D i v i s i o n f o r P a l e s t i n i a n R i g h t s
Chronological Review of Events Relating to the
Question of Palestine
Monthly media monitoring review
April 2002
1
An 11-year old Palestinian boy was shot dead by Israeli soldiers near Rafah. Seven more Palestinians were killed in Ramallah, among them five policemen and an older man, whose body, bearing bullet wounds in the chest and head, was found between two cars in the downtown area of the city. (AFP, DPA)
Seven GIPP (Grassroots International Protection for the Palestinian People) activists, two Americans, two Britons, an Australian, a Japanese and a French, as well as a Palestinian cameraman for APTV, were wounded when an Israeli soldier fired at the ground in front of them. About 100 Palestinian and foreign demonstrators were marching through the centre of Beit Jala behind a sign saying “We want peace not war,” when “an Israeli tank blocked their way and Israeli soldiers opened fire in their direction,” GIPP’s Jerome Lallemand told AFP. Moreover, Israeli troops arrested 11 foreign activists, including French anti-globalization militant José Bové, who had succeeded in entering Chairman Arafat’s compound in Ramallah, and locked them up in the “Givat Zeev” settlement. About 40 others, mainly from France and Italy, but including German and other European nationals, were still in the compound. A further 100 Italian and French nationals managed to enter Ramallah to take up positions around the hospitals as “human shields.” A group of around 50 international activists moved into the refugee camps near Bethlehem – Dheisheh, Aida and Al-’Aza – in a pre-emptive move to protect the residents from a possible IDF incursion (AFP, DPA, EFE, Reuters)
An Israeli was shot dead by a Palestinian gunman near the “Har Homa” settlement in East Jerusalem. (AFP)
The “Quartet,” consisting of the US, Russia, the EU and the UN, met in Jerusalem, with Gen. Zinni in attendance. Efforts to arrange a meeting with Chairman Arafat had failed. (AFP, DPA)
2
Foreign Ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), meeting in Kuala Lumpur, adopted a declaration in which they rejected “any attempt to link terrorism to the struggle of the Palestinian people in the exercise of their inalienable right to establish their independent State with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital.” (Reuters)
Speaking on BBC radio, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw urged the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Ramallah, adding that military action would not solve the region’s troubles. Noting that suicide bombings were creating “complete despair” in Israel and also that there was an “increasing sense of desperation on the Palestinian side,” he said dialogue should be resumed “however difficult it may be.” (AFP, Reuters)
French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin said the Israeli policy “which provokes despair among the Palestinians” had to change and urged the US to get more involved and put pressure on the Israeli Government. (Reuters)
During a tour of IDF positions in the West Bank, Prime Minister Sharon said Chairman Arafat could be allowed to leave his headquarters in Ramallah under three conditions, namely that the Israeli Cabinet would approve his departure; that he would not take anyone with him “because there are wanted [men] and murderers surrounding him there,” and that he would not be able to return. Mr. Sharon said Mr. Arafat could be accompanied by a European or other foreign envoy on leaving Ramallah by helicopter. PA Minister and senior negotiator Saeb Erakat said Mr. Sharon’s comments confirmed he still wanted to kill Chairman Arafat, as he knew perfectly well the latter’s statement that “he would neither be expelled nor killed but would die a martyr.” (AFP, BBC, DPA, Reuters)
Israeli tanks and helicopters shelled the PA preventive security headquarters in the southern Ramallah suburb of Beituniya. A standoff ended with the surrender of all Palestinians inside the building to the IDF. Under the terms of a local ceasefire brokered by US and EU envoys and UN Special Coordinator Terje Rød-Larsen, Israel would detain some 300 Palestinians for 24 hours, interrogate them and then release those who were not on Israel’s wanted list. The HQ had been under siege for three days and the IDF had threatened to attack them, saying some 35 Palestinian militants wanted by Israel were inside. Initial reports had said West Bank Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti was inside the complex, but the head of the IDF Central Command Yitzhak Eitan said he believed Mr. Barghouti had fled Beituniya before the army entered it on 29 March. West Bank Preventive Security Chief Jibril Rajoub was not in the complex either. (AFP, DPA, Reuters)
Columns of IDF tanks, APCs and bulldozers, backed by helicopters, entered Bethlehem before dawn. Israeli forces deployed in the city centre, where troops took up positions in an eight-story building dominating the area. Soldiers went house to house looking for arms and suspected militants. A total of seven Palestinians were killed and another 20 were wounded during the offensive. Among the dead was a Roman Catholic priest and among the wounded at least seven nuns. Israeli military sources said Palestinian gunmen had fired from inside Santa Maria Church at Israeli soldiers outside, who had returned the fire. A woman and her son had been killed when an Israeli tank shelled a shop, in which they had taken refuge after the army seized their house, according to the son’s wife. Elsewhere, in Ramallah, a woman leaving Ramallah hospital had been hit by a bullet and had been left dying in the street, as ongoing gunfire prevented medics from taking her back to the hospital, Palestinians said. The IDF temporarily lifted its curfew on Ramallah to allow residents to buy food and repair the electricity supply. Meanwhile a 40-year-old woman had delivered a baby at an Israeli checkpoint near Beit Jala. The baby had died on the spot, according to Palestinian medical sources. In the Gaza Strip, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy had been killed by IDF gunfire at the Al-Tufah checkpoint, near Khan Yunis, Palestinian security and medical sources said. Israel Army Radio said two Palestinians had been found dead in a car near Tulkarm, with a note from a group calling itself “The Tears of the Widows and Children.” The radio said police believed a Jewish underground group was behind the killings. (AFP, DPA)
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexiy II sent a message to the President and the Prime Minister of Israel demanding an immediate withdrawal from a Russian Church building taken over by Israeli troops in Bethlehem. Patriarch Alexiy II said the Israeli move was undermining a peace mission in the region by the Russian Church and dragging it into the conflict by using its territory for military purposes. “The Russian Orthodox Church vehemently protests the action and demands an immediate troop withdrawal from the territory, which belongs to it,” he said. The Patriarch had also written to Presidents Putin and Bush, as well as to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, asking for their help. (Reuters)
In a round of interviews on US morning television shows, Secretary of State Powell said Chairman Arafat “still ha[d] a role to play” and, as a leader, he could “speak out against the kind of terrorist activity we have seen.” “Sending him to exile will just give him another place from which to conduct the same kinds of activities and give the same messages as he is giving now. Until he decides to leave the country, it seems to me we need to work with him where he is,” Mr. Powell added. He said Israel had assured him it had no intention of hurting or killing Mr. Arafat or of permanently occupying Palestinian towns, cities or villages. Asked how long Israeli troops would stay in Ramallah, he replied he had heard different estimates from the Israeli side but he guessed “right now that they are expecting it will take them a couple of weeks.” Mr. Powell said the US had stopped short of labelling Mr. Arafat a “terrorist” and believed he was “trying to participate in the process,” although he had not done enough to stop terrorist activities. (AFP, Reuters)
Israeli Government spokesman Arie Mekel told BBC that the IDF were “ready to stay in these [Palestinian] cities for a long time, weeks or whatever it takes until we dismantle terrorist organizations.” (AFP)
Pope John Paul II had launched a diplomatic drive to try to end the escalating Middle East conflict, the Vatican said. “The State Secretariat has had diplomatic contacts with various authorities including Washington, Israel, the Arab League, the Palestinian Authority and the [European] Community,” spokesman Joaquin-Navarro-Valls said, without elaborating. The Vatican in a statement said it had invited the Israeli and US Ambassadors to the Holy See to discuss the crisis in the Middle East. While condemning acts of terrorism, the statement said the Pope “reject[ed] unjust conditions and humiliations imposed on the Palestinian people, as well as the reprisals and revenge attacks, which do nothing but feed the sense of frustration and hatred.” (AFP, Ha’aretz, Reuters) (AFP)
The European Commission said in a statement that it had approved continued budgetary aid of €10 million (US$8.9 million) per month to the PA through July 2002, in order to “help the PA to deal with problems encountered by the interruption of monthly transfers of tax receipts – VAT and customs duties – by the Government of Israel following the outbreak of the intifada.” “These operations are designed to help the PA to secure its basic expenditures with respect to public services salaries, social, educational, health and core functions,” the statement added. A Commission spokeswoman said expenditure of the aid was being closely monitored by the International Monetary Fund. (AFP)
The Spanish EU Presidency summoned the Israeli Ambassador to Spain to demand Israel’s withdrawal from Palestinian cities and freedom of movement for Chairman Arafat. Following a meeting in Madrid between Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and the EU “Troika,” Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Piqué said the Spanish Presidency was seeking to convene an emergency meeting of EU Foreign Ministers on the worsening situation in the Middle East. Messrs. Piqué and Ivanov emphasized the importance of immediately implementing Security Council 1402 (2002) and stressed that Israel should not confuse the fight against terrorism and the destruction of the PA. They urged Israel to support the diplomatic efforts of envoys sent by the EU, the US, Russia and the UN. (AFP, DPA, Reuters)
Calling the situation in the Middle East “highly alarming,” German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer urged Israelis and Palestinians to honour Security Council resolution 1402 (2002) and begin talks towards a ceasefire. Mr. Fischer said Germany wanted the two warring sides to cooperate with US, EU, Russian and UN envoys, including allowing access to Chairman Arafat. (AFP)
Turkey called for an international conference to inaugurate a new peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. “There is a need to make a new opening” on the basis of the Madrid and Oslo peace processes, Foreign Minister Ismail Cem told Parliament in a special session on the situation in the Middle East. He renewed an appeal to Israel to heed UN Security Council resolution 1402 (2002). (AFP)
Israeli troops had prevented European consuls and consular personnel from entering Ramallah, where a number of European nationals had been trapped, Spanish Consul Manual Salazar told AFP. Driving in a convoy from Jerusalem, the diplomats had been turned back by the IDF at the Kalandia checkpoint at the southern entrance of Ramallah. “We will try again until we are allowed in,” the Spanish Consul said. (AFP)
The heads of churches in Jerusalem appealed to President Bush and other world leaders “to stop immediately the inhuman tragedy that is taking place in this Holy Land, in our Palestinian towns and villages.” In their letter they accused Israel of inflicting “wanton indiscriminate killings” and said many people were deprived of water, electricity, food supplies and basic medical needs. “Many of our religious institutions have been invaded and damaged,” the letter added. (Reuters)
Speaking to the Commission on Human Rights, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson called for the urgent dispatch of a fact-finding mission to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, to report on human rights violations by Israeli and Palestinian forces, and repeated calls for the establishment of an international monitoring presence in the region. (AFP, Reuters)
Mr. Jehuda Lancry, Permanent Representative of Israel to the UN, told a closed meeting of the Security Council that Israeli troops would not evacuate their positions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory until Israel had dismantled terrorist infrastructure and received a “clear sign” that the Palestinians were ready to discuss and implement a ceasefire. Mr. Nasser Al-Kidwa, Permanent Observer of Palestine, told the press that he hoped to convince Security Council members in a separate meeting to hold a formal open meeting to debate the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, while pushing for the adoption of a new resolution urging Israel to withdraw troops in accordance with Security Council resolution 1402 (2002). (DPA, Reuters)
In an interview with Al-Jazeera, Chairman Arafat had said he would never surrender to Israel and preferred to become “a shahid” (martyr). (AFP, Comtex Scientific Corporation, DPA)
A Palestinian militant from the PFLP had been killed by the IDF near the Erez (Beit Hanoun) crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, Palestinian security sources said. The circumstances of his death were still unclear. (AFP, Comtex Scientific Corporation)
President Bush said he hoped Palestinians could have “their own peaceful State” and that the US would work to stop “terrorist activities” aimed at derailing peace efforts in the Middle East. (Reuters)
3
The White House indicated President Bush was open to discussing the political aspects of a Middle East peace plan before a ceasefire was secured. However, President Bush “believes it is easier to get to the political process once the ceasefire goes into effect,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters. “There are two vital guidelines that the President is seeking to advance. They can work independently, they can work together. The important thing is for the parties to begin focus, with the United States’ assistance, to making progress in both of them or either of them, that is, the security arrangements that help enhance political prospects as a result of a ceasefire, but the political dialogue is an essential part of the dialogue,” Mr. Fleischer said, renewing calls for the Palestinians to make “100 per cent” efforts to halt violence. (AFP, Reuters)
Israeli Border Police wounded a dozen people, including the mayor of Nazareth and two Israeli Arab lawmakers, when they fired rubber-coated bullets and tear gas, and used baton charges, to disperse a pro-Palestinian rally of about 2,000 Israeli pacifists, both Jewish and Arab, at the Ar-Ram checkpoint outside Ramallah. Ten jeeps and two APCs were sent as reinforcements to the checkpoint. Three Israeli human rights organizations had organized the march, during which four trucks laden with food and medicines were to be delivered to Ramallah. However, according to AFP sources on the scene, only one truck made it to the roadblock and the organizers of the march managed to negotiate with the IDF to have it allowed through. (AFP, DPA, Ha’aretz, the Jerusalem Post, XINHUA)
European Commission President Romano Prodi told a press conference that the EU called for an international conference on the Middle East to be attended by the US, the EU, moderate Arab countries, Russia, Israel and the Palestinians. The call was immediately dismissed by Israel. Mr. Prodi also said that elected Palestinian leader Chairman Arafat was the only valid interlocutor for Israel, adding that confining Mr. Arafat would not reduce his influence or power. The EU Foreign Ministers were to gather for an emergency meeting later in Luxembourg to discuss the crisis. Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, the current holder of the EU Presidency, had spoken to Prime Minister Sharon on the telephone for 90 minutes, government sources said. The sources did not reveal the contents of the conversation, but referred to a letter sent by Mr. Aznar to Mr. Sharon late on 2 April, in which he called on the Israeli Prime Minister to launch “political negotiation”, with the Palestinians before the situation became irreversible. He also urged Israel to supply water, food and electricity to Chairman Arafat’s compound in Ramallah. (AFP, Comtex, DPA, Reuters)
The IDF said dozens of armed Palestinian militants were inside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and were firing on Israeli troops outside. The area had been sealed off and there were strict orders not to fire at any churches. Military sources said the army was trying to negotiate surrender. The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, said the militants had laid down their arms and deserved sanctuary. Mr. Sabbah, who led a group of 200 clergymen representing all the churches in the Holy Land, was blocked from entering the city. Palestinian security sources said a civilian had been shot dead by an Israeli sniper on Manger Square outside the Church. A militant and a 60-year-old policeman had died after being shot and left without medical attention. (AFP, Ha’aretz, the Jerusalem Post, XINHUA)
The IDF entered two more West Bank towns, Salfit and Jenin. Heavy fighting broke out as Palestinian gunmen fired back when about 50 tanks made their way to the centre of Jenin. Palestinian medical and security sources said five people were killed in the Jenin refugee camp in the course of the fighting, including two members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a 27-year-old female nurse and a 13-year-old boy. Two residents of the town of Salfit were also killed when the IDF entered the town. The IDF had now reoccupied seven Palestinian-controlled towns in the West Bank: Ramallah, Beit Jala, Qalqilya, Tulkarm, Bethlehem, Jenin and Salfit. (AFP, Ha’aretz)
Israeli forces backed by 250 tanks and APCs, as well as helicopter gunships, entered Nablus from several directions and encircled three adjacent refugee camps. This move left IDF occupying all major Palestinian towns in the West Bank, except Jericho and Hebron. Four Palestinians were killed in Nablus, one of them a 53-year-old woman. (AFP, CNN, Ha’aretz)
Egyptian Minister of Information Safwat Al-Sherif said the Egyptian Government had issued a decree that all contacts between the Governments of Israel and Egypt would stop, except “diplomatic channels which [would] serve the Palestinian question and the issue of peace in the region.” (Ha’aretz)
President Putin, while condemning terrorism, called on Israel to show restraint in its military operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, noting that “retaliatory action must be adequate to the threat” the Israelis were facing. (AFP)
4
