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U.N. Investigating Israeli Abuses
CAIRO, Feb 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A United Nations team has begun a week-long trip to Israel in order to investigate charges concerning Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights in the Occupied Territories.
The three-member committee that started its trip on Saturday will "investigate humanitarian rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law committed since the resumption of violent confrontations in the area on September 28."
The team consists of an American, Richard Falk, a professor of international law at Princeton University; South African John Dugard of the Netherlands' Leiden University; and former Bangladesh Prime Minister Kamal Hussein.
Last year, Israel said it would not cooperate with any team created by the U.N. Human Rights Commission following the escalation of Israeli violence in September after a provocative visit by right wing Likud leader, and now premier-elect, Ariel Sharon to the al-Aqsa mosque complex.
Since the visit, more than 400 lives have been lost in the ensuing violence, most of them Palestinian.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powel is due to visit the Middle East at the end of February in a bid to convince Israeli and Palestinian leaders to resume the peace process, and intends to meet with Sharon, Arafat, and the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait, to further that effort.
Sharon signaled a desire to continue peace talks in a phone call with Palestinian president Yasser Arafat on Friday.
In an effort to shed his appearance as against any peace efforts, Sharon, in an effort to form a coalition government, offered to his defeated rival, Ehud Barak, the opportunity to join his new government as defense minister.
Barak has said before the elections that if such an offer were made, he would refuse. Barak, since then, not only lost the election, but also resigned as Labor Party head.
The U.N. team will visit Gaza, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Hebron, Bethlehem and Beit Jala; and is due to issue a report to the annual session of the Human Rights Commission that begins March 19th, a U.N. statement said.
Arab countries have condemned Israel for "widespread, systematic and gross violations of human rights."
Marwan Barghouti, one of Arafat's officers in the West Bank, states that the Palestinian uprising, now in its fifth month, will continue.
"There is no chance to negotiate with Sharon, we must stop wasting our time thinking about that," Barghouti said.
Seemingly responding to Barghouti's call, David Baker, an official at the prime minister-elect's office, said, "The prime minister officially informed the Palestinians, as he did at the beginning of the negotiations, that nothing is agreed until everything has been agreed and therefore it is only signed agreements which are valid and binding."
Palestinians have demanded that talks continue where they ended with Barak.
Barak's proposals offered Palestinian control over nearly all of the West Bank, Gaza and parts of Jerusalem, but negotiations faltered over the right of return for the Palestinian refugees and the future of the Al-Aqsa complex, both of which Barak stated were not subject to compromise.
Sharon said in interviews Friday that he hoped to alleviate some of the restrictions that have dismantled daily life in the Palestinian areas in recent months.
These restrictions, placed there under Barak's rule, include having Israeli soldiers keeping Palestinians under economic, medical, social and military siege.
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