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Israel Blocks Funerals As Rights Groups Protest
additional reporting by Maha Abdel Hadi
JERUSALEM, March 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli forces stopped a Palestinian funeral from reaching a Muslim cemetery keeping the deceased unburied for hours while Palestinian ambulances ferrying injured protesters were shot at by Jewish settlers, eyewitnesses said Thursday.
Israeli armed troops held up a funeral for a Palestinian man from the al-Shomli family, who died earlier Thursday near al-Khodar in the West Bank, but allowed a few members of his family to accompany the coffin to the cemetery, only 500 meters away from their house.
The Palestinian Red Crescent also complained that its ambulances, busy carrying victims of clashes against occupation troops, came under fire from Israeli settlers stationed nearby, and demanded international protection.
The organization cited incidents of shooting at its ambulances on Thursday near Wad al-Nees and al-Khder. Haron Rima, ambulance coordinator in Bethlehem, said both ambulances were carrying Palestinian victims of Israeli violence.
Meanwhile, Israel came under fire from human rights activists again Thursday for turning a blind eye to Jewish settlers who kill Palestinians, a day after Israel was pilloried for using excessive force against the Palestinian uprising.
The Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, said settlers have killed six Palestinians during the current Palestinian Intifada, 0r uprising, with Israeli law enforcement agencies and have only investigated two of the deaths.
U.N. human rights investigators also called Wednesday for international monitors to be deployed in the Palestinian territories, where they say Israel has used "excessive and disproportionate force" since the eruption of violence nearly six months ago that has cost more than 440 lives.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has repeatedly blamed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's forces for instigating anti-Israeli attacks and has refused to resume negotiations until Arafat orders a halt to the violence.
A U.S.-led commission probing the causes of the Intifada is currently in the region holding talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials.
In its report, B'Tselem catalogued numerous attacks against Palestinians by settlers, citing witnesses, and highlighting the danger of armed settler patrols becoming an organized militia.
"The violence occurs against the background of leniency and prolonged impotence of the Israeli law enforcement authorities," it said in a 52-page report entitled "Tacit Consent."
"Even if the Israeli authorities do not directly encourage violent acts against Palestinian civilians, their neglect leads to the same results," it said, accusing them of "flagrant discrimination" in the treatment of settlers and Palestinians.
Around 200,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, land occupied by Israel it gained through war 34 years ago. Israeli presence there is illegal under international law.
There are another 200,000 Jews living in 10 large enclaves built in Israeli-occupied Arab east Jerusalem, but the report does not deal with them.
B'Tselem also said that while Palestinian demands for the evacuation of settlements were "legitimate," it did not justify harming residents, and called on Arafat's self-rule authority to take action to prevent deliberate attacks.
Since late September, Palestinians have killed 22 Israeli civilians and wounded many others, B'Tselem said, adding that that since the beginning of the first Intifada in 1987, 119 Palestinians, among them 23 minors, have been killed by settlers and other Israeli civilians.
"In addition, over the past few months, settlers fired at and wounded Palestinians, threw stones at Palestinian vehicles, damaged property, uprooted trees, burned a mosque, harmed Palestinian medical teams, attacked journalists, prevented farmers from reaching their fields and blocked roads," it said.
In Geneva, a three-member U.N. human rights team called Wednesday for the immediate establishment of an "adequate and effective" international presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, saying it was beyond dispute that Israeli security forces had used "excessive and disproportionate force."
"Even in life-threatening situations, minimum force should be used against civilians," it said. However, in a meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday, Sharon underscored his opposition to the deployment of U.N. observers, echoing statements made by his Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, on Wednesday.
"Israel is not initiating any acts of terror, we are only reacting," Peres said. "What will the force do, just mark our reactions to their terror?"
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