Israel's representative was conspicuously absent from a UN Human Rights Council special session on the situation in the Palestinian territories and the 2014 Gaza conflict.
Israel provided no immediate explanation for not being present at the Monday session dedicated overwhelmingly to discussion of its policies and alleged abuses, but a source close to the council said its absence clearly amounted to a boycott.
"We won't comment on that," a spokeswoman with the Israeli mission in Geneva told AFP.
The United States was also not present, sparking speculation that its absence could be a sign of the cooling relations between the two allies since it was not there to defend Israel.
But the United States denied that, saying it was US policy not to participate in council debates on a specific agenda item on Israel, which Washington maintains unfairly singles out the Jewish state.
"We remain deeply troubled by this council's stand-alone agenda item directed against Israel, and by the many repetitive and one-sided resolutions under that agenda item," the US ambassador to the council, Keith Harper, said in a statement.
Monday's session had originally been scheduled to discuss a probe on the 50-day war in Gaza last year, but the investigators obtained a delay after the head of the team quit under Israeli pressure.
Canadian international law expert William Schabas resigned as chair of the Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza conflict last month after Israel complained he could not be impartial because he had prepared a legal opinion for the Palestine Liberation Organisation in October 2012.
Schabas strongly denied that he was beholden to the PLO but said he was reluctantly stepping down to avoid the inquiry into the July-August conflict - commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council - being compromised in any away.
Share