The IDF surrounded the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where about 200 Palestinians, some of them armed, had taken refuge. There were reports, denied by Israel, that the south door was blown open by Israeli troops. IDF spokesman Lt.-Col. Olivier Rafowicz said Israeli forces were trying to negotiate the release of at least 40 or 50 priests, being held hostage inside the church. Anton Salman, head of the Antonius Society of Bethlehem, denied anyone was being held hostage, saying the people inside the church were only looking for protection. “What I fear is that the Israelis are preparing a commando operation. That would be disastrous. In that case we could expect a massacre,” Father David Jaeger, a spokesman for the Franciscan order, told AFP. Palestinians outside the Church told DPA they had been in contact with people holed up inside, who told them that an Israeli sniper had shot dead a Palestinian Christian, Samir Ibrahim Salman, who had been working as the Church bell-ringer since 1967. Medics said Mr. Salman had bled for hours on the Manger Square before an ambulance was able to reach him. By then, he had passed away. (AFP, AP, BBC, CNN, DPA, Reuters)
Three Palestinians and an IDF soldier were killed in a firefight in Jenin. An Israeli Border Police officer serving in an undercover unit was killed during a siege of a house in Hebron where a wanted Palestinian and his brother were surrounded. Israel Radio reported that, when troops stormed the house, they found the brother wounded, but the wanted man had apparently escaped. (Ha’aretz, Reuters)
Speaking to military reporters, Chief of General Staff Shaul Mofaz suggested deporting Chairman Arafat, which contradicted the opinion of Defence Minister Ben-Eliezer, as well as that of a committee comprised of officers and officials from military intelligence, the General Security Services and the Mossad. Prime Minister Sharon, speaking to reporters about the expulsion idea during a visit to the IDF Northern Command HQ, said the Israeli Cabinet had decided to press on with a military offensive in the West Bank and to keep Chairman Arafat “isolated” in his Ramallah HQ. “The decision is that he will stay in the place where he is and he will be isolated,” he said. (Ha’aretz, Reuters, XINHUA)
President Bush, in a statement on the Middle East, announced that he would send Secretary Powell to the area the following week. Mr. Bush also called on Israel to halt incursions into the PA areas and to begin withdrawing from the Palestinian cities it had recently occupied, to stop settlement activities and humiliation of Palestinians at the checkpoints. In response to President Bush’s call for a withdrawal, Finance Minister Silvan Shalom said Israel would not pull its troops out of Palestinian territories until a ceasefire was reached. (AFP, AP, BBC, MSNBC)
The EU sent a high-level mission to the Middle East, including the EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana and Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Piqué, to try and mediate a ceasefire, despite Israel’s refusal to let them see Chairman Arafat, announced by Prime Minister Sharon’s spokesman Ra’anan Gissin. “This is now the most dangerous conflict in the world,” British Minister for Europe Peter Hain said at a rare emergency meeting of EU Foreign Ministers in Luxembourg. “It’s quite clear that this operation is unlikely to come to a conclusion until the whole Palestinian Authority has been destroyed,” European Commission President Romano Prodi told a conference of the centre-right European People’s Party parliamentary group. (Ha’aretz, Reuters)
“We have to consider the impact of the situation on the ground in the light of our relationship with Israel,” Swiss Radio International (SRI) quoted Muriel Berset Kohen, a Swiss Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, as saying. “War and terrorism are in no way an excuse to violate humanitarian law,” said Ms. Berset Kohen. “Humanitarian law has to be respected in every circumstance; that’s clearly stated in all human rights conventions.” Economic and military relations were most likely to be affected. The SRI also reported that another Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Daniela Stoffel-Fatzer, said the measures were not tantamount to imposing sanctions on Israel. (XINHUA)
In a speech broadcast on Egyptian TV, President Mubarak said the US had a “special responsibility, being the main sponsor of the peace process and guarantor of all concluded agreements” between Israel and the Palestinians. “I have sent two messages to President Bush, since the Israeli invasion on March 29, to urge him to make the maximum effort and to use his diplomatic channels to guarantee an Israeli withdrawal from the reoccupied areas of the Palestinian Authority and to lift the inhuman siege imposed on the Palestinian leader and his colleagues in Ramallah,” he said. (AFP)
The UN Security Council adopted unanimously resolution 1403 (2002) on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question. The resolution demanded the implementation of Security Council resolution 1402 (2002) “without delay” and welcomed the mission of Secretary Powell to the region as well as the efforts by special envoys from the US, Russia, the EU and the UN. (AFP)
The IDF entered Hebron. An Israeli helicopter gunship fired missiles at a car injuring at least five people, including a woman and an eight-year-old child. The IDF was now occupying all major Palestinian towns in the West Bank, except Jericho. (AFP, DPA, Reuters)
5
Chairman Arafat’s Advisor Nabil Abu Rudeineh said Gen. Zinni had met with Mr. Arafat in Ramallah and had agreed to wider talks. He said the meeting had focused on ways to implement the Tenet ceasefire plan and the Mitchell report recommendations. Mr. Abu Rudeineh said Mr. Arafat had appointed a team to be led by senior Palestinian negotiator and PA Minister Saeb Erakat, that would meet Gen. Zinni to continue the talks. (AFP, DPA, Reuters)
At least 14 Palestinians were killed in clashes with the IDF in Nablus, according to local Palestinian officials, and three were reported killed in Jenin. A 14-year-old Palestinian girl was killed by machine-gun fire when Israeli tanks clashed with gunmen inside the Palestinian-controlled village of Tubas north of Nablus, Palestinian medical sources said. Three other Palestinians were injured, including two girls aged eight and nine, when bullets entered their homes. Israeli soldiers conducted house-to-house searches in the Bethlehem area and encircled a mosque, arresting hundreds of Palestinians, including a senior intelligence officer, Palestinian security sources said. (AFP)
UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen, in a conference call from Jerusalem to reporters at the UNHQ in Geneva, condemned the targeting of medical staff and ambulances, and demanded that Israel lift restrictions on access to the sick and injured. Mr. Hansen said 185 ambulances had been hit by gunfire since September 2000 and four ambulance drivers and three doctors had been killed. Mr. Hansen also said that there had been more than 350 cases of ambulances being denied access to rescue victims. (AFP)
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights approved a resolution presented by Algeria and Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which “condemn[ed] the frightening increase in the loss of life and the invasion of Palestinian cities” and asked the High Commissioner to head an urgent fact-finding mission, which could report back before the end of the Commission’s six-week session. Forty-four of the Commission’s 53 members voted in favour of the draft resolution. Canada and Guatemala voted against, while seven countries abstained, including the UK, Germany and Russia. High Commissioner Robinson said she would only lead the mission if it had full cooperation from Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority supported the mission, and no reply had been received from Israel. (AFP, Reuters)
Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets throughout the Gaza Strip in a “Day of Anger” against the Israeli military offensive in the West Bank. Approximately 25,000 Palestinians marched in the Jabalya refugee camp. About 5,000 Palestinians in Gaza City, and some 2,000 took to the streets in the Rafah refugee camp (Reuters)
Denmark was ready to take part in a United Nations peacekeeping force that could be deployed in the Middle East once a ceasefire was reached in the region, Foreign Minister Per Stig Møller told reporters following a meeting of the Parliament’s Foreign Policy Committee in Copenhagen. Mr. Møller also urged Israel to pull out of Ramallah and other Palestinian areas and called on the Palestinians to stop suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. (AFP)
6
IDF troops killed two Palestinian gunmen trying to enter the “Rafiah Yam” settlement in the Gaza Strip, Israeli military sources said. One Israeli soldier was also killed and four were wounded. A six-year-old Palestinian girl was killed by the Israeli army in Rafah, and a 30-year-old Palestinian was killed by the IDF in the southern Gaza Strip near the Sufa checkpoint into Israel, Palestinian hospital officials said.
Israeli forces, backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, moved early in the morning into the town of Yatta, 10km south of Hebron, Palestinian security sources said. Two Palestinians were killed and seven wounded in exchanges of fire. A 13-year-old Palestinian boy was shot in the chest and killed when Israeli tanks and APCs moving towards Yatta responded with gunfire to a group of young Palestinian stone-throwers in the Al-Fawar refugee camp near Hebron, Palestinian witnesses said.
In separate incidents, Palestinian Authority Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said at least 30 Palestinians were killed by the IDF in the Jenin refugee camp, while Israeli military officials reported that seven Israeli soldiers had died in Jenin during a 24-hour period. Heavy fighting was reported in the camp.
Moreover, the IDF had killed a 56-year-old Palestinian baker in Ramallah, as he was driving to his bakery to make bread ahead of the lifting of the curfew, and a 10-year-old Palestinian girl in the nearby village of Beituniya, Palestinian hospital sources said.
A Palestinian man was killed when an Israeli helicopter gunship fired a missile at his house in Nablus, Palestinian medical sources said, and another Palestinian, belonging to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, was hit by a rocket fired by an Israeli soldier during intense street battles in the town’s old city. (AFP, CNN, Ha’aretz, Reuters)
Arab foreign ministers convened an emergency meeting behind closed doors at the Cairo HQ of the League of Arab States after a consultative meeting the day before, which decided to send immediately US$330 million in financial aid to the Palestinian Authority. “In light of the continued serious situation in occupied Palestinian territories … that may drag the whole region to an all-out war … the Arab League foreign ministers ask the UN Security Council to issue a resolution, based on Chapter VII, to force Israel to immediately and fully implement those resolutions,” the ministers said in a statement. (AFP, Reuters, XINHUA)
EU Middle East Envoy Miguel Angel Moratinos urged Israel in a statement to issue “clear orders” for the IDF to allow Palestinian medics to operate unhampered in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. (AFP)
President Bush, speaking at a joint press conference with visiting Prime Minister Blair, urged Israel to withdraw “without delay” from Palestinian territory. President Bush reportedly followed this up with a late night telephone call to Prime Minister Sharon.
7
US National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice, speaking on CNN said concerning President Bush’s remarks the previous day that “without delay … means today.” An official in the Prime Minister’s office told AFP, “Once we finish the job, then we will be withdrawing our forces ‘without delay.’” Secretary Powell told “Fox News Sunday” that he was “pleased” with Israel’s response. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat accused President Bush of “playing with words” by not giving Prime Minister Sharon a fixed date to pull his troops out of the West Bank. (AFP)
Following a three-hour closed-door discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the United Nations Security Council issued a press statement saying that the continued “violence by the power in control of events on the ground is unacceptable.” The statement said the violence was breaking international humanitarian law regarding the Palestinian territories. (DPA, UN Press Release SC/7357)
IDF troops, backed by around 30 tanks and APCs, entered the village of Beit Rima north of Ramallah, making a house-to-house searches for militants and 7 Palestinians were killed in Nablus, while two Palestinians were killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli forces close to the “Morag” settlement in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian security officials said. (AFP)
In a statement released in Geneva, the UNRWA Commissioner-General, Peter Hansen said the Agency called on Israel “in the name of human decency” to let UNRWA ambulances pass through safely and to permit the delivery of emergency supplies: “Israel is a signatory to international conventions that protect non-combatants in times of conflict. Those conventions are worthless if they are not adhered to precisely at times of the greatest blood-letting. The world is watching and Israel needs to end this pitiless assault on civilian refugee camps,” he added. (DPA)
Briefing the cabinet on its operation, IDF Chief of Staff General Shaul Mofaz estimated that 200 Palestinians had been killed since Israel’s operation against West Bank cities on 29 March, and around 1,500 Palestinians had been wounded. Thirteen Israeli troops had died and 143 were wounded in the operation. 1,500 wanted men had been arrested, Prime Minister Sharon said the next day in his speech to the Knesset reviewed below. (AFP, Reuters)
8
Fighting broke out around the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and a fire started in the Church. Two Israeli border policemen were wounded and a Palestinian policeman was shot dead by an Israeli sniper when, according to Bethlehem’s Mayor Hanna Nasser, he was trying to extinguish the fire. (AP, BBC, DPA)
Violence in “the land of our Lord’s birth, death and resurrection, a land held sacred by the three great monotheistic religions – has increased to unimaginable and intolerable levels,” the Pope told members of an American foundation visiting the Vatican. The Vatican also said in a statement that it was following events with “extreme worry” after fighting erupted earlier in the day in and around the Church of the Nativity. “This is an act of indescribable barbarity. It is a violation of every law of humanity and civilization. It is a violation of the explicit and repeated public and diplomatic guarantees of the State of Israel with consequences that will be long-term and incalculable,” Father David Jaeger, spokesman for the custodians of Catholic sites in the Holy Land, said while in Rome. Vatican diplomats had told Israeli leaders the Holy See considered respect for holy sites an “absolute priority” and an integral part of agreements with Israelis and Palestinians. (AFP, Reuters)
Prime Minister Sharon, in an hour-long speech to the Knesset, said he had promised President Bush to try to end the 10-day-old military campaign as soon as possible, but giving no indication of an imminent pullout, and proposed peace talks with “moderate” Arab leaders. Mr. Sharon said the army’s goals “have not been completed and (it) will continue to operate with as much speed as possible until they are completed,” and then withdraw to “designated security zones.” “Sharon has ended Powell’s visit before he comes here,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters. “He is telling Powell don’t come because ‘we have finished everything, we are setting up buffer zones, we will continue the occupation and we will not end our operations’.” In response to Mr. Sharon’s speech, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher denounced him as an “aggressor.” (AP, XINHUA)
Hospital sources in Jenin estimated that some 100 to 200 Palestinians had been killed in heavy fighting in the Jenin refugee camp. Two Israeli soldiers were killed, an IDF spokesman said in a statement. Moreover, close to 100 fighters put down their weapons and surrendered in the “kasbah”, the Old City of Nablus, Israeli military sources said. Fighting was still under way. (AFP, DPA)
Secretary of State Powell arrived in Morocco at the start of his Middle East peace mission, which would take him to Egypt and then to Spain, which currently holds the EU presidency, before a meeting with Prime Minister Sharon in Jerusalem. The Palestinian leadership would boycott Mr. Powell if he refused to meet Chairman Arafat on his trip, PA negotiator Saeb Erakat told Al-Jazeera TV. PA Minister for Planning and International Cooperation Nabil Sha’ath urged all Arab leaders to do the same. Mr. Powell said before departure he would meet Chairman Arafat “if circumstances permit” and urged Mr. Arafat to call publicly for a halt to violence. (AFP, AP, Reuters)
“General Zinni will meet with Prime Minister Sharon later today and he will deliver the message that the President meant it – they need to begin to withdraw now,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters. Gen. Zinni’s attempts over the weekend to meet Chairman Arafat were blocked by Israel. (Reuters)
“We are very concerned at Israel’s military operation against Palestinian infrastructures. By the end Palestinian structures will not exist. There will be no Palestinian Authority to implement the Tenet plan,” EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana told reporters. “Military operations must stop immediately. That means today, not tomorrow,” said Mr. Solana, adding that the Israeli Authorities must not wait until the arrival of Secretary of State Powell to start the withdrawal. (DPA)
Junior UK Foreign Office Minister Ben Bradshaw, speaking to BBC Radio, called heavy Israeli gunfire near Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity “the latest in a long line of completely unacceptable actions by the Israeli Defence Force.” Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Møller also charged that Israel had “totally overstepped the limits” in its military operations against the Palestinians. (AFP)
The World Council of Churches (WCC) called on Jewish religious leaders to “take a courageous stand and speak out” against acts of intolerance in order to help bring an end to the deadly and escalating conflict in the Middle East. The appeal came in a report compiled after a visit to Jerusalem during 2-4 April by a two-member WCC delegation, the purpose of which had been to meet patriarchs and heads of churches and Christian communities. (AFP)
Israel’s military offensive in the West Bank has created a “critical” health situation, with ambulances unable to reach most emergencies and a growing danger of epidemic, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society emergency response coordinator Hossam Sharkawi told AFP. The Society has counted 166 Palestinian deaths, 47 in Nablus where heavy fighting had raged for the past several days. Its death toll count was lower than the one given by the Israeli army, Sharkawi said, because the gun battles were making it impossible to go into several of the areas, notably Jenin, where the fighting was also intense. (AFP)
