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Amnesty Accuses Israel Of
War Crimes In West Bank

By Mark Heinrich
11-4-2

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.
 
The London-based group said few of the abuses reported last spring had been impartially investigated.
 
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.
 
"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 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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
"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."
 
'LACK OF IMPARTIAL INVESTIGATIONS'
 
"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.
 
The Israeli army said it would comment on specifics of the report after examining them.
 
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."
 
It said 646 Israeli soldiers and civilians had died in more than 14,000 "terrorist attacks" since the uprising began.
 
"The state of Israel is exercising its basic right to defend its inhabitants," an army statement said.
 
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.
 
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.
 
The army has further denied accusations that houses were razed without adequate checks that occupants were not inside.
 
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 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.
 
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.
 
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."
 
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.
 
 
 
Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.





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