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Israel
Forces Palestinians into Suspected Booby-Trapped Homes
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| Israel
sabotaged peace in the Palestinian territories
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OCCUPIED
TERRITORIES, April 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Israeli
occupation soldiers forced Palestinians to enter and search houses
that were suspected to be booby-trapped, according to recent testimony
by occupation soldiers participating in such actions, the Israeli
daily newspaper, Ha’aretz, reported.
In
other cases, Palestinians are forced to pick up suspicious objects so
that occupation soldiers can proceed along the roads these objects
were blocking, soldiers said.
The
occupation army has repeatedly denied the existence of such
procedures.
However,
one Israeli reserve officer who participated in the takeover of the
Jenin refugee camp said Sunday, April 14, that he and his comrades had
ordered Palestinian residents to precede them into suspicious houses.
"We
suspected that the houses were booby-trappped,” he said. "We
preferred to have the Palestinians that lived in these houses enter
them. They know the house, and it is also reasonable to assume that
the bombs will not be used against them."
The
Israeli occupation army weekly Bamahane offered similar testimony from
conversations with occupation soldiers who participated in the
takeover of Qalqilyah two weeks ago.
Israeli
Sergeant Nati Aharoni described an incident in which he and several
comrades had ordered a Palestinian to enter a suspected house and
search it. "In accordance with standard practice, we took one of
the Palestinian neighbors to search the place. He opened all the doors
and cupboards and found nothing."
But
about 10 minutes later, a bomb exploded in the building, injuring one
Israeli soldier seriously and eight others lightly. "The bomb was
built of cooking gas canisters and set off by cellular
telephone," he said
In
light of similar Israeli confessions of committing atrocities, the
Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) asked U.N. chief Kofi
Annan Tuesday to immediately send international investigators to probe
"atrocities ... committed by the Israeli occupation forces"
in Palestinian territories.
In
a letter, OIC Secretary General Abdelouahed Belkeziz saluted Annan's
call for a multinational force in the West Bank and said he hoped such
a force would be dispatched urgently, Agence France-Presse (AFP)
reported.
"Following
the confirmed reports of the perpetration, by the Israeli occupation
forces, of crimes against humanity, including large scale massacres,
genocidal killings, executions and detention of Palestinian civilians
in Jenin and Nablus, we appeal to you urgently to dispatch an
international commission of inquiry into the atrocities that have
been, and are still being, committed by the Israeli occupation
forces," Belkeziz wrote to Annan.
Israeli
forces "are trying to conceal those atrocities by removing the
bodies of hundred of Palestinians for burial in secret locations, in
addition to evicting and displacing thousands of Palestinian after
plundering and demolishing their homes."
The
commission should also investigate pillage committed by Israeli forces
in Palestinian homes, institutions, banks and cultural centers,
Belkeziz said.
According
to the British daily newspaper, The Independent, the Palestinian
minister for planning and international cooperation, Nabil Shaath,
called for an inquiry into the "massacre" in Jenin. Amnesty
International also called for a full investigation by the U.N.
Security Council.
A
spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said the
Jenin refugee camp "looks as if it has been hit by an
earthquake".
Amnesty
investigators in Jenin have taken dozens of witness statements
covering the past fortnight. People say they saw bodies being buried
in individual graves. One claims Israeli soldiers buried 32 corpses in
a trench.
They
have also interviewed many refugees who fled the camp after their
houses were demolished. Derrick Pounder, a professor of forensic
medicine from Dundee University working with the Amnesty team, said a
"pattern of credible evidence" is emerging from witnesses
that residents were not warned by the army before bulldozers crashed
into their homes. "The only warning was their house
collapsing," he said.
Professor
Pounder, who has worked in Sarajevo and Kosovo, believes the Israeli
tactics inevitably means large numbers of dead civilians. "Sooner
or later those bodies will be discovered and the facts will become
absolutely clear."
The
U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA,), is to re-register all
surviving refugees and match their names to its previous list of
13,000 camp residents in the hope of establishing the number of dead.
But the task is expected to take months.
Thousands
are unaccounted for, although many fled to surrounding villages.
Hundreds of men were rounded up and are thought to be abducted by
Israelis.
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