UNITED NATIONS/BETHLEHEM, 27 April — UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has agreed to an Israeli request to delay the arrival of a fact-finding mission to the Jenin refugee camp until tomorrow evening, a senior UN official said yesterday.
Israel and the United Nations had earlier appeared set on a collision course after Israel demanded that the team be delayed while Annan insisted the team arrive in the Middle East on schedule to find out what happened during Israel’s three-week assault on the West Bank camp.
A statement from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office yesterday said Israel had asked that the UN team “be held back until the points of dispute are discussed and settled.”
“In order to clarify matters, Israel is seeking to delay the arrival of the committee until the discussions (in New York) have been concluded and the problematic points have been clarified,” the statement said. Annan had said he expected the UN team to fly from Geneva to Israel today.
Antagonizing the global community, the Israeli government tried to slam the brakes on the weekend arrival of the fact-finding mission.
Earlier yesterday, Israeli officials stressed the panel had not yet received a green light from Israel to enter the heavily damaged northern West Bank camp.
Palestinians called on the United Nations to punish Israel for delaying the fact-finding mission.
“The Palestinian Authority calls on the Security Council to impose sanctions on Israel for its refusal to apply its decisions,” a top aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat told AFP.
A Palestinian official said Israel’s demand for the UN mission to be delayed showed it had something to hide in the Jenin camp and urged the United Nations to get tough.
Israeli forces raided the West Bank city of Qalqilya yesterday in defiance of a fresh call from US President George W. Bush for Israel to complete a pullout from re-occupied Palestinian areas.
President George W. Bush called on Thursday for a peaceful end to standoffs in Bethlehem and at Arafat’s tank-ringed headquarters in Ramallah.
In another developments, an Israeli Army spokesman warned Tel Aviv was ready to use military force against the besieged Church of the Nativity if negotiations fail to evacuate about 200 Palestinians holed up inside.
Capt. Joe Leyden told a press conference that the situation in the Church of the Nativity “is not open-ended” and “If we have to exercise a military option, we will.”
“There are still around 20 boys, most of them between the ages of 14 and 15, still inside,” said Abdel Hayye Abu Srour, 16, one of those allowed to leave the church on Thursday.
Later in the day, Israeli soldiers besieging the church shot and wounded two after four other Palestinians holed up in the church had surrendered. “Four unarmed Palestinians, two in police uniform, gave themselves up to our troops, and then two gunmen were spotted in the church compound, about to fire. Troops shot and wounded them, and then took them into custody for treatment,” Israeli sources said.
Hospital officials in Bethlehem said one of the wounded men was a civilian, the other a member of a Palestinian intelligence agency.
During raids in Qalqilya, Beita, Silt a-Dhar and Jaba’a, the army detained at least 30 Palestinians.
Soldiers shot dead two Palestinians in the afternoon in Qalqilya, one of whom was a local leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Raed Nazel.
The PFLP’s military wing swore to avenge Nazel’s death, saying in a statement that it would no longer refrain from attacking civilians inside Israel. The army said Nazel had been behind several attacks, including one on a Jewish settlement in the West Bank that killed three Israelis in February.
Witnesses said about 15 tanks and armored personnel carriers pushed into Qalqilya and that soldiers stormed into homes, blowing open doors and ransacking rooms.
Residents reported gunbattles in the opening hours of the Israeli thrust into the city of 40,000.
In Bethlehem, the Israeli Army yesterday freed eight of nine young Palestinians detained after they were allowed out of church a day earlier, a Palestinian official said.
But Fuad Al-Laham, 19, was handed over to Israel’s domestic security agency Shin Beth for further questioning, said Salah Al-Taamari, the chief Palestinian negotiator in talks to end the siege.
Taamari, meanwhile, has received permission from Israel to meet Arafat at the Palestinian president’s beleaguered headquarters in Ramallah. Palestinian Tourism Minister Mitri Abu Eita confirmed the visit would take place, but said he did not know when.
In Washington State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations will confer in Washington next Thursday on the conflict in the Middle East. It will be the second meeting of the so-called “quartet,” which held its first meeting in Madrid on April 10 at the start of a mission to the region by Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Meanwhile, the head of Amnesty International, Irene Khan, will visit the devastated Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin to assess the situation there, an Amnesty official said yesterday.
The International Labour Organization is also to send a fact-finding mission to the Middle East to evaluate working conditions in Israel and the Palestinian territories, a spokesman said here yesterday.
