The judge who chaired the controversial UN inquiry into Israel's attack on Gaza from December 2008 has expressed regret that his report may have been inaccurate.

Richard Goldstone, who led the committee that produced the Goldstone report, said in a newspaper article that "if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a very different document".

The judge's article was welcomed by Israeli leaders. Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, told ministers on Sunday: "There are very few incidents in which false accusations are taken back, and this is the case with the Goldstone report."

He said that Israel would now try to get the report retracted by the UN.

The Gaza War, which the Israeli army called Operation Cast Lead, began in December 2008 and lasted for three weeks.

By the end, more than 1,400 Palestinians were dead, at least half of whom were civilians, and 13 Israelis, three of whom were civilians.

Goldstone was asked to head a fact-finding committee into allegations of war crimes by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

Israel refused to co-operate with the mission and would not allow Goldstone's committee to travel to the Gaza Strip via Israel.

The report accused both Hamas and Israel of war crimes and deliberately targeting civilians. It urged that both sides should investigate their own actions or risk being investigated by the international criminal court.

Goldstone was vilified after the publication of the report by supporters of Israel who accused him of a "blood libel", a false accusation that had been used to demonise Jews in the past.

However, in a new article in the Washington Post, Goldstone appeared to backtrack from some of his findings.

He wrote that subsequent Israeli military investigations had confirmed some of the report's findings but also indicated that, "civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy" by Israel.

He cited the killing of 29 members of the al-Simouni family as evidence that Israel had not deliberately targeted civilians.

"The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander's erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack."

Goldstone said that his committee made recommendations based on the evidence before them, but because Israel refused to submit evidence, its views could not be taken into account.

"As I indicated right from the beginning, I would have welcomed Israel's co-operation," he said.

He also noted that the Israeli army had begun 400 investigations into allegations against Israeli soldiers but regretted that more than two years later, few had been finished and none had been held in public.

Captain Aryeh Shalikar, a spokesman for the Israeli army, said that Goldstone's article proved that Israeli forces had never intentionally targeted Gazan civilians, while the strategy of Hamas was to target Israeli civilians.

"We have also demonstrated that we are ready and willing to investigate ourselves," he said.

Israeli officials admit that the Gaza war, because of the high Palestinian death toll and subsequent furore, has caused the country diplomatic and public relations problems.

Israeli media responded to Goldstone's article with jubilation. The columnists of the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper offered a conciliatory tone to the judge for having the courage to question his initial findings, while Ma'ariv writers were unforgiving.

One wrote: "He is undeserving of either forgiveness or mercy" and had perpetrated "a despicable and shameful act".