Issue No. 605
Special
Previous issue
Site map
|
|
26 Sept. - 2 October 2002 Issue No. 605 Special |
Current issue Previous issue Site map | |
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Rights groups count the wrongs
Since the Al-Aqsa Intifada broke out, Israeli war crimes against Palestinians have become a daily practice. Rasha Saad reports.
Palestinian Human rights have sharply deteriorated during the second year of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Violations have been perceived since Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came to power. However, they reached a peak at the end of March 2002 when the Israeli forces reinvaded Palestinian towns in the West Bank. According to the 4th Geneva Convention, the grave Israeli violations are considered war crimes.
According to Sameeh Mohsen, head of the information department at the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment (LAW), the increase in political killings of Palestinians adopted by Sharon's government is the most obvious escalation during the second year of the Intifada. "The Israeli government has extended its political assassination operations and has used the most destructive weapons to kill Palestinian activists, both military and political activists," Mohsen said.
The Israeli forces have mainly used United States-made Apache helicopters in their assassination operations. They also used laser-guided missiles to assassinate Palestinian activists while driving in their cars, and have fired missiles directly towards civilians, as was the case with Ali Ajouri from the Askar refugee camp in Nablus on 5 August. Two Israeli helicopters fired missiles towards Ajouri, claiming he planned a suicide bombing operation in Israel. His house was demolished and his brother, Kefah, and sister, Entessar, were deported to Gaza after being tortured to confess the foreknowledge of their brother's intentions. The move was condemned by Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups.
Israel has also used an American F-16 fighter jet to drop a one-tonne bomb on a residential building where Hamas military leader Salah Shehada lived in Gaza, killing 15 civilians, in July.
According to Raji Sourani, director general of the Gaza- based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), the second year of Intifada witnessed severe restrictions on freedom of movement, speech and press by means of closures, sieges and curfews. The Israeli policy of collective punishment has also risen to a new high.
Portraying a dim picture of the current situation, Sourani believed that "the human rights situation in the Palestinian occupied territories has never deteriorated as much as now, and Israel has never committed as many war crimes against the Palestinians as such. I do believe that the worst is still to come, especially considering the US political and legal cover and the European conspiracy of silence. The situation is likely going to be even more black, bleak and bloody."
Human rights activists acknowledge that Israel systematically committed war crimes against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Rafah, Khan Yunis, Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron, Bethlehem and other places by bombardment, carrying out house demolition, extra-judicial and political killings, wanton destruction, collective punishment, siege, torture of the entire population, and denying medical personnel and media access.
According to the same rights groups, what happened in Jenin in April for eight days was the culmination of all that together. It was "a heavy dose and a real exposé of Israeli policy," according to Sourani.
The United Nations' handling of the issue, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's report on the issue, came under fire from Palestinian and international human rights groups. Organisations such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch charged that the reports of war crimes were watered-down by the world body. The US-based Human Rights Watch described Annan's report as seriously flawed.
"Regarding the position of the UN in this matter, we think that it provided an effective legal and political cover-up in the Security Council by not insisting on the presence of a special international body in Jenin. The way Annan dealt with the investigation showed lack of professionalism and standards."
Sourani lashed out the UN for complying with the Israeli demand and abandoning an investigating committee in favour of a non-binding fact-finding mission.
"In my opinion, it was in itself a crime not having an investigation committee coming to the area, just because Israel denied it access and did not approve of the members of the team. The question I am posing to myself is: Since when have criminals decided who shall investigate him and who shall give permission to investigate him? The UN did not invite human rights organisations or even visit the place itself. This was another real drawback. As a Palestinian human rights activist I see it as another defeat for the UN and international law, and a real deception. It shows that Israel's practices crimes as if they were above humanitarian law."
Shedding light on the political factor, Mohsen believes that it is true that human rights organisations around the world work in accordance with the International Declaration of Human Rights and the international human rights conventions, but he said that the job of these organisations is overshadowed by politics. "[Human rights organisations] are not political parties but they work according to political visions. It is true that we all operate in accordance with the same conventions and accords, but some organisations attempt to explain them in accordance with their interest the same way governments do. The US administration, for example, charges that the regimes in Iraq and Syria and other countries violate human rights but at the same time closes its eyes on violations by Israel and sometimes support these violations," Mohsen said.
Under these conditions, Palestinian human rights organisations' task was never an easy one. According to Mohsen, they have faced major problems as a result of the siege imposed by Israel on Palestinian population centres, which restricted the free movement of researchers. The most difficult task for these researchers was to cross their towns and reach rural areas. Also as a result of the intensity of violations, human rights groups have to concentrate on some issues which they believe are more crucial in this phase at the expense of other violations.
Since the first weeks of the Intifada, Palestinian human rights groups have not worked alone. They have made extensive contacts with international human rights groups such as the International Lawyers Committee in Geneva, International Federation of Human Rights in France, Amnesty in London, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network and many others. International organisations were perceived to be of great help to Palestinian human rights organisations in unifying their position, vis-à-vis the grave human rights breaches perpetrated by Israel. They were believed to have played a respected role in keeping the Palestinian agenda alive.
But was two years of around-the-clock work fruitful?
According to Mohsen, LAW had worked closely at the beginning of the Intifada with human rights organisations world wide, hoping to mobilise their efforts to change public opinion and the prevailing viewpoint of their governments.
"Unfortunately all these efforts produced less than we have expected ... many times we feel that we were left to face our destiny all alone, both as a nation that fights for the end of occupation or as human rights organisations that work to expose the truth and defend the victim."
Human Rights violations committed by Israel and Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), as documented by the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights during the two years of the Al-Aqsa Intifada: - 1007 (65 per cent) were killed in the West Bank (including 40 in occupied East Jerusalem)
- 543 (35 per cent) were killed in the Gaza strip
- 328 (21 per cent) were children under age 18, at least 63 (19 per cent of the children killed) were killed in circumstances of complete quiet, 130 (40 per cent) were killed in protests or clashes
- 151 (10 per cent) were killed in assassination operations, including at least 60 (40 per cent of the total number of killed in assassinations) bystanders, of whom 21 (14 per cent) were children
- 219 (14 per cent) were on-duty members of Palestinian Authority security services
- 15 were on-duty medical workers, including doctors and paramedics
- 30 were killed by Israeli settlers residing in the occupied Palestinian territories in violation of international humanitarian law
- 13,625 Palestinians have been injured since the outbreak of the Intifada. 4,865 in the Gaza strip (of them 2,787 children) and 8,790 in the West Bank (injured by live bullets and shelling)
-In the same period 734 houses were demolished in the Gaza strip. The IDF also carried out 730 operations razing in total 15,000 dunum of land.
|
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
