A veteran UN war crimes investigator acknowledged his probe of possible war crimes by Israel and Hamas - which included interviewing dozens of victims and poring through the files of human rights groups - is unlikely to lead to prosecutions.
UN investigator Richard Goldstone arrives for a meeting at the Hamas Health Ministry, in Gaza City.
Photo: AP [file]
Israel has refused to cooperate, depriving his team access to military sources and victims of Hamas rockets. And Hamas security often accompanied his team during their five-day trip to Gaza last week, raising questions about the ability of witnesses to freely describe the group's actions.
But the chief barrier remains the lack of a court with jurisdiction to hear any resulting cases stemming from the investigation into Israel's three-week offensive in Gaza which ended in January and was designed to stop years of Hamas rocket fire into southern Israel.
"From a practical political point of view, I wish I could be optimistic," Judge Richard Goldstone said, citing the legal and political barriers to war crimes trials.
Still, Goldstone hopes his group's report - due in September - will spur action by other UN bodies and foreign governments.
Goldstone, a South African judge who prosecuted war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, refused to comment on the investigation's content. But AP interviews with more than a dozen Gazans who spoke to the team reveal a wide-ranging investigation into the war's most prominent allegations.
