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HRW's report "omits every crime committed by Israel," says Rantissi
Israeli "occupation is entirely responsible for everything that occurs," Abu Rudeina
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OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, November 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The
Palestinian leadership and two resistance movements, Islamic Jihad and
Hamas, lashed out Friday, November 1, at a report by a leading
international rights watchdog that described suicide bombers as
"war criminals" and said the Palestinian Authority (PA) bore
heavy responsibility for not stopping them.
A
top advisor to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat denounced the report
by the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, stressing that Israel's occupation
of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was behind retaliatory suicide bombings.
"We
strongly criticize the report's content, especially those passages that
say the president (Arafat) and the PA bear the responsibility," for
suicide attacks, Nabil Abu-Rudeina told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Abu-Rudeina
stressed that "the [Israeli] occupation is entirely responsible for
everything that occurs and it must be ended."
"We
demand that Human Rights Watch also criticize the occupation, which
leads to those [retaliatory] operations and criticize the Jenin and
Rafah massacres caused by that very occupation," he also said.
He
was referring to Israeli incursions and strikes, especially in March and
April 2002, that have left hundreds of Palestinians dead, almost all of
them civilians.
Meanwhile,
Jihad and Hamas dismissed the Human Rights Watch report as pro-Israel.
HRW's
"way of thinking is Zionist and one-sided," charged Islamic
Jihad official Mohammed al-Hindi.
"The
report speaks the same language as [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon
and the Israeli extremists," he said.
A
top Hamas spokesman described the report as "exactly biased toward
the Zionist enemy."
"It
omits every crime committed by Israel" against the Palestinians,
said Abdul-Alaziz Rantissi, adding that he saw "a suspect Zionist
hand" in this report.
In
the report, entitled "Erased in a Moment," Human Rights Watch
said there were "important steps that Arafat and the PA could and
should have taken to prevent or deter suicide bombings against
civilians.
"The
failure to take those steps implies a high degree of responsibility for
what occurred," it added.
The
report mentions that since January 2001, 52 Palestinian suicide bombings
have killed some 250 civilians.
But
it ignores that since September 2000, the Israeli occupation army has
killed 1,949 Palestinians, mostly teenagers and children, according to
an Agence France-Presse (AFP) death toll.
Past
reports by Human Rights Watch have been sharply critical of Israeli
military tactics.
The
human rights watchdog released a report in May 2002 that charged Israel
had committed war crimes during its invasion of the West Bank town of
Jenin in April.
Another
renowned rights group, British-based Amnesty International, is scheduled
to release a report Monday, November 4, that also accuses Israel of
committing war crimes during its six-week Operation Defensive Shield on
the West Bank last spring.
