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Palestinians Welcome UN Mission To Uncover Jenin “Mass Graves"
NABLUS, West Bank, April 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies ) - Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat Saturday, April 20, welcomed the U.N. Security Council resolution to send a fact-finding mission to Jenin, saying he expected it would find evidence of mass graves.
"It is a step in the right direction and we think this decision can be implemented now," Erakat told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in a telephone interview from Jericho.
"We hope the international community will allow this team to come with the necessary tools to remove the destroyed houses in Jenin and in Nablus and to find the mass graves in which Israel hid a number of bodies in different areas, " he said.
The Palestinians have maintained that hundreds of people were killed in a "massacre" in the devastated Jenin refugee camp, a charge denied by Israel, which puts the toll at "about 50".
Erakat wanted the mission to arrive "as soon as possible". He said the Palestinians would work with whoever was chosen for the U.N. mission, but cast doubts on Israel's pledge to cooperate.
"This is the fourth decision taken by the Security Council since March and Israel has refused to implement any of these decisions even if the resolutions did not condemn the Israeli army for war crimes," he said.
"We hope the team that will be sent for the inquiry will come with a guarantee of freedom of movement."
The U.N. Security Council voted 15-0 Friday night, hours after Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that it would welcome a U.N. representative "to clarify the facts" of what happened in the Jenin refugee camp.
In his phone call to Annan, Peres only mentioned a mission to the city of Jenin, but "the secretary-general would hope that any fact-finding mission he sends would have full access to all areas of the West Bank," U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
“There is a big difference between a fact-finding team and a investigation team. The former is involved in gathering information and giving an account with what happened and the latter is involved in much more than data gathering but also involves speaking to all parties involved in the matter and coming to a conclusion which pins the responsibility on a specific party,” Dr. Hassan Abu Taleb, a political analyst in the Al Ahram Center For Political and Strategic Studies has told IslamOnline.
Arab nations had pushed for a vote on a resolution expressing shock at reports of a massacre at Jenin and requesting that Annan investigate "the full scope of the tragic events" there. The United States had threatened to veto it, and the final resolution made no mention of a massacre.
The resolution did not say when the team would leave or complete its mission.
The resolution "welcomes the initiative of the secretary-general to develop accurate information regarding recent events in the Jenin refugee camp through a fact-finding team and requests him to keep the Security Council informed."
It expresses concern at "the dire humanitarian situation" of Palestinian civilians and "emphasizes the urgency of access of medical and humanitarian organizations to the Palestinian civilian population."
It also reaffirms previous Middle East resolutions demanding an immediate Israeli withdrawal from all Palestinian cities and outlining a blueprint to end more than 18 months of violence and achieve a final peace settlement ending with a Palestinian state.
Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian U.N. envoy, said international momentum had built to establish some way "to inquire (into) or to investigate what happened in Jenin."
"We believe that a serious war crime was committed ... and thus we believe that some people will have to be held responsible and brought to justice," Al-Kidwa said.
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