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The workers were killed, on Sept 1, in cold-blood in an Israeli army ambush close to a Jewish settlement near Al Khalil (Hebron)
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GAZA CITY, Sept 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A
Palestinian human rights group Saturday slammed as a "joke" an
internal Israeli army inquiry which absolved the military of blame in
the killings of 12 Palestinian civilians in the past two weeks, news
agencies reported.
"The
conclusions of the commission are a joke and show the willingness of the
occupation forces to carry on with crimes against Palestinian civilians
with the full blessing of the Israeli political leadership," it
said in a statement, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The
Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) called for the establishment
of "a neutral and impartial investigating committee to investigate
war crimes committed by Israeli occupying forces."
The
army on Friday absolved itself of blame in the spate of killings, in an
internal inquiry carried out at the demand of Israeli Defense Minister
Binyamin Ben Eliezer.
"The
findings reveal that the standing open fire orders, used in the three
incidents, were appropriate," the army said in a statement on the
probe into separate incidents which drew sharp criticism of the army,
said AFP.
"The
soldiers acted following a suspicious behavior, which included persons
being in an unauthorized area during the late night hours, crawling
toward an Israeli community or infiltrating into an Israeli agricultural
patch," it said.
On
Sunday, four
Palestinians were killed in an army ambush close to a Jewish
settlement near the southern West Bank town of Hebron . Witnesses said
the victims were workers walking home from their jobs in a quarry, while
the army claimed they were preparing an attack.
On
Saturday night, two children and two teenagers were killed by mistake
during an
operation targeting a Palestinian resistance activist in the West
Bank .
A
woman, her two sons and one of her nephews were killed last week in
the shelling of a house in a Gaza City neighborhood.
Also,
on July 22, an
Israeli F-16 dropped a one-ton bomb on a heavily-populated neighborhood,
in an operation to kill the Hamas military leader Salah Shehadeh.
Apart
from the leader of the group's armed wing and his bodyguard, 16 other
people, including nine children, were killed in the raid, drawing a
barrage of international condemnations.
Meanwhile,
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon insisted Saturday that he does have
a plan for a political settlement with the Palestinians, despite having
consigned the Oslo agreement to the dustbin, said AFP.
The
hawkish premier declined to give any specifics beyond his longstanding
demands for a change in the Palestinian leadership and a halt to
anti-Israeli attacks before any new negotiations.
But
he rejected the storm of criticism with which both the Palestinians and
the Israeli left greeted his apparent abandonment, in an interview
published Friday, of the centerpiece of the nine-year-old Middle East
peace process.
Dismissing
suggestions by his Israeli opponents that his attacks on Oslo were
merely a cover for his unwillingness to countenance a diplomatic
settlement, Sharon insisted he did have his "own plan."
"As
a first stage Palestinians have to stop terrorism, violence and inciting
violence and there must be a really different (Palestinian)
Authority," he told public radio.
The
two sides might then discuss an "interim arrangement", ahead
of further talks on a "permanent settlement," he said, using
the language of the Oslo agreement despite his rejection of the accord
itself.
His
comments prompted the main Israeli architect of the Oslo accord, former
deputy foreign minister Yossi Beilin, to accuse the right-wing premier
of "coming to power with the express aim of halting the peace
process."
Egyptian
Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said Saturday that he hoped Sharon’s
comments was just "idle talk".
"I
hope that the declarations of the Israeli prime minister are just idle
talk and the will to go forward will be stronger, because the Israeli
and Palestinian people need peace," Maher said.
"There
are legal agreements and accords that everyone must respect, and if
certain parties do not respect them, we will enter an era of total
chaos," Maher was quoted as saying by the official news agency
MENA.
Maher
also charged that Israel was "continuing its aggressions against
the Palestinian people, and not one day goes by without people killed
and houses destroyed."
He
was speaking after a meeting with a leading Palestinian figure, Mahmud
Abbas, who participated in talks for the 1993 Oslo accords that gave
Palestinians limited autonomy over parts of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip.
For
his part, Abbas, the number two in the Palestine Liberation
Organization, said the Palestinians gave "no importance to the
words of Sharon because the accords are international accords deposited
with the United Nations."
"Israel
is obliged to respect these accords and to sit with us on the
negotiation table. Things cannot be resolved by force, but through
dialogue," he said.
Sharon
also said on Saturday that rogue settlements will not be dismantled.
In
continuous aggression, at least 10 Palestinians, two of them children,
were wounded Saturday by Israeli tank and gunfire in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, Palestinian security officials said.
The
children were among a group of demonstrators in the West Bank refugee
camp of Tulkarem throwing stones at Israeli troops, who responded with
gunfire from their tanks, the sources said.
In
a similar incident, troops in tanks also opened fire on stone-throwing
protesters in Jenin camp, shooting five of them, one of whom was
seriously hurt, the officials said.
