UN Human Rights Council
UN Human Rights CouncilReuters

The European Union (EU) joined Palestinian and other Arab delegations on Monday in calling on Israel to allow a UN human rights investigator to visit Gaza, Reuters reported.

The call came in a debate in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) which both the United States and Israel did not attend.

Israel has not cooperated with the UN’s special rapporteur Makarim Wibisono, who presented his first report to the UNHRC based on interviews with people in Amman and Cairo, or witnesses on video calls in Gaza.

His report urged Israel to investigate the deaths of more than 1,500 Gazan civilians, one third of them children, during the 2014 Gaza war.

"We call on Israel to grant access to the Special Rapporteur without delay," EU policy officer Jerome Bellion-Jourdan told the Geneva forum, according to Reuters.

The EU believed it was urgent to make "renewed, structured and substantial efforts toward peace" in the Middle East, he said. It was the first time in two years that the EU has spoken during the debate dedicated to Israel, known as item 7, in which the United States has refused to participate since March 2013.

Wibisono replaced Richard Falk as the UN’s investigator of Israel last year. Falk was known for his anti-Israel stance and, before stepping down, accused Israel of a campaign of ethnic cleansing and apartheid policies against Palestinian Arabs.

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Ambassador to the UNHRC, Ibrahim Khraishi, accused Israel of reneging on an oral diplomatic understanding to cooperate with Wibisono and grant him access to Palestinian Arab territories.

Israel has imposed "an illegal and inhuman blockade on Gaza for over seven years", he charged, according to Reuters. "This is collective punishment against 1.8 million Palestinians."

Israel's delegation boycotted the debate, which the Foreign Ministry said "negatively singles out Israel and Israel every year asks its friends on the council not to express themselves".

A report separate from Wibisono’s, dealing with possible war crimes committed by both sides in Gaza, is to be issued by a UN commission of inquiry soon. The chairman of that commission, William Schabas, was forced to step down last month after it was revealed he did some consultation work for the Palestine Liberation Organization in 2012.

Schabas has been replaced by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis, who was part of the controversial 2009 Goldstone Report. Even Judge Richard Goldstone, who led the committee, later retracted the core accusation of "war crimes" leveled in the report.