The United Nations Security Council held a formal meeting on the situation in the Middle East after meeting separately in closed meetings with Jehuda Lancry, Permanent Representative of Israel to the UN, and Mr. Nasser Al-Kidwa, Permanent Observer of Palestine to the UN. A draft resolution, submitted by Syria and Tunisia demanded the immediate implementation of Security Council resolution 1402 (2002) and called for an international presence to help provide better conditions on the ground. The draft also called on Israel to “fully and effectively respect” the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention on the treatment of civilians in occupied territories. “Israel should not be treated as a country that is above the law,” Amb. Al-Kidwa told the Council, saying the Israeli Chief of Staff, Gen. Shaul Mofaz, was “personally responsible for many crimes of war committed by his forces,” and called for him to be brought to justice. Amb. Yehuda Lancry said Israel had not rejected resolution 1402 (2002), but was only insisting that the Palestinians implement their side of it too. “Israeli withdrawal, if it is not preceded by a meaningful Palestinian ceasefire, must at the very least be accompanied by one,” Amb. Lancry said, adding: “To our dismay, all the indicators suggest that the Palestinian side has no intention of even declaring a ceasefire, much less implementing a meaningful one,” he added. John Negroponte, the Permanent Representative of the United States to the UN, said it was “time for leadership on the ground and in the region. We do not need any more resolutions, we need full implementation of the existing ones.” (AFP, DPA, Reuters)
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The IDF pulled out of Qalqilya and Tulkarm, a military spokesman in Jerusalem said both would continue to be surrounded, and stressed that military operations were continuing in other West Bank areas. He announced a new operation in Dura, south-west of Hebron, “to capture wanted Palestinians and to seize arms.” Three Palestinians had been killed there during the IDF take-over, Palestinian medical sources said. Israeli troops had also rounded up dozens of Palestinian men and placed them in detention centres belonging to the Palestinian security services, eyewitnesses told AFP. (AFP, Ha’aretz, the Jerusalem Post)
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President Bush was still looking for results of his demand that Israel withdraw its forces without delay from the Occupied Palestinian Territory, adding that the responsibilities for the Israelis were “to withdraw now.” Speaking to reporters in Cairo after talks with President Mubarak, Secretary Powell said “Prime Minister Sharon has reaffirmed yet again to me this morning, in my conversation with him, his commitment to bring this to an end as quick as he can and his commitment to moving forward, not only with security discussions but also with a political process that will find a way forward.” Mr. Powell also said the US believed that “the effect of the incursions throughout the Arab world and throughout the rest of the world [was] very negative with respect to Israel’s long-term interests.” Mr. Powell added that following his visit to Spain, he would meet with Mr. Sharon in Jerusalem and that he “intend[ed] to meet with Chairman Arafat.” In a later joint press conference with his Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Maher, Mr. Powell said that the US was prepared to send observers to monitor an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire to facilitate a resumption of Middle East political talks. He said US monitors could be sent “once we get a ceasefire based on the Tenet proposal, which is instantly linked to the Mitchell process, which is instantly linked to political discussions.” (DPA, Ha’aretz, the Jerusalem Post, Reuters, XINHUA)
Javier Solana, EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy told the European Parliament in Strasbourg that EU countries should stop arms supplies to Israel, saying Israel’s military action in the Occupied Palestinian Territory was “intolerable and must be halted immediately.” “To deny whole populations access to water and electricity is not justifiable by security considerations. These are violations of humanitarian and military law that cannot go uncommented,” Mr. Solana said, noting also that Israel had made a “political error” in preventing the EU delegation from seeing Chairman Arafat during their visit on 4 April, saying “harassing a political peace mission, undertaken in good faith and mandated by Governments of some of Israel's closest partners and neighbours was irresponsible and short-sighted.” (AFP, DPA)
Thirteen Israeli reservists had been killed in a battle in the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin in the northern West Bank, an IDF spokesman told AFP. Some were killed when they entered a booby-trapped building in the camp, which was blown up on top of them, the spokesman said, and the rest were shot dead by Palestinian fighters as they tried to rescue their colleagues. Seven other soldiers were injured, at least one of them seriously. Prime Minister Sharon announced on Israeli television that “the fight against terrorist organisations [would] go on until their infrastructures [were] destroyed. Shortly thereafter, the IDF bombed the Nablus casbah with fighter jets, witnesses told AFP. (AFP, Ha’aretz, Reuters)
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in a statement, said “the limited withdrawal Israel has announced falls short of the requirements of UN Security Council resolutions,” adding that the “Israeli Government must respect international law, including international humanitarian law, ”and noting that “Israel [had] a right to security” as every other country. Mr. Straw also urged Chairman Arafat to “make every effort to achieve an immediate cease-fire.” (XINHUA)
The Palestinian areas in the West Bank, occupied or surrounded by the IDF were “on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that the areas were “suffering serious shortages and a lack of urgent medical aid.” “There is only one way out of the crisis, to abandon the use of force, to carry out UN Security Council resolutions 1402 and 1403 without delay, and to renew political dialogue,” the statement added. (AFP)
Speaking at a UN press briefing, the spokesman for UNRWA René Aquarone said the situation during the past few days was “probably the worst in recent history, especially in Jenin and Nablus with both cities completely cordoned off” by the IDF. He said there was “absolutely no access either for humanitarian goods, food or medical goods, blood, oxygen, nor was it possible for ambulances to pass through,” and that one of its ambulances had been shot at on 8 April as it tried to reach a wounded man in Jenin. (AFP, the Jerusalem Post)
Orthodox, Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish community leaders in Russia issued a joint statement condemning the violence in the Middle East and urging Israel and the Palestinians to enter into dialogue. (AFP)
Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, speaking at a joint press conference in Stockholm with Dr. Cairo Arafat, head of the National Plan of Action for Palestinian Children, said she was particularly worried about the fate of Palestinian children caught up in fighting in the West Bank and demanded that Israel give international observers access to the Occupied Palestinian Territory. (Reuters)
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Following a Palestinian suicide bombing on a bus near Haifa, which killed at least eight Israelis and injured 14 others, the Israeli security cabinet decided to continue the military operations against Palestinians in the West Bank. Although the cabinet reiterated that troops would pull out of the Palestinian areas in the West Bank once they had completed their missions, security sources said there were no immediate plans for further withdrawals. Hamas claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing. Prime Minister Sharon, speaking to troops near Jenin, said it was Israel’s “right to defend [its] citizens and there should be no pressure put on us not to do that,” adding that he hoped their “great friend the US understand that this is a war of survival” for the Israelis. Mr. Sharon said the IDF was trying to complete its security sweeps in the West Bank “as fast as possible,” but had to “finish the job.” (AFP, DPA, XINHUA)
Senior Palestinian negotiator and PA Minister Saeb Erakat told reporters in Jerusalem before meeting Gen. Zinni “that the number of Palestinian dead in the Israeli attacks [had] reached more than 500” and that he thought the number might increase once “the extent of the damage and the massacres committed” was discovered. (Reuters)
Following the meeting of the Quartet in Madrid, a communiqué was issued, which reaffirmed that Security Council resolution 1402 (2002) “must be fully implemented immediately,” while calling on Israel to “halt immediately its military operations and withdraw from Palestinian cities, including Ramallah, specifically including Chairman Arafat’s headquarters.” The communiqué also stated that Israel should “fully comply with international humanitarian principles and to allow full and unimpeded access to humanitarian organizations and services,” while “refrain[ing] from excessive use of force and undertake all possible efforts to ensure the protection of civilians.” The communiqué called on Chairman Arafat, “as the recognized, elected leader of the Palestinian people, to undertake immediately the maximum possible effort to stop terror attacks against innocent Israelis.” The UN, EU and Russia expressed their strong support for Secretary of State Powell's mission and urged Israel and the PA to cooperate fully with his mission and with their continuing efforts to restore calm and resume a political process, while reiterating that there was “no military solution to the conflict and calling on the parties to move to a political resolution of their disputes based on UNSCR 242 and 338 and the principle of land for peace.” The communiqué also affirmed that the “Tenet and Mitchell plans must be fully implemented, including an end to all settlement activity” and that there had to be “immediate, parallel and accelerated movement towards near-term and tangible political progress, and there must be a defined series of steps leading to permanent peace.” Mr. Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General said he was “frankly, appalled by the humanitarian situation in the West Bank” and that the international community demanded that the “Government of Israel honour its obligation under international law to protect civilians” and that respect for international humanitarian law was the “most basic requirement for any nation that lays claim to democracy and membership in the international community.” (AFP, EFE, Reuters)
The Permanent Observer of Palestine to the UN Nasser Al-Kidwa said Arab States had agreed to delay a Security Council vote on a resolution calling for an international presence on the ground in the Middle East to give time to diplomatic efforts, including those of Secretary of State Powell. (Ha’aretz, The Jerusalem Post, Reuters)
Four Palestinians were killed by the IDF in the West Bank. A Palestinian civil servant was killed by an Israeli tank shell as he drove his car in the town of Anabta, near Tulkarm, and a Palestinian woman was shot dead in her home when the IDF opened fire in the Emsbakh area of Ramallah, hospital officials said. A 26-year-old Palestinian fighter was shot and killed in Nablus, medical sources said, and a Palestinian civilian from the Dheisheh refugee camp was shot dead on the outskirts of Bethlehem. The body of a Palestinian killed in fighting several days ago was found near the Chairman Arafat’s Ramallah HQ. The IDF entered the town of Samua, near Hebron, early in the day, conducting house-to-house searches and arresting a number of Palestinians. Rescue teams searching the ruins of buildings destroyed in Israel's offensive on the Nablus casbah found 14 bodies in the rubble, including a local political leader of the PFLP. An Armenian priest in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem had been shot and seriously wounded. Palestinians in the church, who declined to identify themselves, accused the IDF of firing into the church and wounding Father Mahir Arman. The IDF said the priest had been shot as soldiers were transferring food and medicine to the clerics in the church. It said soldiers gave first aid to the priest before sending him to a Jerusalem hospital for medical treatment. A spokeswoman at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem said the priest was seriously wounded and undergoing surgery. (AFP, DPA, Reuters)
The IDF had expelled some 800 women and children from the Jenin refugee camp, while conducting security sweep, UNICEF officials said, citing a report from a worker from the International Committee of the Red Cross, who was allowed into Jenin. The women and children had been forced out on the streets of Jenin, where they had no protection, food or clothing, UNICEF said, expressing its “serious concern” over the development. The IDF said earlier it had taken control of the refugee camp, while adding there were still some “pockets of terrorism.” A senior official from Hamas told Reuters by telephone from inside the camp that the fighting was over and the Israelis were in total control. He also said there were a large number of casualties and many had been arrested. (AFP, Reuters)
UNRWA, in a statement said the head of the Ramallah Men’s Training Centre and 104 trainees were arrested by the IDF. “UNRWA has launched a protest with the Israeli authorities and called for the immediate release of the trainees and their teaching staff.” “Incursions into UNRWA installations by Israeli forces and detention of UNRWA trainees and staff is completely unacceptable and contrary to Israel’s obligations to guarantee the security of UN staff,” Peter Hansen, Commissioner-General of UNRWA said, adding that the humanitarian situation was becoming “catastrophic” inside the Jenin refugee camp and that UNRWA, despite persistent requests, still had not been granted permission to enter Jenin and begin the task of burying the dead, evacuating the wounded and bringing urgently needed food and water to the population. (Reuters)
The Foreign Office of the UK said it was ready to monitor the detention of Palestinian militants as a way to “serve as a reassurance to Israel and the international community that the Palestinian Authority was doing what it was saying it would do,” a Foreign Office source said, adding that the proposal had not been made formally to either side but “tens” of people had been identified already to work as civilian monitors, and the proposal could be activated in advance of any ceasefire. (Reuters, XINHUA)
The European Parliament passed a resolution calling for an international intervention and monitoring force to be sent to the Middle East. The Parliament called on the European Council of Ministers to impose an arms embargo on both Israel and the Palestinians and to suspend the EU’s Association Agreement with Israel. The vote is not binding on EU Governments, whose foreign ministers will meet in Luxembourg on 15 April to consider whether to hold an extraordinary meeting of the Association Council, which oversees the agreement, to pressure Israel into halting its West Bank incursions. (Reuters)
The UN Security Council issued a brief statement supporting the joint communiqué issued by the Quartet in Madrid earlier in the day. (AFP)
Israel’s Defence Ministry said in a statement that the IDF had withdrawn from the towns of “Kabatiyeh, Yatta and Al-Samoha, after having completed their operations against the terrorist infrastructure in these spots”. (AFP, DPA, XINHUA)
Chairman Arafat met with PA officials in Ramallah. PA Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said the meeting welcomed the Madrid communiqué issued by the Quartet. The PA delegation later met with Gen. Zinni in Jerusalem. Senior Palestinian negotiator and PA Minister Saeb Erakat said the meeting had been “good” and that the Palestinians had reaffirmed their commitment to UN Security Council resolutions calling for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian areas and the implementation of the Mitchell and Tenet plans. “We started to work on the best way to define a roadmap,” Mr. Erekat said, adding that Gen. Zinni had asked them to do everything possible to ensure the success of Secretary Powell’s visit. (DPA, XINHUA)
President Saddam Hussein instructed his Government to transfer €10 million (US$8.8 million) “as soon as possible” as a donation to Palestinians to help them in their resistance against the Israeli occupation, according to the Iraq News Agency INA. (DPA)
The Bethlehem 2000 Project issued an appeal to the international community for positive action on behalf of Palestinian citizens and their rights, Palestinian institutions and the Palestinian way of life. “The recent and ongoing invasion of Bethlehem and surrounding towns and the accompanying mad vandalism by the Israeli army has caused tremendous damage to the accomplishments of Bethlehem 2000, which represent the pride of Palestinians and all those countries and organizations who contributed to those accomplishments,” the appeal said. (MIFTAH)
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Prime Minister Sharon said during a meeting with police officers in a Tel Aviv suburb that he had warned the Americans the IDF “would not withdraw from Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah until all the terrorists there have surrendered,” adding that he had also warned that the IDF could move back into West Bank towns they had already left “if terrorist activities resume.” Mr. Sharon also reiterated plans to build “security zones” between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Cabinet Secretary Gideon Saar said on Israeli Army Radio that Mr. Sharon “may be ready to accept the deployment of a limited number of US observers to try to defuse tensions,” although he remained opposed to the deployment of any international observers. (AFP, the Jerusalem Post)
The IDF mounted a large-scale incursion into Al-Dhahiriyah, in Area “A” near Hebron, AFP reported. Dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles entered the area, and exchanges of fire were heard, although there were no reports of casualties during the operation. The IDF carried out house-to-house searches and made several arrests. The IDF also entered Bir Zeit, near Ramallah, Palestinian security sources said. Tanks encircled the area around Bir Zeit University and troops occupied Palestinian police and security offices in the town. The IDF later left Bir Zeit and at the same time went into the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. The IDF said it had withdrawn from 24 villages, a claim denounced as “a big lie” by Palestinian security officials. At least seven Palestinians died in separate incidents in the West Bank during the day. (AFP, EFE)
The IDF announced in a statement it had detained 4,185 Palestinians since it launched “Operation Defensive Wall” on 20 March, including 121 wanted militant suspects. The previous day the IDF had said it had seized 2,107 Palestinians. An army spokesman said that 685 Palestinians had been arrested in Jenin alone. (AFP)
During a press conference in Rome with President Carlo Ciamp, following ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan made the following comments on the Middle East:
(UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news)
White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer said “it is vital, it is imperative for Chairman Arafat to make public statements denouncing the murderous bombings and other forms of terrorism that are taking place, to renounce violence as a political instrument, and reaffirm his commitment to negotiations as the only path,” to peace. (AFP)
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the BBC that Israel was losing international support because of its incursions in the West Bank and that these had strengthened the authority of Chairman Arafat, adding that there was “no evidence that this tactic of moving into the [Occupied Palestinian Territory was] delivering the peace with security” that Israelis wanted. (AFP)
A statement issued by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) said “while the OAU categorically condemns the horrific attacks and suicidal bombings by Palestinian extremist groups against defenceless Israeli civilians, the disproportionate, aggressive, and overwhelming Israeli use of force and the siege of Palestinian territories is totally unacceptable.” The statement called for an end to the current military campaign by the IDF and an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestinian areas. (Reuters)
