ZGram - November 4, 2002 - "Amnesty accuses Israel of war crimes in West Bank"

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ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

November 4, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

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[START]

04 Nov 2002

Amnesty accuses Israel of war crimes in West Bank

By Mark Heinrich

JERUSALEM, Nov 4 (Reuters) - The human rights group Amnesty International
accused Israel on Monday of war crimes through what it said was the
unjustified killing and maltreatment of Palestinians during an army
offensive in the West Bank.

The London-based group said few of the abuses inflicted last spring had been
impartially investigated.

The army reoccupied Palestinian West Bank cities with the declared aim of
rooting out militants behind a campaign of suicide bombings that have killed
scores of Israelis.

"The relationship of the conflict to the deteriorating human rights situation
has led to a growing understanding that there can be no peace in the region
until human rights are respected," Amnesty International said in a 76-page
report.

The report detailed what Amnesty called unlawful killings and abusive
treatment of detainees in two West Bank cities where Palestinian militants
put up the fiercest resistance to the army crackdown on their two-year-old
uprising for statehood.

Cases described included a paralysed detainee beaten by soldiers,
demolitions of homes in which a family of eight and a wheelchair-bound man
died, and a woman in labour struggling to walk to hospital after troops
stopped her ambulance.

Other incidents reported included released detainees forced to walk home
through a battle zone, using civilians as human shields, some looting of flats,
frequent blocking of ambulances and humanitarian assistance, and the
destruction of religious, commercial and residential buildings without
military
necessity.

Amnesty has previously accused Israel of brutalising Palestinians under
occupation, but in July condemned Palestinian suicide attacks on Israeli
civilians as crimes against humanity. It has denied Israeli accusations of
pro-Palestinian bias.

"Amnesty believes some of the acts by the IDF (Israeli Defence Force)
described (here) amount to grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention
and are war crimes," said the report, entitled: "Shielded From Scrutiny:
Israeli Violations in Jenin and Nablus".

"LACK OF IMPARTIAL INVESTIGATION"

"Virtually none of these (civilian) killings has been thoroughly and 
impartially
investigated. The failure to (do so) in disputed circumstances and those that
were clearly unlawful has created a climate where members of the Israeli
army believe they may carry out such killings with impunity," it said.

Amnesty said it submitted all cases in the report to the army in June and
July for a response but had received none.

The Israeli army said it would have no comment until it read the full report.
In the past six months, it has denied a barrage of accusations by the United
Nations and humanitarian activist groups that it had trampled on human
rights in the West Bank.

It has voiced regret for civilian deaths but said they occurred during combat
or operations to destroy buildings believed to be booby-trapped or serving as
cover for militants. Residents were given adequate notice to get out, it said.

The army has said some ambulances were held up because of suspicions they
were transporting militants or weapons, or because they refused to be
searched. In September, the army said it was prosecuting 18 soldiers for
plundering homes.

Amnesty said the sources of its new report were Israeli court records,
medical files, and interviews with Palestinian victims and their families
and
local and international officials, with testimony cross-checked for accuracy.

Over four months ending June 30, the period of two army offensives and
reoccupation of cities given self-rule under interim peace deals in 1994-95,
the Israeli army killed nearly 500 Palestinians, according to Amnesty.

"While many Palestinians died during armed confrontations, many of these
Israeli army killings appeared to be unlawful and over 70 of the victims were
children," it said.

Palestinian gunmen and suicide bombers killed over 250 Israelis, including
164 civilians, in the same period, it noted.

Amnesty cited cases of several civilians killed when the army used
explosives to blast open doors of buildings without adequate warning --
"disproportionate use of force or gross negligence in protecting those not
involved in fighting".

Amnesty urged Israel to adhere to humanitarian law and told the
international community to "stop being an ineffective witness" to abuses
and take meaningful action such as installing monitors in the region, an
idea previously rejected by Israel. <end>

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(Source:  http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L03161607 )