PALESTINIAN official Hanan Ashrawi accused Israel of intimidation today in the wake of Tel Aviv’s demands that a UN commission tasked with investigating potential war crimes be scrapped.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decried the Geneva-based UN’s human rights council as an “anti-Israeli body” after its chairman, Canadian law professor William Schabas, submitted his resignation on Monday night.

Ms Ashrawi said that Mr Netanyahu’s remarks were “typical Israeli tactics.”

“They try to intimidate, they try to slander, they try to discredit. They make it extremely difficult for anybody to take any position that would hold Israel accountable or investigate Israeli violations or Israeli war crimes.”

Mr Schabas’s resignation followed an official complaint from Israel on January 30 which accused him of “clear and documented bias against Israel,” citing a “contractual relationship with the Palestinian side” prior to becoming head of the commission.

In his resignation letter Mr Schabas acknowledged receiving $1,300 (£860) for a legal opinion he wrote for the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 2012, making clear that it was of a “technical legal nature” drawn from scholarly work he had published.

Mr Schabas defended his record, saying that as a “scholar involved in international human rights, I have regularly condemned perpetrators of violations.

“This work in defence of human rights appears to have made me a huge target for malicious attacks,” he added, explaining that he was resigning to avoid any distractions while the commission finishes the “decisive stage” of its work.

The commission’s final report is scheduled to be delivered on March 23.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said that the resignation “shows the huge pressure Israel and the zionist lobby put on the committee and its chairman.” Such pressure “is meant for impunity and killing the truth,” he said.

Mr Netanyahu engaged in classic what-aboutery, accusing the commission of unfairly targeting Israel and ignoring abuses elsewhere.

“This is the same council that in 2014 made more decisions against Israel than against Iran, Syria and North Korea combined,” he declared, demanding that Gaza’s Hamas rulers “need to be investigated, not Israel.”

Not to be outdone, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (pictured) said: “Having Schabas investigate Israel is like having Cain investigate who murdered Abel.”