The United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – The Israeli Foreign Ministry has announced that it will not cooperate with the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) inquiry into the summer Gaza conflict led by Canadian law professor William Schabas.

“While Hamas fired thousands of rockets toward Israel, the U.N. Human Rights Council decided it would determine in advance Israel’s ‘guilt’ and set up an investigative committee to serve as a rubber stamp to its known positions,” foreign ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon said in a statement.

“Since the Schabas commission is not an inquiry but a commission that gives its conclusions in advance, Israel will not cooperate with the U.N. Commission on Human Rights over the last conflict with Hamas,” Nahshon said.

As a result, Israel has also denied an entry request by the three U.N. investigators, leaving them stuck in Amman, Jordan. In the past, Schabas has called for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former president Shimon Peres to be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court for human rights violations. Given Schabas’s history, the Israeli government has called the current U.N. probe a “kangaroo court.”