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An Israeli border guard was killed at the Erez crossing in an attack in which the assailant and a Palestinian labourer also died, the IDF said. The attack was claimed by the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad. (AFP)
The IDF was rounding up “thousands of men, between the age of 15 and 50,” keeping the detainees in the town’s schools and main square, said Jenin Mayor Walid Abu Mweiss. (AFP)
The IDF revised a statement by its chief spokesman Ron Kitrey that hundreds of Palestinians had been killed in the Jenin refugee camp, saying instead there were hundreds of casualties in the fighting, and that the figure for those killed was close to 100. “We call on the United Nations to immediately create an international commission of inquiry on the Israeli massacres at Jenin because it is a UN-administered refugee camp,” said senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. Mr. Erekat also asked Secretary of State Powell to tour the camp. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that he was “deeply shocked” by reports of hundreds of deaths and wounded in the Jenin refugee camp and in a statement called on Israel to provide more information about the circumstances of the deaths and claims of human rights abuses at the camp. (AFP, Reuters, XINHUA)
Prime Minister Sharon and Secretary Powell, in a four-hour meeting failed to reach agreement on a timetable for withdrawing Israeli troops from Palestinian cities and towns. “The conversations have just begun and I am prepared to stay here for as long as is necessary in order to make sure we have some progress as a result of this mission,” Secretary Powell told the reporters after the meeting. (AFP, AP)
An explosion, triggered by a female suicide bomber, went off at a bus stop near Jerusalem’s outdoor market killing six and wounding more than 60. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack. Gaza Preventive Security Chief Mohammad Dahlan said the attack was “the result of the massacres perpetrated by Sharon.” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President Bush would not “be deterred to seek peace, despite this attack,” and urged Chairman Arafat “to speak out and denounce today’s homicide attack.” (BBC, Reuters, XINHUA)
The Secretary-General issued the following statement:
(UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news)
The UN Secretary-General, speaking to reporters in Geneva after a meeting with Swiss Foreign Minister Joseph Deiss, expressed concern at reports from UN humanitarian agencies of “grave violations” by Israeli forces during their West Bank offensive. “My own view is that the situation is so dangerous, and the humanitarian and human rights situation is so appalling – in fact you heard me say that this morning – but I think the proposition that a force should be sent in there to create a secure environment and as well as provide space for diplomatic and political negotiations can no longer be deferred. It is urgent, it is imperative. That capacity exists in the world today, we must now muster the will… I think it is patently obvious that the parties left to themselves cannot resolve this issue, that they do need help from a third party.” (AFP, UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news)
The UN Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution put forward by the EU, expressing “grave concern at continuing Israeli settlement activities,” including the expansion of existing settlements and expulsions of Palestinians, and urging the Government of Israel “to reverse its settlement policy in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, and to stop the expansion of existing settlements, including ‘natural growth’.” “All these actions are illegal, constitute a violation of the Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilians in time of war and are a major obstacle to peace,” the resolution said. (AFP)
The EU External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten, while in Athens, accused Israel of violating international law with its treatment of Palestinians and said the Israeli ongoing military offensive in the West Bank was threatening to spark “anarchy in the region.” He notably referred to a report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that accused Israel of humiliating and harassing aid workers in the West Bank and appealed to the US for help to deal with the humanitarian situation. In a rare joint statement, the ICRC and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies enumerated widespread violations of the Geneva Conventions during IDF incursions in the West Bank. (AFP)
The Franciscan Order urged Israel to release some 200 Palestinians it had trapped in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem for 10 days and provide water and power to the Franciscan friars trapped with them. “We urgently demand that the Palestinians be allowed to leave the monastery, with guarantees that their lives will be saved, in order to prevent a humanitarian disaster and a futile massacre that will only serve to increase the hatred between the two communities,” Father Giacomo Bini, the head of the Order, said. Israel immediately rejected the demands, Vatican news agency Fides said. “We hope our elder brothers, the Jews, can help us, given the widespread sympathy that links the Jews to the Franciscans,” the spokesman of the Franciscan community in the Holy Land, Father Daviters, said in a separate appeal. (AFP)
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Maher met Chairman Arafat in his HQ in Ramallah. The meeting focused on Secretary Powell’s trip to the region and on ways to get out of the crisis and was also attended by Mahmud Abbas, Saeb Erekat, Yasser Abed Rabbo and Nabil Abu Rudeineh. (AFP)
Finland called on Israel to restore freedom of movement to Chairman Arafat and accused the IDF of violating international law in its ongoing offensive in the West Bank. A senior ministry official met with Israel’s Ambassador, Miryam Shomrat, and “urged Israel to yield to the demands of the international community and withdraw troops from the occupied Palestinian territories.” The official also requested details on damage sustained to a Lutheran cultural centre being built in Bethlehem with Finnish development aid funds and demanded return of computers, computer files and other material concerning Finnish development projects that were confiscated by Israeli troops from the PA Education Ministry. “Eventual claims will be specified later if so called for by the magnitude of damage,” the Finnish Foreign Ministry statement said. (AFP)
The IDF stated it shot and wounded an Armenian monk inside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. (AFP)
According to a Time/CNN poll of 1,003 Americans, conducted on 10-11 April, 60 per cent of Americans believed the US should cut off or reduce its US$3 billion in annual aid to Israel if Prime Minister Sharon refuses to heed US calls for Israel’s troops to withdraw from the Palestinian territories. Seventy-five per cent thought Secretary Powell should meet with Chairman Arafat during his trip, though only 21 per cent of respondents said they believed it would result in a peace agreement or major progress towards it. In comparison, a poll of 1,009 adults published by USA Today on 9 April showed that nearly half of those surveyed (49 per cent) felt US support of Israel was acceptable, while one-third (35 per cent) saw US support unfairly lop-sided. (AFP)
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The IDF moved dozens of tanks and bulldozers into the West Bank villages of Kafr Rahi, Burqin, Arabeh, Tahmeh, Al-Arka, Al-Farah, Kafr al-Khut, Al-Hashmiyah and Amun, and declared curfews. The IDF announced it had entered six West Bank villages, arresting 40 suspected militants. IDF troops shot dead a Palestinian believed to be trying to infiltrate the “Dugit” settlement in the Gaza Strip, while his two companions escaped. Troops also killed a senior member of Hamas in the West Bank, Israel Radio reported. In Nablus the bodies of eight Palestinians from one family had been pulled from the rubble of their home, which had collapsed earlier in the week amid heavy fighting in the city, witnesses said. (AFP, AP, DPA, Reuters)
Palestinians said Israeli troops raided the offices of several PA ministries, including the Ministry of Health, as well as some higher educational institutions and a cultural centre in Ramallah, seizing files and destroying computer disks and other contents. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the PA had yet to assess the damage. (Reuters)
The director of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Paul Grossrieder, in remarks published in Le Monde, accused Israeli soldiers of impeding the work of Palestinian aid workers in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. “The Palestinian Red Cross can only respond to 20 per cent of the calls it receives. To this day, three people have been killed, including a doctor – for which the Israeli army apologised – and 136 ambulance personnel have been injured,” Mr. Grossrieder said, adding that two ICRC vehicles were deliberately crushed by a tank. (AFP)
Some 3,000 Israeli pacifists protested against the Israeli offensive in the West Bank, taking to the road that leads to Jenin, organizers from Ta’ayush (“coexistence”) movement said. They were allowed by the army to send 35 lorries loaded with essential goods and medical supplies for the Palestinians. (AFP)
Chairman Arafat issued a renunciation of all forms of terrorism, written in Arabic and broadcast on Palestinian TV. (AFP, AP, see the full text at http://www.wafa.pna.net/EngText/13-04-2002/page007.htm)
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Israeli Defence Minister Ben Eliezer said in a statement that “dozens and not hundreds” of Palestinians were killed in the Jenin refugee camp. (AFP
Secretary Powell called his three-hour meeting with Chairman Arafat “useful and constructive,” but indicated no progress toward a ceasefire. Mr. Powell then met with Israeli President Moshe Katsav and former Prime Minister Barak to discuss his talks with Mr. Arafat, and later with Prime Minister Sharon for about an hour to brief him on the meeting and urging him to withdraw the IDF from the Palestinian areas. (AFP, AP, Ha’aretz, XINHUA)
In Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Sharon had proposed to Secretary of State Powell the organization of an international conference for a peace settlement in the Middle East,” Prime Minister’s spokesman Ra’anan Gissin told AFP, saying: “This conference would be held under the aegis of the US, should be held at a neutral venue and gather representatives from Israel, the Palestinians, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Gulf states.” Mr. Sharon was quoted later by public radio calling it “a regional conference” and stressed “the list is not closed,” adding: “This idea was accepted by the United Sates and this conference will meet some time depending on political arrangements in the region.” “The purpose of the conference is not just to meet, but also to open a political horizon. Because the Palestinians … said, in order to have an effective ceasefire, we must understand where are we moving politically,” Foreign Minister Peres told ABC television. Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat accused Mr. Sharon of using “this trick to find a way to … to carry on the occupation.” Spanish Foreign Minister Piqué, speaking in Luxemburg at an EU Foreign Minister meeting, regretted that Mr. Sharon failed to mention the EU – which has been striving for a bigger role in Middle East diplomacy – when he raised the possibility of a peace conference over the weekend. (AFP)
Prime Minister Sharon’s office issued a statement saying reports claiming Mr. Sharon told his cabinet that he wanted nothing more to do with Mr. Javier Solana, the EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and that the EU would not be welcome at the regional peace conference he had proposed, “were not true.” But foreign diplomats and at least one member of Israeli cabinet confirmed the report. Mr. Solana said: “Our problem is not with this or that Government. Our problems are the people involved, the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, and we are going to continue to work on their behalf.” (EFE)
The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in favour of a petition filed by LAW and Adalah, calling for the immediate cessation of the burial of Palestinians in mass graves and for the IDF to hand over to the Palestinians bodies of those killed in the Jenin refugee camp instead of burying the bodies in unmarked graves. Red Cross representatives would accompany Israeli military teams searching for bodies in the debris of the Jenin refugee camp. If the local army commander agrees, representatives of the Palestinian Red Crescent could also participate, the Court said. Three teams of ICRC monitors, including some Palestinians, were allowed to enter the camp next day to count the dead and help the wounded. (AFP, AP, LAW)
The IDF announced it was ending a ban on entering many Palestinian West Bank areas while still keeping some restrictions in place around Chairman Arafat’s compound in Ramallah, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and Jenin. (AFP, AP)
The Israeli proposal concerning the Palestinians in the Church of the Nativity, to take the option of safe passage to a third country and never return or face trial in Israel, was rejected by Salah al-Ta’mari, the head of the Palestinian negotiating team. The Palestinian Governor of Bethlehem, Mohammed al-Madani, who was among around 100 Palestinians, including some gunmen, inside the church, also rejected the Israeli proposal, but said the Palestinians in the church would abide by any solution endorsed by Chairman Arafat. A Palestinian policeman was killed in the church compound by an IDF sniper. The Israelis installed a large loudspeaker in front of the Church of the Nativity complex and were playing screeching noises at high volume, witnesses said, in an apparent effort to unnerve the Palestinians. The IDF refused to comment. (AFP, AP, DPA)
The Israeli Cabinet decided to build electric fences around Jewish areas in Jerusalem bordering on PA areas, as well as around Jenin and Tulkarm, in a bid to cut down bomb attacks, Army Radio said. The security cabinet also approved a five-kilometre-wide buffer zone with fences and barriers along a 57-kilometre stretch of the so-called “seam line,” according to Ha’aretz. (AFP)
German Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping confirmed that the Government had temporarily suspended some military sales to Israel due to its military offensive against the Palestinians, becoming the first European country to apply direct economic pressure on Israel. The shipment of replacement parts for military equipment had been “interrupted but not stopped,” Mr. Scharping told public TV network ZDF, adding that Germany wanted to send “a signal” to Israel with its decision. The EU budget commissioner Michaele Schreyer said in an interview with the Handelsblatt that she opposed the EU taking sanctions against Israel calling such a step “a bad signal.” Israeli officials also warned that any sanctions by the Europeans would mark the end of the EU attempts to expand its involvement in diplomatic efforts in the Middle East crisis. The warning was made ahead of an EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg where Belgium and Spain wanted to consider taking tough measures against Israel for its military offensive. (AFP, The Financial Times)
“There is a need for an international peace force so that the Palestinian State can begin to function normally,” Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou told the newspaper Express. (AFP)
15
In an open letter to Prime Minister Sharon published in the daily Le Figaro, former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard wrote: “You are producing world-wide anti-Israelism and people like me, who have fought anti-Semitism since they were very young, are powerless to hold back the torrent of anger and hatred to which you have opened the floodgates.” (AFP)
In the village of Doha, southwest of Bethlehem, a 24-year-old Palestinian woman was shot dead as she reportedly tried to enter the building after the Israeli troops had forced everyone out. In an Area “A” village Labdia east of Bethlehem, a 29-year-old Palestinian was shot dead in his car as Israeli soldiers carried out house-to-house searches, witnesses said. Two more Palestinians were killed in a clash near the “Kfar Darom” settlement in southern Gaza, Israeli military sources said. (AFP, BBC, XINHUA)
The IDF partially lifted the curfews imposed on reoccupied Ramallah and Bethlehem, allowing people to leave their homes between 9 am and 6 pm. The curfew was still in place in Nablus and Jenin. (DPA)
The UN Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution expressing “grave concern” at the deterioration of human rights and the humanitarian situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly “at acts of mass killings perpetrated by the Israeli occupying authorities against the Palestinian people,” by 40 votes, with five against, seven abstentions and one absence. Among the European members, Austria, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain and Sweden voted for the resolution, while UK and Germany voted against. (AFP)
West Bank Fatah leader and Palestinian Legislative Council member Marwan Barghouti, sought by Israel since it launched a West Bank offensive on 29 March, was arrested in Ramallah, sources said. (Reuters)
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights condemned Israel’s transfer of Palestinian prisoners to the newly reopened “Ketziot” prison camp in the Negev desert in southern Israel, popularly known as “Ansar 3,” saying the measure violated the Fourth Geneva Convention. PCHR received information that Ansar 3 was due to receive some 70 Palestinians currently held in administrative detention in Megiddo prison in Israel. A further 281 Palestinians, placed in administrative detention during Israel’s current military offensive and currently held at the “Ofer” military base in the West Bank, would also be transferred to the facility. (Reuters, PCHR press release 59/2002)
Prime Minister Sharon “confirmed to President [Bush] that Israel [would] withdraw from Jenin and Nablus within a week,” White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer said, adding that President Bush “expressed his belief that this increase[d] the prospects to bring peace to the region.” During a 15-minute call placed by the President, Mr. Bush also “urged the Prime Minister to consider the human dimensions and to improve human conditions throughout the West Bank,” Mr. Fleischer told reporters. Mr. Fleischer also said that “as soon as the situation at the Church of the Nativity can be resolved, I think the President believes there will be rapid progress by Israel on following in Bethlehem what they are doing in Jenin and Nablus.” Earlier, in a CNN interview, Mr. Sharon had said the IDF would be out of Jenin within a “couple of days” and would leave Nablus in “not more than a week” while noting the pullback could take longer in Ramallah. With regard to Bethlehem Mr. Sharon said: “I want to make it very clear. We will leave Bethlehem only after [Palestinian terrorists] either are arrested and tried in Israel or deported.” Mr. Sharon added that the IDF would withdraw a short distance from the West Bank towns at first and then pull back further if the situation remained quiet. (AFP, Ha’aretz, Reuters, Tribune Business News)
