Palestinians slam Abbas over UN Gaza report delay

* Abbas stance criticised even within his own party
* 14 rights groups condemn delay over U.N. Gaza report
* Dismay on streets; minister voices surprise at decision


By Mohammed Assadi
Sun Oct 4, 2009 12:24pm EDT

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Critics accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday of letting down his people by bowing to U.S. pressure and postponing action on a U.N. report that criticised Israel's offensive in Gaza.

The Palestinian Authority agreed in Geneva on Friday to defer a vote in the United Nations Human Rights Council on a resolution that would have condemned Israel's failure to cooperate with a U.N. war crimes investigation led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone. It would also have forwarded his report to the Security Council.

Hamas, the Islamist group which runs the Gaza Strip, condemned Abbas, but the president and his Palestinian Authority also faced anger from commentators in their own backyard in the West Bank, and even criticism within Abbas's own Fatah party.

"Abu Mazen has lost a lot from this," said Shawan Jabarin, who runs the al-Haq human rights watchdog in Ramallah, using Abbas's familiar name.

"Even the average man in the street thinks Abu Mazen has given up the rights of the victims and given up on pursuing Israeli war criminals," Jabarin added.

Protesters said they would march in Ramallah on Monday.

A group of 14 rights groups issued a statement condemning the consent to a delay and vowing to "seek justice".

The United States said it was in the interests of efforts to relaunch peace negotiations between Abbas and Israel that the U.N. body give both Israel and Hamas more time to pursue Goldstone's recommendations that they each launch their own credible investigations into possible crimes in January's war.

Palestinians say over 900 of 1,400 people killed in Gaza were civilians. Israel, which contests those figures, lost 10 soldiers and three civilians during the three-week offensive, which it said it launched with the aim of halting rocket attacks from Gaza that disrupted life in nearby Israeli towns.

Abbas's foreign minister, Riyad al-Malki, said the Authority agreed with postponing until March a vote that could lead to the Security Council referring Israel and Hamas to the International Criminal Court. Israel has denounced the report as biased.

"COST US DEAR"

Ismail Haniyeh, once Abbas's prime minister and the leader of Hamas in Gaza, said Abbas's consent to deferring a vote on the report "encouraged the occupier ... to continue his crimes".

But even within Fatah, where Abbas has struggled to assert the kind of dominance his late predecessor Yasser Arafat enjoyed, voices were raised against the decision in Geneva.

"The consent to defer the vote had cost us dear. We'll need years to fix this mistake," said one Fatah official, who declined, however, to be quoted by name.

Abbas's government, led by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, has demanded the report's recommendations be implemented in full. Planning Minister Ali Jarbawi expressed his "surprise" over the Palestinian consent to a postponed vote.

On the streets of Abbas's West Bank base, Ramallah, there was also dismay. "This shows that the Palestinian leadership cannot be trusted to defend our just cause and this will cost us international sympathy," said bank clerk Husam Ahmad.

Formal negotiations with Israel on establishing a Palestinian state have been suspended since the Gaza conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday the United Nations would deal a "fatal blow" to prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace if it endorsed Goldstone's report.

(Additional reporting by Nidal Al-Mughrabi in Gaza, editing by Alastair Macdonald and Mark Trevelyan)