009 war found evidence of Israeli war crimes. Israel has denied the allegations and said the report's mandate was biased -- an opinion echoed by U.S. officials.

The Obama administration is ready to use the U.S. veto at the U.N. Security Council to deal with any other "difficulties" arising out of the report, the White House official said Wednesday. The administration also has made clear to the Palestinian Authority that Washington is not pleased with a P.A. petition to bring the report's allegations against Israel to the International Criminal Court.

The official said the Obama administration's view was that the report was flawed from its conception because the mandate presumed a priori that Israel had violated war crimes and that the mandate ignored Hamas' role in prompting the war through its rocket fire into Israel.

Another insight from the call: The White House official said the Netanyahu government had given the White House a heads up before announcing about 450 new housing starts in settlements earlier this month. Netanyahu needed the starts to justify a freeze to his right flank, was how the Israelis explained it.

White House officials countered to the Israelis that they had lined up a number of Arab states ready to make key symbolic concessions Netanyahu has demanded in exchange for a freeze: overflights for Israeli civilian aircraft, opening trade interest sections, visas for Israelis, etc.Netanyahu says he needs this to sell the peace process to a skeptical Israeli public.

Certainly, not all 23 Arab states were on board, the official said, but a significant number had made specific "deposits" of what they intended to do once a freeze was announced. That would coallpse if Israel announced the new starts, the official said.

Sure enough, that's what happened, he said: The "deposits" are off the table for now, even if Israel freezes settlements.