A Palestinian was killed by the IDF as he was approaching the “Nisanit” settlement in the northern Gaza Strip, an IDF spokesman said without elaborating. (AFP)
René Aquarone, spokesman for UNRWA told a news briefing that thousands of Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp still lacked food, water and basic medical supplies as the IDF continued to hamper access. Mr. Aquarone said UNRWA had tried to distribute food and medical supplies, and while the Israeli authorities had given authorization for a truck to enter the camp, they had not given permission to unload. (Reuters)
The ICRC, which visited Jenin refugee camp with the IDF, said it was launching a programme for families to report missing persons in an effort to get a clearer picture of the number of dead. ICRC spokesman Vincent Lusser said the first priority was to help surviving civilians in the camp and evacuate the dead and the injured. The ICRC removed seven corpses. (Reuters)
16
Israeli army spokesman Maj. Tal Rivlin said that most of the 250 Palestinians inside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem were civilians, adding, however, that “more than 30 true terrorists” were also inside and Israel would not let them escape. Israeli and Palestinian sources said the IDF had evacuated two Palestinians from the church who were in need of medical attention. (AFP, Reuters)
Nabil Sha’ath, PA Minister for Planning and International Cooperation said close to 500 residents of the Jenin refugee camp were killed as the IDF swept through the city, and demanded an inquiry into allegations of a massacre. (Reuters)
Amnesty International released a statement calling on the UN Security Council to establish immediately an independent investigation into human rights abuses in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin, following the IDF operation: “According to the principles of international law, when deaths have occurred in disputed circumstances there must be an impartial investigation with the cooperation of all sides.” (AFP, DPA)
On behalf of the EU, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Piqué and his Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov told a joint news conference in Luxembourg that Israel’s announcement of pulling its forces from parts of the West Bank was “insufficient,” and reaffirmed their support for Secretary Powell’s mission to the region. (Reuters)
European Development and Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Poul Nielson renewed a call to Israel to remove all obstacles placed in the way of the UN, the ICRC and other humanitarian agencies in the West Bank, telling a news conference that he was “deeply concerned about the way in which basic principles of humanitarian law, in particular regarding access to civilian casualties of the violence, are being flouted.” Mr. Nelson also said the Commission would strive to make an additional €10 million contribution to UNRWA this year. (AFP, DPA, Reuters)
State Secretary Vidar Helgesen of the Norwegian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Norway would send US$230,500 in emergency aid to Jenin refugee camp for the local authorities to buy food, blankets and other necessities. Meanwhile, Thorbjørn Jagland, leader of the opposition Labour party and head of the Storting Foreign Affairs Committee, said he would present a plan to the parliament for setting up a large new cash fund, consisting of “hundreds of millions of crowns” for Palestinian refugees. Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik said he was favourable to the plan, adding that the decision over how it should be organized had to be made in cooperation with other donor countries. (AFP, Reuters)
The IDF made a brief incursion into Tulkarm during which nine suspected Palestinian militants were arrested, Palestinian sources said. Eight Palestinians were wounded during the incursion, which took place at dawn with troops, tanks and helicopter gunships. An IDF spokesman said that the goal of the operation was to carry out arrests of Palestinian militants, not to reoccupy the town. An Israeli soldier shot and fatally wounded a 24-year-old Palestinian after he tried to stab a comrade, an army spokesman said, while Palestinian security sources said the man was walking along the road when he was shot. A 12-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by the IDF in the Askar refugee camp in Nablus, when the IDF went in to carry out house searches; a 55-year-old man was seriously injured during the operation. The IDF moved into Dar Salah, a Palestinian-controlled village east of Bethlehem and conducted house searches and arrested a number of Palestinians, including Fatah members, residents said. Israeli soldiers also arrested a number of Palestinians in Walajah near Bethlehem. In a separate incident, 15 Palestinians were arrested in Nablus, including journalists and political leaders, according to their families who telephoned an AFP correspondent there. In the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian was killed and two others wounded by Israeli tank fire in the village of Beit Lahya. (AFP, EFE, XINHUA)
UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in a statement at the House of Commons said that Israel had failed to address complaints over its use of British military equipment in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. “As a result of what I regard as unsatisfactory answers from the Government of Israel to our inquiries, we can no longer make decisions in respect of arms exports to Israel on the basis of those undertakings,” he said. Mr. Straw also said the only solution to the crisis in the Middle East was to create a “viable” Palestinian State. (AFP, Reuters, XINHUA)
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Following a meeting with Chairman Arafat in Ramallah, Secretary Powell told a press conference that Chairman Arafat and the PA could no longer “equivocate,” stressing that they had to “decide, as the rest of the world has decided, that terrorism must end.” “Chairman Arafat must take that message to his people, he must follow through with instructions to his security forces… We are disappointed in Chairman Arafat,” Mr. Powell said. “We believe he could do more, it is time for him to make a strategic decision” to combat attacks on Israel civilians. Turning to Israel, Mr. Powell said Prime Minister Sharon had provided him with “a timeline through this weekend and as you all know, reservists are now returning home. I stressed to the Prime Minister the urgency of completing the withdrawal and have been assured of real results in the next few days,” adding that “only with the end of the incursions and engagement in security talks can a ceasefire be achieved in reality as well as rhetoric.” Secretary Powell also said “the question is whether the time has come for a strong, vibrant state of Israel to look beyond the destructive impact of settlements and occupation, both of which must end.” Before leaving for a short stop in Cairo, Mr. Powell pledged an ongoing effort by Washington to push for a ceasefire and said he would return to the region to advance the process, though he gave no date for his return. (AFP, Ha’aretz, the Jerusalem Post, Reuters)
PA Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo described the meeting between Chairman Arafat and Secretary Powell as a “catastrophe.” Mr. Arafat demands Washington to put pressure on Israel to withdraw from West Bank cities and abide by the latest UN Security Council resolution and the Madrid Declaration went unheeded, he said, stressing: “No mechanism for the withdrawal of the Israeli Army exists. They talk about a partial withdrawal from the West Bank, but the IDF can return whenever it chooses, just like in the refugee camps.” (AFP, DPA, EFE)
Secretary Powell met in Cairo with Foreign Ministers Ahmed Maher of Egypt and Marwan al-Muasher of Jordan. A scheduled meeting with President Mubarak was cancelled at the last minute. At a press conference following the meeting, Mr. Maher, in reply to an appeal issued earlier by President Bush for the Arab States to do more to fight “terrorism,” said “that an appeal must be addressed first to Israel for it to halt its occupation and its aggression against the Palestinian people.” (AFP, DPA, XINHUA)
Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar told reporters that Chairman Arafat and the EU had to be part of any future Middle East peace conference. (DPA, Reuters)
Prime Minister Sharon reiterated to Israeli Army Radio that he had promised President Bush that there would be “no physical harm done to the person of Arafat, and I respect my promise.” Mr. Sharon pointed out that Israel had reconnected water and electricity to the Mr. Arafat’s offices in Ramallah and that food supplies were being allowed through. (AFP)
Israeli tanks left the centre of Jenin but were still occupying the outer fringes of the town and the Jenin refugee camp, a Palestinian official said. Meanwhile, Israeli tanks entered Balaa, east of Tulkarm, while helicopter gunships destroyed several buildings belonging to the Palestinian security services. One Palestinian was shot dead in the operation. Homes were searched and a large number of Palestinian men detained by the IDF. The IDF also opened fire in Silat al-Harthiyah, north of Jenin. The IDF confirmed both operations were under way, saying they were aimed at seizing wanted militants. The IDF said it had withdrawn from the Askar refugee camp, near Nablus, after a one-day incursion. Curfews were imposed in 12 villages near Jenin. An armed Palestinian was killed in an attempted attack on the settlement of “Dugit” in the northern Gaza Strip, an army spokesman said. Palestinian hospital sources said he was hit by tank fire on Beit Lahya from the settlement of “Dugit,” that wounded two other Palestinians. (AFP, DPA, Ha’aretz, the Jerusalem Post, Reuters)
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokesman Vincent Lusser called for international search and rescue teams to be sent to Jenin refugee camp to remove dead bodies known to be under bulldozed buildings and to search for possible survivors after some camp residents reported hearing noises from beneath the rubble. Mr. Lusser said the rescue work could not proceed fast enough without help and that Norway and Switzerland were among countries ready to give assistance, adding that there was no response yet from Israel where officials were observing Independence Day. (AFP, Reuters)
Arab League Secretary-General Amre Moussa, speaking to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, said the deaths of Palestinians in refugee camps amounted to “genocide” and “slaughter,” and urged the Commission to call for a special meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss human rights in the West Bank. Mr. Moussa also said that Israel saw itself as above international law and would continue to do as long as it could rely on the protection of the US. (Reuters)
EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten told The Guardian in an interview that Israel had to accept a UN investigation of alleged atrocities against Palestinians or face “colossal damage” to its reputation, adding it was in “Israel’s interest to behave like a democracy that believes in the rule of law.” (Reuters)
Oman transferred US$ 6.6 million in advance aid to the PA in accordance with a decision taken at the Arab summit in Beirut in March, the ONA news agency said. (AFP)
18
Human Rights Watch issued a 24-page report “In a Dark Hour: The Use of Civilians during IDF Arrest Operations,” which said the IDF routinely compelled Palestinian civilians to assist in its military operations. The report documented how the IDF had taken civilians at gunpoint to open suspicious packages, knock on doors of suspects, and search the houses of “wanted” Palestinians during its military operations. It also documented one-case of hostage-taking, prohibited by Article 34 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and one of the acts defined as “grave breaches” in Article 147 of the Convention, making it a war crime. (AFP, HRW)
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An IDF statement said Israeli forces had “completed their mission in Jenin” and redeployed to positions encircling the city and its downtown camp “to prevent and thwart terrorist activity and the passage of terrorists into Israel.” An armoured unit also withdrew from Qalqilya after an overnight raid. (AP)
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson called off a planned fact-finding mission to the Middle East after Israel failed to cooperate, her office announced. (AFP)
“We must recognize that we are in a situation in which the capacity of the PA to manage security issues is greatly diminished, and in some areas totally destroyed,” UN Special Coordinator Terje Rød-Larsen said, noting this threatened Palestinians and Israelis alike: “Israel’s operation may have dismantled the physical infrastructure of terrorism, but this is easily rebuilt. And meanwhile the mental infrastructure of terrorism is building up – the mentality of hate and confrontation – and this is very difficult to undo.” On the economic impact, he said: “the Palestinian economy has moved from a relentless economic depression into economic paralysis.” On Israel’s claim that it had uncovered documents linking Chairman Arafat to militants who had staged suicide attacks, Mr. Larsen said: “We are concerned by the allegations that we have seen, but we have had no opportunity to study these documents ourselves.” He emphasized that Mr. Arafat was the elected leader of the PA and as such remained the leading representative of the Palestinian people. “We cannot say that we will relate only to those who we like, and not relate to those who we don’t like,” he said, stressing that suicide attacks and other forms of terrorism were “illegal and counterproductive to peace. We are appalled by the human destruction that it causes, and have repeatedly condemned suicide bombings as morally repugnant.” (AFP, Reuters)
Prime Minister Sharon’s spokesman Rana’an Gissin said there was “no need” for a third-party inquiry into the deaths in Jenin refugee camp, after a White House spokesman said President Bush supported an investigation into the events. Permanent Representative of the US to the UN said the US was opposed to Security Council involvement in an inquiry into deaths in the camp. “Our position, certainly at the moment, is that this should not be through a Security Council resolution,” Amb. Negroponte told reporters, adding: “We certainly do not oppose trying to find out the facts and getting to the bottom of the situation.” (AFP)
“There is strong evidence that human rights and international humanitarian law were breached in Jenin by the Israeli Defence Forces,” Amnesty International members visiting the town said in a statement issued in London. (AI press release MDE 15/056/2002, Reuters)
EC representative to the West Bank and Gaza Strip Jean Breteche said the EC had €10 million (US$8.9 million) “readily available to undertake repairs in Jenin refugee camp and Nablus’ old city,” and that €1.7 million had already been transferred to the ICRC and another €5 million might follow, while €5 million were disbursed in support of the World Food Program. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) set up a tracing service for missing people and was delivering water to the Jenin camp. Offers to send specialised workers to clear the camp had been pouring in from around the world, UNRWA said. (AFP, AP)
A World Food Programme plane loaded with around 40 tons of biscuits had departed from Italy and arrived in Tel Aviv ahead of being distributed to displaced Palestinians and Palestinian institutions, WFP said in a statement. (DPA)
A nine-year-old Palestinian boy and a teenager were killed by Israeli fire in separate incidents in the Ramallah area, Hosni Atari, the head of the city’s hospital, reported. (AFP)
The PA expressed alarm at IDF troop movements in the Gaza Strip, which they said had occurred in all areas, notably around Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah as well as in Rafah. (AFP)
A car with a Palestinian suicide bomber exploded in the morning near an IDF roadblock on the edge of the central Gaza Strip town of Deir El Balah, killing the man and lightly wounding two Israeli soldiers. Following the attack, Israeli troops moved into an area round the village of Al-Qarara, and troops blocked off the main north-south road through the Gaza Strip, witnesses said. (AFP, XINHUA)
Three Palestinian men, two of them unarmed civilians, were shot dead during an overnight incursion by Israeli tanks and troops into the Brazil neighbourhood of Rafah, Palestinian security and hospital sources said. In a separate incident, two Gaza City residents were killed while launching an attack on the “Netzarim” settlement south of the city. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attempted attack. Another Palestinian was shot and killed as he tried to stab an Israeli police officer on the border between the northern West Bank and Israel near the village of Anin, according to Palestinian sources. (AFP, XINHUA)
A Palestinian photographer, who covers Nablus for AP, said his new-born daughter had died because delays at IDF checkpoints had prevented him from getting her from the family home in the village of Salem to a Nablus hospital, about 5km away, in time to save her. (Reuters)
German Economic Cooperation and Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul denounced as a “humanitarian catastrophe” the situation in the Palestinian territories and called on Israel to allow aid groups in. Ms. Wieczorek-Zeul also said that by occupying the territories, the army would endanger Israeli civilians in the long term rather than protect them. “This is not the way to bring an end to terrorist actions, this is how new generations of terrorists are created,” she said. The German Government also pledged to send €330,000 (US$293,000) in humanitarian aid to the West Bank and Gaza. (AFP)
The Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 1405 authorizing a UN fact-finding team to visit Jenin refugee camp. In a telephone call a few hours before the Council met, Foreign Minister Peres reportedly had told Secretary-General Kofi Annan that Israel would welcome a UN representative “to clarify the facts” of what had happened in the camp. Although Mr. Peres only mentioned a mission to the city of Jenin, “the Secretary-General would hope that any fact-finding mission he sends would have full access to all areas of the West Bank,” UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said. Mr. Annan also spoke to Defence Minister Ben-Eliezer, who reportedly had also agreed to the fact-finding mission. The next day, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told Reuters: “We hope that the first step after the panel submits this report is the creation of an international peace force.” (AP)
Chairman Arafat wrote to the US Administration saying he was ready to “immediately” put on trial the killers of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evy as soon as the situation in Ramallah was “normalized,” a senior Palestinian official told AFP. (AFP)
20
International aid workers at Jenin refugee camp halted the recovery of bodies from the rubble until the arrival of a UN fact-finding team. “We decided to be extremely careful in not destroying evidence by digging the area with bulldozers … loads of crucial evidence was already lost,” UNWRA Regional Deputy Director Guy Siri told AFP. “Rather, we will concentrate our efforts on caring for the survivors, demining dangerous areas of the camp and making sure we prevent damaged buildings from falling.” (AFP)
US Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East William Burns, accompanied by UN officials and armed bodyguards, toured the ruins of Jenin refugee camp after the Israeli army pullback, saying enormous suffering had been visited on Palestinian civilians there. Russian Middle East envoy Andrei Vdovin also visited the camp and said he was shocked by “the extent of the destruction” he saw there. (AFP, Reuters)
