President Shimon Peres of Israel warned Thursday against potential attempts by the United Nations to impose a Palestinian state on Israel and said that the recent recanting of the harshest conclusions by the author of a United Nations report accusing Israel of war crimes was insufficient to undo the “libels” caused to Israel’s reputation.
With unrest convulsing the Middle East, Israel has come under intensified pressure in Europe and the United States to make a substantive offer to the Palestinians or risk a vote in the United Nations General Assembly in September on a resolution the Palestinians are pressing for that would recognize Palestine as a state.
Israeli diplomats said that Mr. Peres, who will meet with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday, had come to try and ward off such a resolution, which would put Israel in a diplomatic bind at a time when the peace process is at an impasse.
They said he was also seeking to revoke the damning 2009 report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, which said that Israel had deliberately singled out civilians in its three-week invasion of Gaza.
Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist who led the report of more than 500 pages, recently wrote in an opinion article in The Washington Post that he no longer believed that Israel had intentionally made targets of civilians. Mr. Goldstone said he would have written a different report if he had known then what he knew now.
But his essay did not condemn or retract most of the report, which accused Israel of misusing certain weapons, improperly attacking hospitals and United Nations buildings and aiming at things like food production and water installations. He also noted that Israel had refused to cooperate with the inquiry.
Mr. Peres, speaking in front of ambassadors from the 15 members of the Security Council, said that Mr. Goldstone’s reversal of some of his views was not enough to overcome the “libel” that had sullied Israel’s name.
“I saw that Goldstone expressed his regrets,” Mr. Peres said at the meeting, sponsored by the International Peace Institute. “Well, unfortunately, libels are living longer than denials.”
Mr. Peres said that the United Nations report cited some 400 human rights abuses by Israel during the fighting but that Israel’s investigations had found that “mistakes” had occurred in only three cases. The soldiers involved were to face trial, he said.
Israel has urged the United Nations to withdraw the report, but diplomats said that was unlikely. Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said at a Congressional hearing on Wednesday that while she wanted the report to “disappear,” she did not think it could be amended.
The growing impatience with Israel over the stalemate in the peace talks was evident on Thursday in Berlin, where Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, historically Israel’s closest ally in Europe, pressed the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to return to the negotiating table. Germany, Britain and France are trying to persuade the United Nations and the European Union to draw up plans for outlines of a final settlement to the conflict rather than wait for the United States to retake the lead.
Israeli diplomats said they feared that Germany, which has long felt a historical responsibility toward Israel, was aligning itself with countries in Europe that Israel sees as pro-Palestinian.
Mr. Peres told the United Nations ambassadors that Israel was prepared to give up land in return for peace. But he warned against potential attempts by the United Nations to impose a Palestinian state on Israel when the United Nations could not guarantee Israel’s security.
“So what are we supposed to do with a U.N. resolution?” he asked. “If we are prepared to give up land, we expect to have our security guaranteed. None of you would give away the security of your own people.”
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