Gaza WarHead of UN panel investigating 2014 Gaza war quits after his work for PLO comes to light

The controversial Canadian academic William Schabas, who was appointed to head the UN inquiry into Israel-Hamas war of summer 2014, said yesterday (Monday) that he would resign following revelations that he was paid for consulting work he did for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Schaba has long been subject to Israeli allegations that he was biased against Israel.

Schabas, who lives in the United Kingdom and teaches international law at Middlesex University, was appointed last August by the head of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to lead a three-member panel to investigate possible war crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas during the war.

Reuters obtained a copy of the letter which Schabas sent to the UNHRC, in which he informed the commission that he would step down immediately to prevent the issue of his consultancy work for the PLO casting a shadow over the preparation of the report and its findings.

The final report is scheduled to be published in March.

Haaretz reports that Schabas’s resignation and the publication of the report come only weeks after prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in (ICC) The Hague said they had launched a preliminary examination into alleged atrocities committed by Israel in the Palestinian territories.

In his letter to the UNHRC Schabas said he was paid $1,300 for a legal opinion he wrote for the PLO in 2012. He noted that he did similar work for many other governments and organizations.

“My views on Israel and Palestine as well as on many other issues were well known and very public,” he wrote. “This work in defense of human rights appears to have made me a huge target for malicious attacks (…).”

Israel had harshly and persistently criticized Schabas’s for what Israel considered to be his intemperate criticism of Israel and its political leadership. Schabas argued, for example, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former president Shimon Peres should be put on trial in The Hague for being war criminals.

When the UNHRC in August appointed Schabas to head the UN investigation, Israel announced it would not cooperate with the investigative committee and would not take part in the process (although, informally, Israeli individuals were allowed to testify before the committee).

Schabas noted that his legal work for the PLO – of which the UNHRC was unaware when he was appointed last August — had led the UNHRC’s executive on Monday to seek legal advice from UN headquarters about his position.

“I believe that it is difficult for the work to continue while a procedure is underway to consider whether the chair of the commission should be removed,” he wrote.