OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 8 April — The UN agency dealing with Palestinian refugees yesterday urged the Israeli Army to “end the horror” in West Bank refugee camps where troops are fighting pitched battles to smash Palestinian groups.
“The Israeli Defense Force has made a hellish battleground among the civilians in Balata and Jenin refugee camps,” said Peter Hansen, commissioner general of UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.
“We are getting reports of pure horror — that helicopters are strafing civilian residential areas; that systematic shelling by tanks has created hundreds of wounded; that bulldozers are razing refugee homes and that food and medicine will soon run out,” he said in a statement. He said Israel must let ambulances evacuate the wounded and deliver emergency supplies of food and medicine. “The world is watching and Israel needs to end this pitiless assault on civilian refugee camps,” he said.
UNRWA’s West Bank operations chief Richard Cook added: “A humanitarian disaster is in the making in the West Bank camps. There has been an alarming loss of life.”
Israel launched Operation Defensive Wall on March 29 to crack down on hard-line Palestinian groups behind a wave of deadly anti-Israeli suicide bombings.
Meanwhile, an Israeli human rights group said yesterday it had petitioned the supreme court to end what it called the use of torture during interrogation of Palestinian detainees, but the petition was rejected. Lior Yavne, spokesman for B’Tselem which focuses on rights issues in the West Bank and Gaza, also said the court turned down an appeal to end the use of a collective warrant that prevents detainees from having access to a lawyer.
“We received information that (some of the) detainees at Ofer detention camp in Beitunia (on the West Bank) are being interrogated by means of torture,” Yavne said.
He quoted “Israeli sources” as saying some detainees had had their toes broken. Yavne said the petition called for the court to “end immediately all use of physical pressure in interrogation”.
In Venice, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique said yesterday the EU could impose sanctions on Israel if it refuses to withdraw its troops from Palestinian territory. “It’s a possible scenario, but we have to discuss” it, Pique told a group of journalists in Venice, where he was attending the Aspen European Dialogue conference.
“Some countries are in favor... of sanctions very soon, some others are more reluctant, so we have to discuss it,” he added.
“The question is very very complex. But the most important thing, is to concentrate our efforts on obtaining a cease-fire with the Palestinian side stopping terrorist attacks.”
Pique also confirmed UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan would attend a meeting on the Middle East crisis in Madrid on Wednesday with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
