Israel Snubs U.N. Over Jenin Camp Probe
Tue Apr 23, 6:24 PM ET
By Jeffrey Heller
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel snubbed world efforts to get to the bottom of Palestinian allegations of an Israeli massacre at the Jenin refugee camp, saying it was withholding its agreement to cooperate with a U.N. fact-finding mission.
Senior Israeli political sources said late on Tuesday Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) and his defense chief, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer were unhappy with the composition of the U.N. team to be sent to the region and its terms of reference.
Amid an international outcry at the scale of destruction in the Jenin camp, Palestinians have said hundreds of civilians may have been killed there, including many whose homes were shelled or bulldozed.
Israel has said it killed only a few dozen gunmen and noted that 23 of its own soldiers died in street fighting in the camp during the three-week West Bank offensive it launched on March 29 after scores of Israelis died in Palestinian suicide bombings.
"Israel is delaying the agreement for the arrival of the fact-finding delegation," a senior Israeli diplomatic source said.
"They are politically oriented people as opposed to military oriented people and there were no consultations with Israel."
In Bethlehem, Israel and the Palestinians failed in initial talks on Tuesday to end a standoff at the Church of the Nativity, while Palestinian gunmen in Hebron carried out a street execution to the approval of a watching crowd.
But the negotiators agreed to meet again on Wednesday to try to find a peaceful solution to the stalemate between Israeli troops and dozens of Palestinian gunmen who ran into the church after Israel's West Bank campaign began on March 29.
Tanks still ringed President Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s headquarters in Ramallah, where the army's detonation of what it said were unexploded grenades near his office caused alarm among Palestinians.
But Israeli efforts to isolate him seemed to be eroding, with planned visits this week by European Union (news - web sites) foreign policy chief Javier Solana and the foreign ministers of Greece and Turkey.
ISRAEL UNHAPPY WITH TEAM MEMBERS
Israel's effective ban of the U.N. Jenin probe was likely to touch off a flurry of diplomatic activity to put the mission back on track.
Mohammed Rashid, an aide to Arafat, said the Palestinians were not surprised by Israel's decision not to cooperate with a fact-finding mission.
"It shows that Israel has something to hide concerning the atrocities and war crimes committed at the camp," he told Reuters.
A spokesman for Sharon had earlier welcomed a fact-finding mission, saying Israel had nothing to hide over its actions in Jenin.
Martti Ahtisaari, a former president of Finland, was to lead the team, which included Cornelio Sommaruga, former president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Sadako Ogata, the former U.N. high commissioner for refugees.
"We weren't happy with the fact that there was no military presence on the team, an Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said earlier.
Ahtisaari said on Tuesday that a U.S. military adviser, retired Major-General William Nash, would be a full member of the team.
At the United Nations (news - web sites) in New York, diplomats said "something was in the works" but that the exact nature of Israel's latest complaint was not yet known.
British Foreign Office Minister Ben Bradshaw said any Israeli refusal to cooperate with a U.N. mission "would be the latest in a string of cataclysmic public relations mistakes by the Israeli government."
Bradshaw told BBC Television: "It is absolutely essential that Israel realizes that it cannot continue to defy the international community and world opinion on a succession now of unanimous United Nations resolutions supported by the United States and the whole of the international community.
"It is doing itself irreparable damage."
The United Nations Security Council was called into session for 6 p.m. EDT to discuss the explosions heard near Arafat's office on Tuesday. Any news on the Jenin fact-finding mission probably would be included in their deliberations.
STREET JUSTICE
In the Palestinian security vacuum left by Israel's military campaign, Palestinian gunmen carried out a gory execution at the scene of an overnight Israeli strike that killed two militants in a car in Hebron.
About 20 gunmen had dragged three suspected collaborators with Israel out of a local prison, meeting no resistance from the handful of police on duty there.
They took them to the wreck of the car, hit by missiles from an Israeli helicopter gunship, and shot them there as a crowd screamed "Revenge, revenge."
The gunmen dragged the bloodied corpses through the street as men, women and children spat at the bodies, which were later strung up on electricity poles.
The Hebron execution followed similar shootings of three men in Ramallah on Monday, one of whom died of his wounds.
In the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) late on Tuesday, Israeli forces killed three Palestinians who tried to infiltrate the Jewish settlement of Netzarim, the army said.
EU foreign policy chief Solana, denied access to Arafat when he and Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique went to the Middle East earlier in the month, planned to see Arafat in his Ramallah headquarters on Wednesday, EU president Spain said.
Pique told a news conference in Spain that Solana, accompanied by the EU's Middle East envoy Miguel Angel Moratinos, would also hold talks with Sharon.
At least 1,302 Palestinians and 454 Israelis have been killed during an 18-month-old Palestinian uprising.
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