U.N. Report on
Jenin Massacre to Be Published Thursday
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UNRWA
described what happened in the Jenin camp as “a hellish
battleground among the civilians”
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UNITED
NATIONS, July 31 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A report on
events during the bloody Israeli military occupation of a Palestinian
refugee camp in the West Bank town of Jenin in April will be made
public later this week, diplomatic sources said Tuesday, July 30.
After
the release of the report which is expected on Thursday, August 1, the
U.N. General Assembly will reconvene the special session that voted
overwhelmingly to direct the investigation and report on May 7, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
“I
would prefer the session on Thursday, but it is not possible for
practical reasons,” said Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian observer
to the United Nations, adding that it would likely be held on Friday.
A
similar meeting of the General Assembly took place in May at the
behest of the Arab group of nations, after Israel blocked an attempt
to send a U.N. fact-finding team to Jenin.
Palestinians
have accused Israeli forces of massacring civilians and committing war
crimes between April 2 and 12 in the Jenin camp.
Israel
has repeatedly denied such accusations, insisting that about 50
people, mostly Palestinian fighters, died in pitched battles that also
left 23 Israeli soldiers dead.
Human
rights investigators from other organizations said the Israeli army
committed war crimes.
Attempts
to send a U.N. fact-finding team to the spot were repeatedly blocked
by Israel.
U.N.
Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen told a seminar on peace in the
Middle East last week that he could not comment on the contents of the
report before it was issued.
Roed-Larsen
said the report would both address humanitarian issues arising from
the Israelis’ refusal to allow aid organizations into the refugee
camp, and the presence of armed Palestinians in Jenin at the time of
the Israeli assault.
Touring
the camp three weeks after the raid, Roed-Larsen denounced Israel for
blocking aid to the wounded in Jenin, saying it was “totally
unacceptable that the government of Israel for 11 days did not allow
search and rescue teams to come.”
“This
is morally repugnant,” the U.N. envoy told reporters at the time.
Referring
to these comments Roed-Larsen said his criticism “was not related to
the way the battle was conducted” but because aid organizations were
not allowed to enter the camp immediately afterwards.
Israel
carried out a bloody massacre in Jenin’s refugee camp on Sunday,
April 7, killing at least 35 Palestinians after Palestinians refused
to comply to their orders.
Israeli
occupation forces bombed the refugee camp using U.S.-made Apache
planes with more than 20 rockets, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite
channel reported.
Palestinian
information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said Sunday that at least 35
Palestinians were killed so far in five days of combat, although there
was no independent confirmation as the town has been declared a closed
military zone by the occupation army, AFP reported.
Israel’s
occupation army has said seven have been killed in fighting in the
makeshift neighborhood in Jenin, built to accommodate refugees who
fled Israeli atrocities in their homes in Palestine when the Israeli
state was created in 1948.
Fighting
between Palestinian resistance activists and Israel’s occupation
soldiers had erupted after the camp’s residents refused to comply to
Israelis who ordered them to get into the mosque’s court in the
camp.
Hamas
representative in Jenin, Gamal Hega said that hundreds of Palestinians
were killed in this Israeli massacre.
Hega
had also said that the refugee camp is also being demolished by the
occupation forces which as he said received demolition orders from the
hawkish Israeli premier Ariel Sharon.
The
U.N. agency dealing with Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, described the
situation as “a hellish battleground among the civilians” in the
Jenin camp and in the Balata camp in Nablus.
The
Israeli daily newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, had reported from inside the
town that as the battle raged on, Israeli bulldozers were demolishing
houses, sometimes burying inhabitants alive who refused calls to
surrender.
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