Chairman Arafat set up a 10-member Palestinian committee of inquiry to collect and document evidence of war crimes reportedly perpetrated by Israel in the West Bank, particularly Jenin, Nablus and Bethlehem, as well as coordinate with the international community over the implementation of Security Council resolution 1405, WAFA reported. Hassan Asfour, the PA Minister for NGO Affairs, was named chairman of the committee, which would include Palestinian ministers, human rights activists, academics and lawyers. (AFP)
A group of 20 Israeli settlers, allegedly from the “Yizhar” settlement south of Nablus, shot two Palestinian farmers, injuring one seriously, in the village of Urif, a few kilometers southwest of “Yizhar.” The group then stole some 50 goats from the farm, 10 of which they had shot. Although the IDF appeared at the scene, they did nothing to stop the settlers, Palestinian security sources told AFP. (AFP)
21
PA legal adviser Michael Tarazi told CNN that the Oslo agreements specified that the Israeli side must present evidence of wrongdoing in order for the PA to detain and try suspects, but no evidence had ever been presented in the case of Fuad Shubaki, who was in Chairman Arafat’s Ramallah compound and whose handover Israel was also demanding. Israeli security officials reportedly started to discuss the possibility of mounting an assault on Chairman Arafat’s compound. (AFP, CNN, XINHUA)
Palestinians had international law on their side in rejecting Israeli demands for handing over four Palestinians suspected of assassinating the Israeli tourism minister, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Piqué said upon arrival for the fifth Euro-Mediterranean conference in the Spanish city of Valencia. Mr. Piqué said the four should undergo trial under Palestinian jurisdiction and with international guarantees, along the lines of the Lockerbie trial in The Hague. (DPA)
Israeli troops completed their withdrawal from Nablus overnight, while Ramallah was also almost completely evacuated, the IDF said. “I’m pleased to note this morning that the Israeli forces are now out of the towns that we’ve been following so closely, with the exception of Israeli forces around Chairman Arafat’s HQ in Ramallah … and at the church in Bethlehem, the Church of the Nativity,” Secretary of State Powell said. “This is a lie for television. It doesn’t mean anything,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat commented on Israeli announcement. Prime Minister Sharon later in the day announced the end of the first stage of his operation “Defensive Wall.” (AFP)
Israeli soldiers entered the Kalandia refugee camp, located between Ramallah and Jerusalem, and made a total of approximately 15 arrests in house-to-house searches, with no casualties reported. In separate incidents the IDF shot dead a Fatah activist in the village of Deir al-Ghusun, north-east of Tulkarm, Palestinian security sources reported, and seven Palestinian children, including a three-year-old, were wounded when Israeli troops fired live rounds on them as they were throwing stones in Rafah, witnesses and medics said. (AFP)
Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein said the Government of Israel had legal grounds for declaring the UN Special Coordinator Terje Rød-Larsen persona non grata for comments he had made to the press on 18 April about the Jenin campaign, while Defence Minister Ben-Eliezer, speaking on Israel Radio the same day, accused him of “incitement” against Israel. Israel’s cabinet discussed cutting ties with Mr. Rød-Larsen, but made no decision. Mr. Rød-Larsen, however, stuck by his criticism of Israel’s assault on the camp, saying the next day he reacted as any decent human being would have. (AFP, AP)
The UN Secretary-General issued the following statement in New York:
(UN press release SG/SM/8205)
Secretary of State Powell said on NBC: “I will be returning to the region in the not-too-distant future. I didn’t go over there expecting I would come back with peace at this time.” (AFP)
Responding to a proposal by senior IDF officers to dismantle some isolated settlements to ease the security burden on Israeli troops, Prime Minister Sharon told the Cabinet meeting that after the 2003 election, “it will take him two or three months to assemble a new Government and even after that he doesn’t intend to deal with this issue of dismantling settlements,” said Communications Minister Ra’anan Cohen (Labour). (AP)
22
One Israeli soldier and two Palestinians were killed in a firefight in Taluza north of Nablus when IDF troops, backed by tanks and APCs, raided the village, Palestinian sources reported. Two other Palestinians were killed in a clash when Israeli troops raided the Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. Another Palestinian was shot dead when he tried to infiltrate an Israeli settlement in northern Gaza. An Israeli helicopter missile attack killed two Palestinians in Hebron, one of them a local leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the other a member of Force 17. (AFP, XINHUA)
As rescue and relief efforts in the Jenin refugee camp were under way, UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen told the reporters “the chances would have been far greater to find survivors if we’d been allowed in earlier. We could have saved people.” (AFP)
The Assistant Secretary of State Burns met with Chairman Arafat for about two hours at his compound in Ramallah to discuss the situation in Ramallah and Bethlehem, truce prospects and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians. Netta Golan, an Israeli-Canadian activist in the compound, said that while the talks were going on, an Israeli bulldozer crushed several cars parked outside and began building a rampart near one of the walls. She said Mr. Burns came out to see what was going on before resuming the meeting. (AP)
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said Israeli troops wantonly destroyed PA ministries during the three-week occupation of Ramallah and seized large amounts of records, including vehicle registration files and medical records. IDF units also reportedly entered several ministries in Ramallah overnight, among them the education and employment ministries, and destroyed computer systems, files and archives. (AP, DPA)
Israeli Attorney-General Eliyakim Rubenstein set up a team of senior legal and security specialists to “oversee the investigation” of West Bank Fatah leader and PLC member Marwan Barghouti, who was arrested by Israeli special forces in Ramallah on 15 April. (Reuters)
The IDF confiscated 17 foreign and local journalists’ credentials, documents issued by the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO). Reporters and cameramen working for ABC, AFP, AP, ARD, BBC, Al-Jazeera, Reuters, and a Spanish journalist, were about 400m from the Manger Square and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, when “an Israeli army major stopped the journalists and told them that this [was] a restricted area,” according to an Al-Jazeera reporter, and then ordered them to hand over their press cards. The incident took place in an area where journalists in the past had not been stopped by Israeli soldiers, and the day before an Israeli TV crew was allowed much closer to Manger Square. The army did not produce any document backing up the claim that the area was restricted, as required by law. The Foreign Press Association in Israel called on the IDF to return the press cards. (AP, XINHUA)
The situation in the besieged Church of the Nativity compound in Bethlehem was getting steadily worse, with no end in sight to the three-week standoff, an envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Canon Andrew White, said, adding: “There is no food, the sanitary conditions are terrible and some of people are sick or wounded.” “Yesterday, the Israelis put in ladders to help people get out and that was how five people managed to leave,” Rev. White said. Two of them were civilians, two were Palestinian police officers and one was a member of Chairman Arafat’s presidential guard. In Rome, the Franciscan Order expressed “dismay” over the cutting of the telephone lines to the monastery in the church compound and asked Israel to restore them. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Yaffa Ben-Ari said the IDF had allowed deliveries of food to the Church, though the army had no immediate reaction. Pope John Paul II, lamenting that one of Christianity’s holiest shrines had become the site of “clashes, blackmail and intolerable exchanges and accusations,” urged Israel and the Palestinians to make peace, while the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexei II, appealed to Israel to spare the Church. (AFP, AP, Reuters)
West Bank security chief Jibril Rajoub led journalist on a tour of his Ramallah HQ, ransacked by IDF. In a press conference afterwards, he announced that there would be no more security cooperation with Israel, and said Prime Minister Sharon had “opened a new chapter in relations with the Palestinians.” “It’s impossible to return to what was before. Sharon’s policies have destroyed everything. After the blood spilled in Jenin, in Ramallah, in Nablus, I don’t think we, the Palestinian people and its security apparatus, can resume talking with the Israelis about security coordination,” Gen. Rajoub said. (AP, DPA)
EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, speaking to journalists at the fifth Euro-Mediterranean conference, which opened in Valencia, called for the “fastest possible formula” to create an independent Palestinian State, saying it was time for Israelis and Palestinians to go straight to the final negotiations.” (DPA)
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan named former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari to head a three-person fact-finding team inquiring into events at the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin. The team also included Sadako Ogata of Japan, former head of the UNHCR, and Cornelio Sommaruga of Switzerland, former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Retired US General William Nash, former UN regional administrator in Kosovo, would act as military adviser to the team, and Peter Fitzgerald of Ireland, former UN civilian police officer, as police adviser. “The team will start its work without delay. It will first assemble in Europe this week and then travel to the region as soon as possible,” the Mr. Annan told a news conference. Before the team was named, Israeli officials reportedly let it be known that three names were unacceptable: UN Special Coordinator Terje Rød-Larsen, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson and UNRWA Director-General Peter Hansen. (AFP)
Israeli police expelled nine Palestinian families living in houses in East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah that had been claimed by Jewish settlers, after a court in Jerusalem authorized the expulsion. Police declared the area a closed zone after dozens of Palestinians and Israeli peace activists had staged protests against the expulsions. (AFP)
An Israeli helicopter missile attacked killed two Palestinians in Hebron, one of them a local leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the other a member of Force 17. (AFP)
Five members of the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination Team arrived in the West Bank, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which is sending a total of seven experts to the area at the request of UNRWA. (UN News Centre)
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On their return from a mission of inquiry to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Amnesty International delegates presented their preliminary findings during a press conference at the Foreign Press Association in London. Delegates interviewed eyewitnesses and met Israeli Government representatives, including from the IDF. They visited Rummana village, Jenin city, Jenin City Hospital and Jenin refugee camp. “The evidence compiled indicates that serious breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed, including war crimes, but only an independent international commission of inquiry can establish the full facts and the scale of these violations,” said Javier Zúñiga, Director of Regional Strategy of the AI’s International Secretariat and a member of the mission. Delegates stressed that the UN fact-finding mission was an important first step towards establishing the truth. However, an independent international commission of inquiry, with the means and the expertise necessary to carry out a serious and thorough investigation, should follow without delay, its report must be made public and those found responsible must be brought to justice. (AFP, AI press release MDE 15/058/2002)
A British rescue team, Rapid UK, which had arrived in Jenin refugee camp on 21 April, left the camp without finding any survivors in the rubble and having abandoned hope that any might still be alive. (AFP)
Bethlehem Mayor Hanna Nasser reported that the first round of talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators on the situation at the Church of the Nativity had been conducted in a “good and constructive atmosphere,” although no specific breakthroughs had been achieved. Mr. Nasser said he was “optimistic” about the second round, adding that the “Israelis didn’t reject the idea of sending the Palestinians to Gaza.” (AFP)
Prime Minister Sharon, speaking during a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, said on the subject of the UN fact-finding mission: “I am concerned by what the final report could consist of, but we consider the arrival of the mission a lesser evil.” Other Israeli officials expressed surprise at not having been consulted over the mission appointments, saying they would have preferred the team to be made up of “military specialists qualified to assess the complexity of a battle in a populated area.” (AFP)
Prime Minister Sharon, addressing from Jerusalem by satellite the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, declared the Israeli military operation in the West Bank a success, and said a “window of opportunity” was open for a new, “realistic” peace process to begin. (DPA)
EU foreign ministers, attending a trade and development meeting with ten southern Mediterranean States, dispatched the EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana and special EU Middle East envoy Miguel Angel Moratinos on an urgent mission to end Israeli-Palestinian tensions, as well as promised immediate work on a new programme of humanitarian and reconstruction aid to help rebuild Palestinian infrastructure destroyed by Israeli military action. The EU mission follows a promise made in Valencia by Foreign Minister Peres that Mr. Solana’s mission would be given “the same freedom of movement and action” as was earlier accorded to Secretary of State Powell. (DPA)
The PA ordered all local Palestinian administrations to break off contacts with Israel “in order to abort the temporary Israeli occupation authorities from spreading chaos and creating a void that would facilitate the permanent return of the occupation.” “Palestinian ministries and official institutions … are the only parties authorized to govern and administer relations on all fronts, regarding institutions and individuals,” the PA said in a statement. (AFP)
Niger broke off diplomatic relations with Israel in protest over the Israeli assault on Palestinian areas, the first country to do so since the outbreak of the intifada. Lawal Kader Mahamadou, Government Secretary-General, accused Israel of “genocide” during a broadcast. (Reuters, WAFA)
A 13-year-old Palestinian boy was shot and fatally wounded by Israeli soldiers in Beit Jala, Palestinian witnesses and medical sources said. He died from his wounds after being rushed to a Hebron hospital, as the ambulance had been unable to enter the much closer Bethlehem, blocked off by Israeli troops. (AFP)
After declaring the village of Fasayil, 20km north of Jericho, a “closed military zone,” the IDF conducted house-to-house searches for two hours, “without taking or destroying anything and without making any arrests,” the village mayor said. (AFP)
Israeli forces supported by tanks, APCs and bulldozers moved more than one kilometre into the village of Wadi Salka in the southern Gaza Strip, opening fire and bulldozing a position of the Palestinian security services, the village mayor said. (AFP)
The IDF said in a communiqué it had arrested 26 Palestinians in the West Bank overnight on suspicion of “terrorist activities,” nine in the village of Husan, seven in Surif and five in Al-Khadr, all in the Bethlehem area; five more in Yatta, south of Hebron, while an AFP correspondent saw four arrested during searches at Dhahiriya, also near Hebron. (AFP)
Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi announced US$3.3 million to be provided to UNDP for emergency humanitarian assistance to Palestinians. (AFP, DPA)
UNRWA protested to the Israeli military authorities after they had prevented a UN convoy carrying humanitarian aid from leaving Nablus. The convoy contained flour, sugar, rice and lentils intended for the residents of Qalqilya left homeless or needy by the recent Israeli incursions and curfews, the Agency said in a statement released in Jerusalem. “Despite all the urgent needs we are facing in Jenin we must not forget the situation in places like Nablus,” Commissioner-General Peter Hansen also said, noting the serious damage caused to both people and their property by the Israeli incursion, including the more than 80 bodies that have been recovered from the recent fighting. (UN News Service, UNRWA press release Jerusalem/09/2002)
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan met with the Permanent Representative of the Israel to the UN Yehuda Lancry, who related Israeli reservations over the composition of the UN Fact-Finding Team for Jenin. Amb. Lancry said he had delivered a message to Mr. Annan from his Government asking for talks on a “more balanced” team including experts on military operations and counter-terrorism. A UN spokesman said that Mr. Annan would not discuss his choice of team members but considered adding experts “as might be deemed necessary,” adding that “the Secretary-General agreed to postpone the departure of the Fact-Finding Team to allow this consultation to take place, but expect[ed] the team to be in the Middle East by [27 April].” (AFP, DPA, Financial Times Limited, Ha’aretz, Reuters, the Jerusalem Post)
An explosion was heard at Chairman Arafat’s compound in Ramallah. A PA spokesman said the IDF had blown up the prison next door to the building where Mr. Arafat was staying. Mr. Arafat was not harmed. The spokesman said that the IDF kept planting explosives all around the compound and that the IDF earlier in the day had blown up a room used by Chairman Arafat’s security guards. Senior Palestinian officials accused Israel of attempting to enter Mr. Arafat’s office. (AFP, Reuters, XINHUA)
Israeli tanks stationed near the “Netzarim” settlement drove about 500 m into Gaza City, firing tank shells and heavy machine-gun. During the night, three Palestinians were killed by the IDF, as they tried to infiltrate the settlement. They were later identified as 14-year-old schoolboys armed with knifes, grenades and explosives. A Palestinian security spokesman said the IDF had escalated its activities in northern and eastern Gaza, especially near settlements and army roadblocks. Palestinian witnesses said that several explosions were heard near Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, adding that Israeli tanks fired several tank shells and heavy gunfire at a Bedouin village in the same area. The spokesman also said that Israeli tanks stationed in eastern Gaza opened heavy gunfire at Palestinian houses, adding that three tank shells had been fired at a Palestinian public security post near the main cemetery east of the City. No injuries were reported. (AFP, XINHUA)
