Israel has no chance in UN

President Shimon Peres called the Goldstone Commission's report "a great victory for terror," saying a "built-in majority against Israel" in the United Nations means the Jewish state has "no chance to win" support on any single issue.

In an interview with Newsweek published on Saturday, Peres said, "Never before did any terrorist organization gain such recognition, in the most unfair way," referring to the UN-commissioned report on Operation Cast Lead, which accuses both Hamas and Israel of committing war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.

The report was endorsed earlier in October by a majority in the UN Human Rights Council. Among the countries who voted in favor of endorsement were Bahrain, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.

"We have a problem in the United Nations: There is a built-in majority against Israel. Israel doesn't stand a chance to win any single issue because the Muslim and the Arab nations and the ones who follow them are a majority," Peres said.

When asked whether he would support an internal Israeli inquiry into alleged war crimes committed during the three-week IDF operation in Gaza, Netanyahu replied that such an option was being looked into "not because of the Goldstone Report, but because of our own internal needs."

Speaking the truth was "the best way to defuse this issue," the prime minister said, because "Israel was defending itself with just means against an unjust attack.

"Serious countries have to think about adapting the laws of war in the age of terrorism and guerrilla warfare. If the terrorists believe they have a license to kill by choosing to kill from behind civilian lines, that's what they'll do again and again. What exactly is Israel supposed to do?" Netanyahu said.

In response to Netanyahu's remarks, Defense Minister Ehud Barak reiterated his opinion that Israel should not appoint a commission to investigate the actions of IDF officers and soldiers during Operation Cast Lead.

Barak stressed that he fully trusted the operational investigations conducted by the IDF, adding that "there is no army in the world that investigates its actions like the IDF."

Also in the interview published over the weekend, Peres said Netanyahu could no longer be called "right-wing."

"He came from the Right, but he's no longer a rightist. He agreed to a two-state solution and to what no other prime minister ever agreed to, to freeze settlements," Peres was quoted as saying.

Peres told Newsweek he may have had "a certain influence" upon the steps that Netanyahu has taken. "I don't expect him to take everything that I say. My advice is simple: We have to make peace. We shouldn't postpone it," the president said.

Netanyahu, for his part, expressed his belief that the government represented the "consensus of the Israeli public."

He went on to blame the Palestinian Authority for preventing the resumption of peace talks by setting preconditions. "We just wasted six months because of the Palestinian effort to place preconditions on the negotiations, preconditions that weren't there for the last 16 years … it's freezing the settlements, it's committing in advance to the results of the negotiations."

The prime minister claimed that "the gist of the problem is that for 62 years the Palestinians have refused to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people