The commission, established by the U.N. Human Rights Council in April, is headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Goldstone and his colleagues arrive in Gaza on Monday and will stay in the area for about a week.
The commission’s mandate is “to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after.”
U.N. spokesperson Rolando Gomaz told reporters in Geneva last week that Israel had been asked to cooperate with the commission, which also plans to visit areas of southern Israel affected by the conflict, but Israel had declined.
More than 1,000 Palestinians were killed during Israel’s 22-day offensive targeting Hamas rocket-launches and weapons caches in the Gaza Strip that began on December 27, 2008.
Palestinian officials say some 1,400 people were killed, most of them civilians. Israel says the death toll was lower and most of the dead were Hamas fighters.
Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have accused Israel of violating the rules of war and deliberately targeting civilians. But Israel says it did everything possible to avoid civilian casualties even though Hamas chose to store its weapons beneath mosques and civilian buildings, and booby-trapped other facilities, including schools and a zoo.
Israeli officials denounced the mission as a “masquerade,” saying the aim of the exercise was “to find Israel guilty, no matter what.”
Andy David, deputy spokesman for the Israel Foreign Ministry, described the mandate as “one-sided,” and confirmed that Israel would not be speaking to the U.N. officials.
“It doesn’t look into anything that was preceding the Israeli operation in Gaza: the missiles that were being fired at Israel for so many years, or the terrorist activities coming out of Gaza,” David told The Media Line.
“We believe that the mandate that was given to this commission, not looking into the whole picture but just looking at one frame of it, will not enable Goldstone to produce anything with any substance; therefore we do not believe that this commission can do a balanced and full inquiry.”
He added that Israel believed the mandate given to the commission was biased, therefore the results could not be different.
“We clearly told Goldstone that we would not be able to co-operate with the commission,” he said.