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Following informal consultation in the UN Security Council, Security Council President, Sergey Lavrov (Russian Federation), issued the following press statement on the Middle East:
(UN Security Council press statement, SC/7374 of 23 April 2002)
At the end of the 5th Euro-Mediterranean Conference in Valencia, Spain, the EU demanded that Israel suspend its military operations and immediately withdraw its forces from the Palestinian cities of Bethlehem and Ramallah. The EU asked Israel to respect and guarantee the personal security and freedom of movement of Chairman Arafat, and to find a peaceful solution to the Israeli siege of the Palestinians seeking refuge in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The EU also called on Chairman Arafat to stop all attacks against Israeli civilians. (XINHUA)
The IDF killed two Palestinians activists, including a leader of Hamas in Hebron. The Hamas leader, whose name was not disclosed, was on a list of Palestinian militants wanted by the Israeli authorities for carrying out terrorist attacks. Four other Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire in fighting in Bani Naim, located in the Hebron district. In the same operation, soldiers in house-to-house searches arrested approximately 20 other Palestinians wanted on terrorism charges, the radio said. Palestinian hospital officials and witnesses said the two Palestinians killed were local leaders of Fatah. A 14-year-old Palestinian boy was killed and 10 other children injured, as gunfire erupted around a school in Jarba, south of Jenin. The IDF also encircled a house where they arrested two senior Palestinian intelligence officers and a civilian, Palestinian security officials said. The IDF fired shots and stun grenades, forcing back 100-150 demonstrators who tried to approach Chairman Arafat’s compound in Ramallah. (AFP, EFE, DPA, Reuters)
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators began a second day of talks on resolving the standoff at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, after Israel rejected a reported Palestinian proposal to send suspected militants for trial in the Gaza Strip. Earlier, heavy shooting had broken out around Manger Square. Two Palestinians were wounded, as well as an Israeli soldier nearby, Palestinian negotiator Imad Natshe said. Three Palestinians, including a man seriously wounded by Israeli sniper fire during the night were evacuated from the Church and taken to a hospital, officials said. A Palestinian inside the church told AFP by telephone that the two Palestinians were sick policemen, without giving further details. (AFP, Reuters)
Israeli media reported that Prime Minister Sharon, in a closed-door meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Relations and Security Committee, had announced that the IDF’s operation “Defensive Wall” could be extended to the Gaza Strip. Mr. Sharon also said the operation had resulted in “1,800 important arrests, including 100 prime cases,” and that the interrogation of these prisoners should lead to “other arrests and allow us to thwart terrorist attacks.” (AFP)
Hamas, in an official statement, called on Palestinian children to refrain from futile attacks against Israelis. The statement called on Palestinian children to remember that their lives were precious, and should not be sacrificed. “Too many young lives lost at the fences of Israeli settlements would be a catastrophe for the future of the Palestinian struggle,” the statement said. Hamas called on teachers and religious leaders to spread the message of restraint among young Palestinians. (BBC)
Deputies in Russia’s State Duma lower house unanimously approved a resolution urging the UN to impose sanctions on Israel unless it withdrew its troops from the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Israel “is carrying out a major military operation against an all but unarmed population,” the text of the resolution said, adding that appeals for an end to military action and a return to the negotiating table had fallen on deaf ears. “If Israel refuses to honour its commitments to the international community, it is essential that the UN take every measure, including the imposition of economic and other sanctions against Tel Aviv, to restore peace and security,” the resolution said. (AFP)
In her Report, High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson demanded a halt to all military operations and attacks conducted by both Israel and the Palestinians and said all sides had to be held accountable for abuse, while noting an urgent need for a “comprehensive” independent investigation into alleged human rights abuse and breaches of humanitarian law. “The [Israeli] military operation must be brought to an end. Equally, all attacks against Israeli civilians must end,” the High Commissioner said. (The full text of the report: E/CN.4/2002/184 of 24 April 2002)
Construction work has begun on expanding the West Bank settlement of “Elkana,” some 30 km north-east of Tel Aviv, Yediot Aharonot reported. Earth-moving had already begun for the settlement’s expansion on 40 hectares (98.8 acres) of land, the paper said. About 500 housing units were expected to be built within one year, it added. A spokesperson for “El-Kana” told AFP that the project had been approved under former PM Ehud Barak and that it merely sought to address the settlement’s “natural growth” needs. (AFP, DPA)
The Russian Foreign Ministry said a plane carrying 32 tons of humanitarian aid, including 10 tons of canned meat, 10 tons of canned milk, 1,000 blankets and 30 tents, was due to leave for the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Engineers and rescuers would fly out on the same plane, while a second plane would be readied to fly out a mobile hospital and doctors, the Ministry said. (AFP)
OPEC has approved an emergency grant of US$200,000 to fly wounded Palestinians abroad for medical care. The grant was “in response to the recent escalation of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip” a statement said, adding that the recent upsurge in violence had “severely compromised the ability of local medical services to cope with the increasing levels of emergency care,” for “severely injured Palestinians.” (AFP)
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, presented a proposal for ending the Israeli-Arab conflict to Jordanian Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb, during a visit to Jordan. The Ukrainian proposal according to the text distributed to the press foresees a “complete and immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from territories under the control of the Palestinian Authority.” This step would then be followed by an “unconditional and mutual ceasefire,” including an end to all “acts of terrorism.” The plan then calls for the “deployment of a multinational force mandated by the UN Security Council” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in order to “ensure the creation of favorable conditions for the resumption of negotiations on the establishment of a Palestinian State.” This would then be followed by an implementation of the internationally-backed Tenet Plan and Mitchell report recommendations, which aim to revive talks on a final settlement. The proposal affirmed Ukraine’s readiness to “provide a venue” and the “necessary conditions on its territory” to host peace negotiations. It also advocated a revival of Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese peace talks with the aim of terminating the “occupation of Arab territories” and bringing a “normalization of relations with Israel” (AFP)
Pope John Paul II during his regular Wednesday address prayed for an end to the standoff between Israelis and Palestinians at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, calling it an “inhumane situation.” The Pope warned the conditions in the Church were worsening. (Reuters)
UNDP, in a statement, announced a US$1.5 million allocation to send medical and relief supplies to Palestinians and finance repairs in West Bank towns. The funds had been authorized on 5 April and had already started being utilized as part of UNDP emergency relief and recovery plan. An additional US$400,000 dollars from the Islamic Development Bank was also being used to purchase food, medical kits and essential household items for Palestinians especially in Nablus and Jenin, the statement said. (AFP)
After visiting Chairman Arafat’s compound in Ramallah, EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, accompanied by EU Middle East Envoy Miguel Moratinos, said he was “shocked” by the conditions in the compound in Ramallah. Mr. Solanan said he did not believe that subjecting Mr. Arafat to such conditions could bring about any positive results. Messrs Solana and Moratinos also met separately with Defence Minister Ben-Eliezer and Prime Minister Sharon later in the day. (XINHUA)
Secretary Powell testifying before the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations Subcommittee said he had seen no evidence of a massacre in the Jenin refugee camp, but said it was “in the best interest of all concerned, especially in the best interest of the Israelis” to permit the UN Fact-Finding Team to investigate the matter. (AFP, Ha’aretz FDCH)
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Israel was seeking assurances that the UN Fact-Finding Team for the Jenin refugee camp would not draw any conclusions and would not incriminate any Israeli witnesses, Foreign Minister Peres said in an interview with Israeli army radio. Mr. Peres said the Israelis had sent a team to New York to “clarify” the terms of the Team. (AFP)
As a result of ongoing talks between Israelis and Palestinians, nine young Palestinians left the besieged Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, along with the release of the bodies of two Palestinian men, an IDF spokesman said. Meanwhile a fourth round of talks ended without a breakthrough on how to end the stand-off, Bethlehem Mayor Hanna Nasser told AFP. (AFP)
A PA statement said a Palestinian military court had sentenced four Palestinian men from one year to 18 years in jail for the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Ze’evy. The court was convened in Chairman Arafat’s compound in Ramallah. Prime Minister Sharon dismissed the trial, saying Israel still demanded their handover to Israel. Meanwhile, in an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Sharon indicated he might allow Chairman Arafat to leave his compound in Ramallah for the Gaza Strip, to see if he could get his security forces to crack down on terrorism. Senior Palestinian negotiator and PA Minister Saeb Erakat rejected the proposal, saying it went “against all agreements, which [said] the Gaza Strip and the West Bank [were] one area.” (AFP, DPA, The New York Times, Reuters, XINHUA)
Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou and Turkish counterpart Ismail Cem, on a joint Middle East peace mission, told reporters after meeting Prime Minister Sharon and Chairman Arafat, respectively, that they had urged each of the two to resolve the standoffs in Bethlehem and Ramallah, without further violence, and that they had asked Mr. Arafat to denounce terrorism. (AFP, Reuters)
Eleven Palestinians were killed in three separate incidents in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank during IDF operations, Palestinian security and medical sources reported. Four Palestinians were shot and killed by the IDF when they tried to infiltrate into the settlement of “Kfar Darom” in southern Gaza, according to the IDF. Palestinian security sources denied that the four gunmen had tried to infiltrate the settlement. Another Palestinian policeman was killed and two injured by IDF gunfire when Israeli troops made an incursion into the Gaza town of Deir Al-Balah, following the killing of four Palestinians earlier in the day. Five Palestinian policemen were killed near Hebron and another Palestinian was killed on “Tunnel Road”, linking the “Gush Etzion” settlement with Jerusalem. (AFP, DPA, Reuters, XINHUA)
International donors meeting in Oslo pledged US$ 1.5 billion dollars in aid for the Palestinians, following the Israeli assault on the West Bank. They agreed to grant US$300 million in emergency relief to cover the most urgent humanitarian needs on the West Bank, and the remaining to help the Palestinians rebuild their infrastructure. (AFP, Reuters)
The UN Security Council received a short briefing from the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Kieran Prendergast on the progress of the talks with the Israeli delegation, concerning the Israeli reservations over the mandate and composition of the UN Fact-Finding Team going to the Jenin refugee camp. After the briefing, Security Council President, Ambassador Lavrov (Russian Federation) made the following statement to the press:
(Security Council Statement SC/7378 of 26 April 2002)
Palestinian officials at the Jenin refugee camp turned down a US aid shipment of tents, food and children’s toys, saying that the camp had been destroyed by Israel with US-made weapons. According to the officials, residents had refused to unpack the shipment, which included 800 tents and other relief supplies from the US Agency for International Development. (AFP, DPA Reuters)
Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia met with President Bush at his Texas ranch. Saudi foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir told reporters after the meeting that the Crown Prince believed US ties with the Arab world would suffer if Washington failed to persuade Prime Minister Sharon to withdraw from the Occupied Palestinian Territory. President Bush told reporters that “Israel must finish its withdrawal, including resolution of standoffs in Ramallah and Bethlehem, in a nonviolent way,” adding that the Palestinians, in turn, had to “do more to stop terror.” (AFP, DPA, Tribune Business News, XINHUA)
A Palestinian woman was killed and six others injured by the IDF during the night, near the settlement of “Rafiah Yam” west of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources said. (XINHUA, the Jerusalem Post)
26
Two Palestinians were wounded by IDF gunfire and evacuated from the Church of the Nativity, an AFP photographer at the scene said. One of the two men was shot in the chest, according to a Palestinian source inside the Church. Meanwhile, IDF spokesman Captain Joe Leyden said the situation was ”not open-ended” and if the IDF had to “exercise a military option” to resolve the situation, they would. At least three people were wounded, one seriously, when the IDF opened fire to force back about 1,000 peace activists attempting to march to Chairman Arafat’s compound in Ramallah. Lloyd Quinan, a member of the Scottish parliament, who was in a group of about 40 foreigners joining the Palestinians on the march, said the shots were fired as they approached a barricade near the compound. Staff at Ramallah Hospital said most of the injured had minor wounds from shrapnel, but a 19-year-old man was seriously injured after being shot in the face. (AFP, the Jerusalem Post)
According to Palestinian sources, the IDF with the backing of armored vehicles and helicopter gunships made an incursion into the West Bank town of Qalqilya, where they arrested more than a dozen local Palestinians. The IDF confirmed the operation and the arrests of suspects, including two leading members of Hamas. Israel Radio reported that the IDF had also killed two Palestinian militants, one of whom was on Israel’s most wanted list. In addition, the IDF raided the Palestinian-controlled villages of Ya’bad, Beita, Silt a-Dhar, near Jenin. Touring the area, Defence Minister Ben-Eliezer said, “the moment we have information of a terrorist cell, we have no other option but to enter and prevent terrorist attacks,” adding that the IDF had “no intention of staying,” he said. (AFP, DPA, Ha’aretz, Reuters, the Jerusalem Post, XINHUA)
In a poll published by Maariv, 65 per cent of respondents said they had confidence in Prime Minister Sharon “for the way he [was] directing the country”, while 30 per cent did not. On 8 March, a poll carried out by Yediot Aharonot said 76 per cent of Israelis were dissatisfied with Mr. Sharon’s performance. Maariv also said 57 per cent of those surveyed felt “safer” since Operation Defensive Wall was launched, while 42 per cent say the level of security had not changed or that it had deteriorated. Three-quarters of Israelis also thought the IDF did not commit a “massacre” in the Jenin refugee camp. Twenty per cent voiced the opposite opinion. The survey was carried out by the independent Market Watch Institute on a sample of 590 Israelis and with a margin of error of 4.5 points. (AFP, Reuters)
A statement issued by the Non-Aligned Movement in Johannesburg said the Movement “repeated the demand for Israel to implement, without delay, Security Council resolutions, by immediately withdrawing its forces from the reoccupied Palestinian cities and ending the siege imposed on President Arafat.” (Reuters)
27
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan had ordered the “reconstruction of 800 houses in Jenin camp equipped with every facility to ease the suffering of the inhabitants,” the official WAM news agency reported. Sheikh Hamdan Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Chairman of the UAE Red Crescent Society, had informed the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Peter Hansen, of the commitment, the news agency added. The rebuilding project would be undertaken in coordination with UNRWA and the Palestinian Ministry of Works. Moreover, WAM quoted Mr. Hansen as telling a press conference in Abu Dhabi that Israeli forces could launch a military offensive in the Gaza Strip “at any time” and that UNRWA had drawn up an emergency plan for any such eventuality. UNRWA would cooperate fully with the UN fact-finding mission to the Jenin refugee camp, providing information on deaths, missing, injuries and the level of destruction, according to Mr. Hansen. UNRWA would also ask Israel to pay compensation for damages to buildings and equipment belonging to it. (AFP)
Israeli soldiers had shot and injured seven Palestinians, one seriously, in the Rafah region in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources said. Three had been injured overnight near the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt and four, including a 75-year-old woman, in Rafah’s marketplace, when Israeli tanks patrolling the area opened fire. (AFP)
Palestinian gunmen disguised as Israeli soldiers cut through the perimeter fence surrounding the “Adora” settlement, west of Hebron, and killed four settlers. The settlement’s security officers rushed to the scene and fired on the gunmen, who escaped. IDF officials said troops on the outskirts of Hebron later killed an armed Palestinian believed to have been involved in the raid. (DPA, Reuters)
According to preliminary statistics released by UNRWA, 140 houses had been completely destroyed by the Israeli army in the Jenin camp and another 85 had been badly damaged, leaving a quarter of the camp’s population homeless. (AFP)
28
