VILNIUS/RAMALLAH, 4 May — UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson yesterday called for an independent investigation into recent events in the Jenin refugee camp and urged Israeli authorities to seriously consider a report by Human Rights Watch that its soldiers committed war crimes.
According to Asharq Al-Awsat, Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, is likely to meet Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in Cairo next week. Other reports said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has invited Arafat to Cairo on Tuesday.
In other developments in the occupied territories, Israeli forces thrust deep into the West Bank city of Nablus yesterday in a raid on Palestinian activists, sparking a fierce gunbattle, as four Palestinian policemen left Bethlehem’s besieged Church of the Nativity in the afternoon, one of them on a stretcher and a deal struck between the Israelis and the Palestinians to supply food to those trapped inside earlier in the day, collapsed.
The fighting in Nablus left three people dead. A Palestinian policeman, a Hamas activist and an Israeli Army officer were killed in Nablus after soldiers stormed the hide-out of a group of activists.
Some 50 tanks and armored personnel carriers entered the Palestinian autonomous city overnight, but withdrew in the morning, Nablus Governor Mahmoud Aloul confirmed.
"We have a credible report of Human Rights Watch raising prima facie concerns of breaches of international humanitarian law and disproportionate force against the civilian population in the Jenin refugee camp," Robinson said.
The report released concluded that rights were violated in apparent "war crimes," including the alleged army use of Palestinian human shields.
"I call on the state responsible, Israel, to carry out an independent investigation on the situation and to have accountability for those found to have been in breach of international humanitarian law," Robinson told journalists. The Israeli Army has termed the report biased.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said yesterday he was ready to take part in an international peace conference on the region sponsored by the "quartet" of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the UN. "We accept the idea of the international conference," Arafat told reporters at his Ramallah headquarters, adding that "any political solution should be based on international law."
Meanwhile, Israel’s Supreme Court refused yesterday a plea by his lawyer to see Marwan Barghouti, the number-two in Fatah who has been under continuous interrogation by the Shin Bet intelligence agency since his arrest on the West Bank.
According to a report from Tel Aviv, Israel said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would show US President George W. Bush evidence provided by Palestinian leaders under interrogation linking Arafat to the financing of attacks on Israelis.
"Arafat directly approved funding to Fatah activists with the knowledge it would be used to pay for attacks against Israelis," the statement said. It did not say under what conditions the men made their "confessions". Sharon’s office said the evidence against Arafat had been supplied by Marwan Barghouti.
Both senior Palestinian officials and Barghouti’s lawyer denied that the Fatah leader had testified against Arafat.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat rejected as a "lie" Israeli claim that confessions by senior aides to Arafat link the Palestinian leader directly to the financing of attacks on the Jewish state.
Efforts to restart talks to end the standoff at Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity failed yesterday after a deal to deliver food to the people holed up inside fell through, Palestinian negotiators said.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Salah Taamari said Israeli officials told his team when it arrived to supervise the delivery that no food would be let in and that Palestinian negotiators could not go into the church unless they promised to bring out a list naming everyone inside.
"We cannot go on negotiating with people who do not honor what we agree upon," Taamari told reporters. Some people who have left the church in recent days said they were living on lemon peel and grass.
Bethlehem Mayor Hanna Nasser said Palestinians proposed the men wanted by Israel be sent to Jericho, where US and British personnel are supervising the incarceration of six Palestinians taken from President Yasser Arafat’s compound on Wednesday.
Pope John Paul yesterday called for a "courageous dialogue" to bring about a "just and lasting peace" in the troubled Middle East.
In Nairobi, UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing Miloon Kothari told an international conference Israel’s destructions of Palestinian homes in the occupied Territories amounts to a war crime.
Arab nations, meanwhile, said yesterday they would ask the UN General Assembly to accuse the Jewish state of war crimes.
Syrian UN envoy Fayssal Mekdad said Arab diplomats would shift the argument from the 15-nation council to a reconvened emergency special session of the 189-nation General Assembly expected to take place Monday and Tuesday.
