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EU Official Shames Jenin ‘Human Tragedy’ Amid Growing World Fury At Israel
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Nothing left in Jenin, but rubble, destruction and homeless survivors
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JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank, April 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The destruction of the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin showed the failure of efforts by Middle East peace envoys, EU envoy Miguel Angel Moratinos said Monday after a visit to the scene.
"I am deeply moved and leave with a tremendous impression of what I have seen. It's a human tragedy," he told reporters, declining to comment on Palestinian charges that the Israeli army carried out a massacre, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"It's a failure for the people like me who have been working without stop to avoid this kind of incident and to bring peace to the region. We have to work even more for the future," said Moratinos.
Israeli tanks and bulldozers flattened Jenin refugee camp in a fierce nine-day aggression that ended on April 12. This was a violation of all international convictions and rights of people under occupation
The EU special envoy to the Middle East said that a UN fact-finding team, whose mission to Jenin was delayed three times by Israel since approval more than a week ago, should "come as soon as possible."
"We still hope it will come very soon. That's why I am going back to work on it in Ramallah and Jerusalem," with the Palestinian and Israeli leaderships, he said.
Moratinos spent more than an hour in the camp and used a vantage point from the top of a mosque to survey the devastation.
The EU official’s comments came as a blow to Israeli efforts that seek to divert world attention from the massacres, war crimes and human tragedy its forces committed in Jenin.
In London, Britain urged Israel Monday to immediately allow UN investigators into the devastated town of Jenin, expressing serious concern at delays to the fact-finding mission.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told parliament Israel's international standing was being damaged by its resistance to the UN probe, raising the veiled threat of further action against Israel if it did not comply, according to AFP.
He said that if Israeli troops had truly acted proportionately in combating Palestinian resistance activists during the Jenin fighting earlier this month, then it had nothing to fear from the UN mission.
"If as they say this action in Jenin was proportionate and justified, then the quicker an international inquiry... gets in there the better it will be for Israel itself," Straw told parliament.
"It is important that Israel does recognize that... their reputation is itself damaged as long as they refuse to admit this inquiry," Straw said, expressing "serious concern" that 10 days after Israel first agreed to the mission, it had yet to gain access to Jenin.
Some 23 Israelis and an unknown number of Palestinians - mostly civilians - were killed in Jenin in what Palestinians call a massacre and Israelis claim was a pitched battle.
"Israel must cooperate without delay with the UN team in order to establish the facts," Straw said.
"If it does not... we and the international community have to consider very carefully what further action may be taken," he added.
And in Moscow, Russia, currently chair of the UN Security Council, will "insist" on UN inspectors being given access to Jenin , Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Monday.
"Security Council resolutions must be implemented by all UN member countries and we shall insist on the mission being allowed to visit Jenin.
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