LONDON/ BETHLEHEM, 23 April — Amnesty International called yesterday for an international war crimes probe into the events surrounding the recent Israeli incursion into Jenin as UN Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen stuck by his criticism of Israel’s assault on the refugee camp, saying he reacted as any decent human being would have. Roed-Larsen on Thursday accused Israeli Army of using "morally repugnant" means in Jenin.
Amnesty delegate Javier Zuniga, who visited Jenin last week as part of a three-day survey said: "We have concluded, on a preliminary basis, that very serious violations of human rights were committed. We are talking here (about) war crimes. Nothing short of a full international inquiry will do," he added at a briefing to journalists in London.
The human rights organization, detailing what it claims was evidence of serious human rights abuses, said the United Nations fact-finding mission would not be able to go far enough into uncovering what had happened in the West Bank camp. Palestinians say that a massacre took place in Jenin, during which hundreds died.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan named yesterday a three-member fact-finding mission to look into what happened at the Jenin refugee camp.
They are: Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland who has often had high-level UN positions; Sadako Ogata, the former UN high commissioner for refugees; and Cornelio Somarruga, the former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Israel reluctantly agreed to the mission on Friday and it was then approved by the UN Security Council. The operation was labeled a "fact-finding team" rather than an investigative mission and would report to Annan rather than the council.
In Ramallah, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat told US Undersecretary of State for the Middle East William Burns that there should be a total Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank.
Burns met Arafat at his Israeli-besieged compound yesterday, Palestinian officials said.
Arafat’s senior adviser Nabil Abu Rudeina, quoted by the Palestinian news agency WAFA, said the US official and Arafat "continued during the meeting the discussions between President Arafat and US Secretary of State Colin Powell" held last week.
He said Burns assured Arafat that the US administration was committed to dealing "simultaneously with the political and security tracks" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as demanded by the Palestinians.
Israel barred Palestinian delegates from taking part in the Burns-Arafat meeting, according to another Palestinian official.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers shot dead five Palestinians in the Gaza Strip before dawn yesterday and troops kept Arafat’s headquarters and Bethlehem’s Nativity Church under tight siege.
Troops entered the central Gaza Strip El Bureij refugee camp, sparking gunbattles with Palestinians and killing two policemen, the reports said.
Three Palestinian activists were killed in two separate Jewish settlements in the northern Gaza Strip.
A sixth Palestinian was killed in the northern West Bank city of Tulkaram overnight, when hit by a bullet on the way to his farm, Palestinian sources reported.
Another Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli troops as he was returning to his home village of Azmut from the main northern West Bank town of Nablus.
Jibril Alaouni was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers, who were enforcing a Palestinian travel ban between villages surrounding Nablus, medical sources said.
Two Hamas activists were shot dead by troops in the village of Taluza near Nablus.
The Israeli Yediot Ahronot daily quoted Palestinian officials as saying they feared the Israeli Army was planning to storm Arafat’s compound, which troops have continued to encircle, even after the Israeli Army withdrew from parts of Ramallah early Sunday. About 30 peace activists attempting to enter Arafat’s besieged headquarters yesterday, were forced back by Israeli tanks and soldiers, an AFP correspondent witnessed.
The group, including several who had been involved in a diversion on Sunday which allowed other activists into the compound, carried placards reading "Arafat is our partner" and "End the occupation".
Ten international pro-Palestinian activists, eight of them French, meanwhile quit Arafat’s besieged headquarters yesterday where they had been acting as a "human shield," a Western diplomat said.
Israeli troops destroyed several homes of Palestinian activists in the Deheishe refugee camp near Bethlehem.
Israeli soldiers yesterday seized the press cards of 17 journalists with foreign media organizations who were in a restricted area around the Nativity Church in Bethlehem, an AFP journalist witnessed.
The head of Palestinian preventative security in the West Bank yesterday said there would be no more security cooperation with Israel as long as Israeli troops occupied Palestinian land.
Col. Jibril Rajoub, once a leading figure in security talks with Israel, accused Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of destroying his headquarters near Ramallah despite security guarantees from the United States.
In Tel Aviv, an Israeli military judge extended the detention of Marwan Barghouti, the West Bank chief of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, by a further 25 days.
The judge announced the custody had been extended after meeting Barghouti at the police headquarters in west Jerusalem, where he has been held since his arrest seven days ago, the agency said. During the meeting, Barghouti insisted that as a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Israel did not have the right to arrest or try him.
Peter Hansen, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) tasked with looking after Palestinian refugees, reiterated UN criticism of Israel for not allowing rescue teams to enter the camp sooner after the battle that left most of it in ruins.
"The chances would have been far greater to find survivors if we’d been allowed earlier. We could have saved people," he told reporters. He said the priorities were to repair damaged water pipes, warning that survivors who had returned to their ruined homes were drinking water contaminated by sewage and decomposing bodies. The Palestinian Authority accused Sharon yesterday of trying to install a puppet government in the West Bank by cracking down on the self-rule administration’s infrastructure. "I don’t believe in the Israeli withdrawal — this is a deception," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Eraket said in reference to Israel’s announcements that its troops had pulled out of most major towns it had reoccupied over the past three weeks. Sharon has said the first phase of his Operation Defensive Wall against Palestinian militants is over, and was gearing up yesterday to build fences and buffer zones, but his next political move remains far from clear.
