- JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The
human rights group Amnesty International accused Israel on Monday of war
crimes, saying there had been unjustified killings and maltreatment of
Palestinians during an army offensive in the West Bank.
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- The London-based group said few of the abuses reported
last spring had been impartially investigated.
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- The army reoccupied Palestinian West Bank cities in April
with the declared aim of rooting out militants behind a campaign of suicide
bombings that have killed scores of Israelis.
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- "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.
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- 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.
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- Cases described included a paralyzed detainee beaten
by soldiers, demolitions of homes in which a family of eight and a wheelchair-bound
man died, and a woman in labor struggling to walk to hospital after troops
stopped her ambulance.
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- Other incidents reported included released detainees
forced to walk home through a battle zone, using civilians as human shields,
blocking of ambulances and humanitarian aid even where fighting had ceased,
and the destruction of commercial, religious and residential buildings
without military necessity.
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- Amnesty has previously accused Israel of brutalizing
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.
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- "Amnesty believes some acts by the Israeli army
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."
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- 'LACK OF IMPARTIAL INVESTIGATIONS'
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- "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.
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- The Israeli army said it would comment on specifics of
the report after examining them.
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- But it said its operations aimed to pre-empt attacks
from "terror infrastructures situated in the heart of the innocent
Palestinian population, which is used as cover for them."
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- It said 646 Israeli soldiers and civilians had died in
more than 14,000 "terrorist attacks" since the uprising began.
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- "The state of Israel is exercising its basic right
to defend its inhabitants," an army statement said.
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- In the past six months, Israel 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.
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- 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.
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- The army has further denied accusations that houses were
razed without adequate checks that occupants were not inside.
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- 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.
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- Amnesty based its new report on petitions to Israeli
courts by rights groups, medical files, and interviews with Palestinian
victims and their families and local and international officials, with
testimony cross-checked for accuracy.
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- 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."
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- It quoted U.N. refugee agency figures that 2,629 homes
housing 13,145 people were battered, sometimes by tank shells or helicopter
missiles, in a one-month period. This did not include demolished homes
of Palestinians not registered as refugees.
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