An Amnesty International team led by the organization’s Secretary-General Irene Khan, visited the Jenin refugee camp, where it found ”credible evidence of serious violations of international humanitarian law” and asked for the UN fact-finding team “to bring out the truth,” Ms. Khan said. The AI team was investigating both the Israeli assault on the Jenin camp and Palestinian attacks on Jewish settlers and wanted to produce a balanced reckoning, she noted. AI military advisor Reserve Major David Holley said the IDF’s demolition of part of the Jenin refugee camp did not seem militarily justified but dismissed allegations that a massacre had taken place there, predicting that no evidence would be found to substantiate them. He said information available so far suggested the army had bulldozed the camp centre after fighting had abated, as a collective punishment measure, to avenge heavy casualties exacted by Palestinian gunmen. Mr. Holley said the destruction probably entombed some civilians who had been too frightened to emerge from their homes and noted that military discipline may have broken down after Palestinian fighters ambushed and killed 23 soldiers. He also labelled as a war crime the fact that “the dead and the wounded were not taken to the hospital between April 4 and April 13.” AI investigator Elizabeth Hodgkin said 54 bodies had been recovered since fighting ended and 21 of them appeared to be civilians. She added that combat zones usually yielded about three badly wounded people for every death, but the absence of such casualties at the hospital suggested they had died in demolished buildings. (AFP, Reuters)
The Israeli Cabinet accepted a US proposal that Chairman Arafat be released from his besiegement in Ramallah, while six wanted Palestinians sheltered with him, including four convicted by a Palestinian military court last week of killing Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, would be placed in the custody of US and UK guards. The proposal was later accepted by Chairman Arafat. Palestinian officials said the prison in Jericho would be used to hold the convicts. President Bush welcomed the Israeli and Palestinian agreement but warned that much work needed to be done, particularly by Chairman Arafat, who “must now seize this opportunity to act decisively in word and deed against terror directed at Israeli citizens.” “This is a time for all of us to commit to fight terror and to promote peace in the Middle East,” Mr. Bush added. (AFP, Reuters)
“The Secretary-General’s priority is to get the fact-finding mission on the ground as soon as possible,” UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Kieran Prendergast told reporters, after briefing the Security Council behind closed doors on Mr. Annan’s efforts to send the UN team to Jenin. “The Council is very frustrated with the delays, but supportive of the Secretary-General’s efforts,” he added. The Security Council’s current President, Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov, said after consultations that the Council wanted Israel to clear the mission on 29 April. Asked what would happen if the Israelis sought further delays or turned down the mission, he declined to speculate. Israeli envoy Aaron Jacob said Mr. Annan had talked twice during the day with Foreign Minister Peres and the two were making progress on resolving their differences, although some obstacles remained. The previous day Israeli Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Yehuda Lancry had written to the Secretary-General to say Israel wanted to be sure the mission only gathered facts on what happened at Jenin and would not make any “observations” on those facts, as Mr. Annan had said they might. Israel also wanted the right to decide which of its officials and documents would be made available to the mission and wanted access to all interviews and documents gathered from the Palestinians, so it could comment on them, according to the letter. The Israelis had reportedly also expressed concern that information gathered by the mission might be used to prosecute their soldiers or government officials on war crimes charges. (AFP, Reuters)
29
Nine Palestinians, including at least two militants and three security men, were reported killed, at least 20 more were wounded and 17 arrested as Israeli troops backed by tanks and helicopters, stormed Hebron. A curfew was declared in the city and the streets were deserted except for Israeli tanks deployed at strategic points. An IDF spokesman said the operation would be “limited in time” and was “not aimed at the Palestinian Authority but only at the terrorist infrastructure in this town.” An IDF statement said the 17 Palestinians arrested Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, as well as fighters linked to Fatah, adding that Israeli forces had unearthed a stash of illegal arms and explosives. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the US opposed any incursions into Palestinian areas and noted that that position had been made clear to Prime Minister Sharon. “We think they should refrain and withdraw,” Mr. Boucher said. (AFP, DPA, Reuters)
In Bethlehem, an Israeli sniper shot dead a Palestinian holed up inside the Church of the Nativity, as the four-week-old Israeli siege of the site continued with no sign of a settlement. (AFP, Reuters, XINHUA)
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told BBC Radio he had phoned his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres and had told him it was “really important for Israel and for Israel’s reputation” to agree to the arrival of the UN fact-finding mission in Jenin “as soon as possible.” Mr. Straw also said Britain could play an important role in implementing the agreed plan to end the siege of Chairman Arafat in his Ramallah headquarters and to that end it was dispatching a three-member advance party with relevant experience. (Reuters)
Palestinian officials held initial talks with US and British experts on the US plan to end Israel’s besiegement of Chairman Arafat and guarantee the imprisonment of the convicted men currently in his Ramallah compound. (Reuters)
All [UN] Member States are bound by Security Council resolutions and Russia will insist Israel allow the [UN fact-finding] mission to reach Jenin,” Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told reporters after meeting Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri. The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement backing “the strict implementation of the important [Security Council] resolution 1405.” (Reuters)
Israeli Defence Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer told Israeli public radio that a 90-kilometre-long electric fence between Israel and the West Bank would be completed soon. Within two years, an electric fence would cover the entire length of the 310-kilometre border between Israel and the West Bank, the Minister added. (AFP)
A NAM Foreign Ministers meeting in Durban expressed “grave” concern “about reports on war crimes and massacre committed in the Jenin refugee camp and in other Palestinian cities” and rejected “what has become an Israeli culture of acting with impunity and with disregard for resolutions of the UN Security Council.” They “stressed the international liability regarding grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention” and called for “actions against the perpetrators by the United Nations system, including the Security Council or alternatively the General Assembly.” The Ministers stated that Israeli credentials to the General Assembly and international conferences should not cover territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem, and reiterated their support for the establishment of a Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital. (AFP, NAM website at http://www.nam.gov.za)
In a letter from Foreign Minister Peres to Secretary of State Powell, Israel appealed to the US to make sure the UN fact-finding team for Jenin would not present conclusions in its final report. In the letter, obtained by Reuters, Mr. Peres said the team’s report should be submitted only as “findings” and not include “observations,” i.e. conclusions. He also said the report should explicitly mention the word “terror” in relation to events in Jenin. Mention of international humanitarian law must include references to the “right of self-defence” and the “rights to fight terrorism.” Mr. Peres said Israel would respond to requests to interview its public servants in accordance with “Israeli law and at its discretion.” Any testimony of other Israelis had to be made available to Israel, prior to completion of the team’s report, so Israel could comment on the testimony. Submission of documents to the fact-finding team would be at the discretion of the Israeli Government, Mr. Peres added. “Faced with a relentless battle against terrorism on the one hand and wishing to cooperate with the international community on the other, we are obliged to ensure that our very basic interests, and those of our military and security servicemen, are fully protected,” he noted. In the meantime, responding to an earlier Israeli demand that more police and counter-terrorism experts participate in the team, the UN had released the names of four more experts, of whom two Irish police officials, one British military official and one French military official. (Reuters)
Secretary Powell said “all elements were in place” for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian standoff at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and that he expected a resolution in the near future, although some difficult negotiations still had to take place. Regarding the Israeli siege of Chairman Arafat’s HQ in Ramallah, details still had to be worked out as to how US and British personnel would take custody of the six wanted Palestinian militants. Those details could be resolved within two days, Mr. Powell said, at which point “a transfer [would] be able to take place that [would] then allow Chairman Arafat to have the flexibility needed for movement around the occupied territories, so he can take up his responsibilities once again to end the violence and terrorism and to recreate functioning structures of the Palestinian Authority.” (AFP, DPA)
Israeli tanks and bulldozers made a two-hour incursion into the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, an AFP correspondent witnessed. The bulldozers had dug holes in the ground and troops had detonated underground explosions in a bid to search and destroy tunnels allegedly used for smuggling arms. The entry of tanks and bulldozers into Rafah had triggered a heavy exchange of fire between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli troops, Palestinian security sources told AFP. The troops had moved 150 meters into the camp with the tanks firing as they advanced, the sources said. A 15-year-old boy had been moderately wounded by gunfire. A ten-year-old Palestinian boy had been seriously wounded after having been hit in the face by Israeli bullets in the town of Rafah, which adjoins the refugee camp. The 10-year-old had been sitting in front of his house near the “Rafiah Yam” settlement, when an Israeli tank opened fire, security sources said. It was not clear why the army opened fire, as there were no skirmishes in the immediate area, the sources said. An Israeli army spokeswoman denied there had been any activity in the Rafah area and said the only incident that had occurred was shots fired and grenades thrown at an IDF position on the border with Egypt. Later a 30-year-old Palestinian man was killed by Israeli gunfire near Deir El-Balah, in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources said. The man had been shot in the head by Israeli troops when they noticed him walking in the darkness towards their roadblock. (AFP, XINHUA)
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The Israeli Ministerial Committee on National Security (Security Cabinet) met on the subject of the UN fact-finding mission to Jenin and heard reports from the IDF Chief of Staff, intelligence officers and others. It then issued the following statement: “Israel has raised essential issues before the UN for a fair examination. As long as these terms have not been met, it will not be possible for the clarification process to begin.” PA Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo denounced the Security Cabinet decision to further delay the arrival of the UN fact-finding team, saying Palestinians would demand that the UN Security Council impose sanctions against Israel. “The decision, in itself, is a war crime against the Palestinian people and confirms that massacres have been perpetrated at Jenin camp,” Mr. Abed Rabbo was quoted as saying. (Arutz-7, DPA, Reuters, Israeli Prime Minister’s Office website at http://www.pmo.gov.il)
Responding to questions by reporters, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the UN had done everything to meet Israeli concerns about the Jenin fact-finding team. Mr. Annan said he would wait until he had been officially informed of the Israeli Security Cabinet decision before commenting on it. But he recalled that both Foreign Minister Peres and Defence Minister Ben-Eliezer had told him the UN was welcome and Israel had nothing to hide. Speaking to reporters following his closed-door briefing to the Security Council, Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Kieran Prendergast said he had told the Council membership that “in the Secretary-General’s view a thorough, credible and balanced report on recent events in Jenin refugee camp would not be possible without the full cooperation of the Government of Israel.” He added that “In the circumstances, and since it appears from today’s Cabinet statement by Israel that the difficulties in the way of deployment of the fact-finding team will not be resolved any time soon, the Secretary-General is minded to disband the team and I have so informed the Council.” (AFP, DPA, Reuters, UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/News)
European Commission President Romano Prodi told a news conference in Brussels that “[t]he continuing [Israeli] refusal, reiterated this morning, to allow the UN fact-finding mission to go into Jenin is unacceptable.” “If Israel has nothing to hide, there is no reason for preventing this mission from going forward,” he added. Speaking ahead of the annual US-EU summit in Washington, due to take place on 2 May, Mr. Prodi said he was deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation and the destruction the Israeli offensive had wrought on the PA’s infrastructure and records, adding that he would ask President Bush to join him in calling for full and unhindered access for humanitarian organizations. He applauded recent US efforts to defuse the latest wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence but said they would not succeed unless they led to peace negotiations under the joint aegis of the Quartet. (DPA, Reuters)
Israeli officials dismissed news reports that Israel had agreed to lift a siege on Chairman Arafat in return for US backing of its objections to the UN fact-finding team for Jenin. “The two issues are not related,” Foreign Minister Peres told Israel Radio. “The Americans won’t agree in any way to create the impression that there is a linkage… They don’t want to appear as if they are trading on such fundamental issues,” he added. (Reuters)
Israeli tanks entered the Palestinian villages of Ash-Shawawra, east of Bethlehem, and Silat Al-Harthiyeh, near Jenin, in brief overnight raids. The IDF said it had detained six Palestinians in Ash-Shawawra, three of them on its wanted list. A local Palestinian official said troops had seized nine people before withdrawing. Residents in Silat Al-Haratiya said troops had detained four Fatah supporters before pulling out. (AFP, DPA, Reuters)
Israeli Border Police shot dead two Palestinians in an early-morning clash near the “Kfar Darom” settlement, in the Gaza Strip. Israeli troops had also shot and killed a 24-year-old Palestinian in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, witnesses said. An elderly man was wounded in the firing, which they said came from Israeli tanks near the “Neve Dekalim” settlement. (DPA, Reuters)
Israeli forces had begun pulling out of Hebron a day after tanks and troops had swept into the city, witnesses said. Israel Radio reported that the IDF had started to withdraw after having arrested more than 200 Palestinians, including 40 on its “wanted” list. Despite the start of the withdrawal, troops continued to surround a hospital in the city where some 20 wanted men had taken shelter, the radio said.
“Due to his concerns for peace in the Holy Land, for its Christian community and the Israeli and Palestinian populations,” Pope John Paul had reportedly decided to send Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, on a “special mission” to Jerusalem on 1 May, the Vatican said in a statement. (DPA, Reuters)
In a televised address to mark Labour Day (1 May), President Mubarak said he feared the international war on terrorism could lose credibility among Arabs and Muslims, because promises by international Powers to deliver a just Middle East peace were not being fulfilled and, instead, the focus was placed on security on the ground while “the pivotal role of political negotiations” was ignored. Mr. Mubarak said Israel’s actions aimed “to terrorize the Palestinian people and suppress their resistance to occupation.” He called on Israel to end its “harsh” campaign against the Palestinians, stop all provocative actions against them and withdraw from Palestinian territories it recently re-occupied, and noted that the international community had supported the US political vision of a Palestinian State next to Israel, with both sides living in security and peace. (DPA, Reuters)
Following renewed negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian officials, 26 Palestinians left the Church of the Nativity to give themselves up to Israeli troops. After a brief identity check they were loaded on to a bus and ferried off to an Israeli base to be screened for affiliation to anti-Israeli militant groups. “To my knowledge, none of them was wanted,” said IDF spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Olivier Rafowicz, adding that, if there was no problem, they would be released. There were still between 180 and 200 Palestinians inside the building, including armed men and up to 40 “senior terrorists” on Israel’s most-wanted list, he said, and negotiations continued. (AFP, XINHUA)
UNRWA spokesman René Aquarone told reporters in Geneva that the damage to PA infrastructure, refugee and civilian houses since the onset of the Israeli offensive was estimated at about US$300 million. More than US$41 million was needed to rebuild the devastated Jenin refugee camp, while some US$3.7 million was required for immediate relief in the camp. Mr. Aquarone added that destruction in the Gaza Strip had caused damage estimated at about US$21.7 million and noted that the southern region was under “economic strangulation,” with severe restrictions on movement of people and goods. Coming up with the required funds was not easy, he said, but the UN was “heartened” by private contributions, such as a collection in Syria, which had produced US$2.7 million. UNRWA’s normal emergency appeal for the whole of 2002 had been for US$117 million, of which the agency had so far received pledges of about US$47 million. WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said the biggest problem for the UN health agency remained restricted movement for medical workers but it was also worried about a six-month interruption in vaccinations. There was a risk of a measles outbreak and cholera, because of the water supply problems, she said. (AFP)
Israeli troops completed their pullout from Hebron. The troops had withdrawn into Israeli-controlled areas after arresting 150 Palestinians “suspected of involvement in hostile terror activities,” an IDF statement said. Some 25 of those detained were on Israel’s “wanted” list. A confrontation with 20 Palestinian fighters trapped in a local hospital was not pursued further, as the military “didn’t want another Church of the Nativity situation,” an IDF spokesman conceded. (AFP, DPA)
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Document Type: Chronology
Document Sources: Division for Palestinian Rights (DPR)
Subject: Incidents, Palestine question
Publication Date: 30/04/2002