A new UN report exposes a bit of misinformation peddled by the US and Israel and shatters the Zionist illusion that the Gaza war was legal.

The report, prepared by human rights investigator Richard Falk, confirms that Tel Aviv was indeed the party that violated the Egyptian-brokered six-month truce in Gaza.

Israel and the democratically elected Palestinian government confined to the Gaza Strip agreed in mid June 2008 to a six-month truce.

While reports indicated that Tel Aviv had initially broken the truce with its tanks and bulldozers crossing the southern border of the Gaza Strip on November 4 and 5, echelons in the United States and Israel insisted otherwise.

A widespread campaign in support of the alleged Israeli right to enter the Palestinian territory was then launched by US and Israeli media outlets.

"Records show that, during the ceasefire, it was predominantly Israel that resorted to conduct inconsistent with the undertaking, and Hamas that retaliated," Falk responded in a report presented Monday at the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council.

The report outlined the incidents leading up to the three-week Israeli offensive on the tiny coastal strip. The carnage caused by the Israeli operations killed nearly 1,350 Palestinians and wounded around 5,450 others -- most of them civilians.

"On 4 November … Israel killed a Palestinian in Gaza, mortars were fired from Gaza in retaliation, and then an Israeli air strike was launched that killed an additional six Palestinians in Gaza," Falk said, adding that the "the breakdown of the ceasefire seems to have been mainly a result of Israeli violations."

Falk, who based his findings on Israeli sources, said the number of Palestinian rockets and mortar shells fired into Israel after the ceasefire came into effect in June had considerably declined.

"The ceasefire was remarkably effective; after it began in June 2008, the rate of rocket and mortar fire from Gaza dropped to almost zero, and stayed there for almost four months," the report continued.

The report went on to conclude that "the experience of the temporary ceasefire demonstrates both the willingness and the capacity of those exerting control in Gaza to eliminate rocket and mortar attacks."

Since Israel denied Falk entry into Gaza during the war, his report focused on the legality of the military operations and whether Israel even had a right to enter the Palestinian sliver in the first place.

Tel Aviv in late December had claimed that it launched Operation Cast Lead on the territory of 1.5 million Palestinians in "retaliation for Palestine rocket attacks on Israel".

The UN report confirms that Tel Aviv began the bloodshed by breaking the truce and is thus unable to use claims of self-defense.

In addition to the lost lives, the onslaught cost the Palestinian economy at least $1.6 billion, destroying some 4,000 residential buildings and damaging 16,000 other houses.

Israel's staunch ally, the United States, on Monday commented on the report, which calls for an investigation into Israel's war crimes in Gaza, as "biased".

The US has so far vetoed at least 45 anti-Israel resolutions at the UN and has blocked official condemnation of crimes committed against the native Palestinian population.

At the height of the war on Gaza, the US abstained from voting on the resolution which called for an 'immediate and durable' ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the region.

MT/AA