Baroness Ruth Deech and six other peers have warned that an upcoming UN Human Rights Council inquiry on the conflict with the Palestinians would “open the door to all the enemies of Israel.”

The open-ended probe, set up last year after May's 11-day war and expected to be published in June, is investigating alleged human rights law violations and “all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions”.

Israeli officials are reportedly concerned the report could label the country an apartheid state. 

In a fiery submission to the inquiry, the peers say: “Rather than serving as an impartial investigatory platform and as a conflict mediator, the United Nations and its agencies have instead exacerbated the tensions fuelling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through deep-seated anti-Israel bias and its inculcation of anti-peace narratives.” 

Speaking to the JC, Baroness Deech said: “The inquiry is going to open the door to all the enemies of Israel to write in and accuse Israel of war-crimes. It’s unwanted. It’s biased and it’s particularly dangerous because it coincides with the equally unpleasant and biased Amnesty International report accusing Israel of apartheid.”

She added: “We simply have to defend Israel in the United Nations because Israel does not get fair play in the United Nations and especially the United Nations Human Rights Council which is full of members whose own human rights records are absolutely disgraceful.”

The crossbench peer urged “all concerned politicians and people who are acquainted with this issue who read the JC please to write in to the United Nations and do the same thing.”