South African judge Richard Goldstone, author of a UN report on Israel's Gaza offensive two years ago, said his work would have been "a different document" had he been given access to information available today.
"We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission" that produced his report, Goldstone wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece.
A UN committee of independent experts that followed up on Goldstone Report recommendations found that Israel "has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza".
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In contrast, Hamas "have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel" that triggered the offensive, Goldstone wrote.
The Goldstone Report found evidence of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity by both Israel and Hamas.
Crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional because its rockets were "purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets," Goldstone wrote.
Allegations of intentionality by Israel in turn were based on the death and wounding of civilians in situations where the UN fact-finding mission could not reach "any other reasonable conclusion."
"While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the UN committee's report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy," he said.
Goldstone said he shared the concerns in the follow-up UN report "that few of Israel's inquiries have been concluded," and believed that "the proceedings should have been held in a public forum".
"Although the Israeli evidence that has emerged since publication of our report doesn't negate the tragic loss of civilian life, I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes," he wrote.
He also said he would have welcomed Israel's cooperation. "The purpose of the Goldstone Report was never to prove a foregone conclusion against Israel."
Goldstone wrote that his report marked the first time the United Nations investigated and condemned acts of terrorism by Hamas.
"I had hoped that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of evenhandedness at the UN Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted," he wrote.
The report's main recommendation was for Israel and Hamas to "investigate, transparently and in good faith, the incidents referred to in our report".
The subsequent UN report "has found that Israel has done this to a significant degree; Hamas has done nothing.
"The laws of armed conflict apply no less to non-state actors such as Hamas than they do to national armies," Goldstone wrote.
