OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 15 October — British Ambassador to Israel Sherard Cowper-Coles has told Israel that the Palestinian territories are the world’s largest jail, where harassment and humiliation are rife, the daily Yediot Aharonot said yesterday.
An official at the British Embassy in Tel Aviv said the report was “generally accurate but also highly selective from a long conversation” which Cowper-Coles held with the Israeli general overseeing the administration of the occupied territories, Amos Gilad.
“The territories are the largest detention camp in the world, in which 3.5 million people live,” the daily quoted the British diplomat as saying.
The ambassador toured the territories and told Gilad he had seen “illegal (Jewish settler) outposts, new roads, needless harassment and humiliation of the civilian population at roadblocks,” the daily said.
He was also quoted as saying that Israel was “in violation of the Geneva convention” and accused Israeli forces of displaying “instances of a lack of professionalism” amid reports about soldiers looting property in the territories.
“I understand the security difficulties and I know that the top echelon in the army is professional, but specific acts of soldiers on the ground do not conform to the Israeli interest,” he said, quoted by the daily.
Five Israeli soldiers were jailed in May for up to five months for having engaged in “looting” during the army’s March and April invasion of the West Bank, since when fresh accusations of pillage has arisen, including charges that soldiers swiped goods from Yasser Arafat’s offices during a siege there last month.
The British Embassy official said Cowper-Coles “was raising concerns that we have, on instructions from London.”
“The ambassador has been to the occupied territories and was shocked by what he saw there,” said the official, who asked not to be named.
In other developments, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the Israeli Knesset or Parliament yesterday his country was prepared to defend itself against attack by any Arab state using weapons of mass destruction, an apparent reference to Iraq.
Sharon also called on the Palestinians to replace their current leadership headed by President Yasser Arafat with a “government of peace.”
Two members of Islamic Jihad were killed and a third was wounded yesterday as Israeli troops opened fire on the car they were driving near the West Bank town of Jenin, Palestinian hospital sources told AFP. The dead men were named as Mohammed Musa, 27, and Wassim Sabari, 23, both from villages near the northern West Bank city.
In what appeared to be assassination, three Apache helicopters were overflying the area as tanks surrounded the car near Kafr Qud, to the west of Jenin, and opened fire on its occupants, an Islamic Jihad official told AFP.
Soldiers arrested a third militant in the car who was said to be moderately hurt.
Arafat, meanwhile, convened his Cabinet yesterday to discuss his plans to form a new government.
Palestinian officials reiterated that Arafat was expected to announce the new cabinet in the next few days and that he was likely to bring in new ministers.
Arafat’s chief security adviser Col. Mohammed Dahlan resigned yesterday because he did not want any official position in the Palestinian Authority at this time, sources closes to Dahlan said.
