OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, October 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The British ambassador to Israel, Sherard Cowper-Coles, has told Israel that the Palestinian territories are the world’s largest jail, where harassment and humiliation are rife, the daily Yediot Aharonot said Monday, October 14.

An official at the British embassy in Tel Aviv said the report was “generally accurate but also highly selective from a long conversation” which Cowper-Coles held with the Israeli general overseeing the administration of the occupied territories, Amos Gilad.

“The territories are the largest detention camp in the world, in which 3.5 million people live,” the daily quoted the British diplomat as assaying.

The ambassador toured the territories and told Gilad he had seen “illegal (Jewish settler) outposts, new roads, needless harassment and humiliation of the civilian population at roadblocks,” the daily said.

He was also quoted as saying that Israel was “in violation of the Geneva convention” and accused Israeli forces of displaying “instances of a lack of professionalism” amid reports about soldiers looting property in the territories.

“I understand the security difficulties and I know that the top echelon in the army is professional, but specific acts of soldiers on the ground do not conform to the Israeli interest,” he said, quoted by the Israeli daily.

Five Israeli soldiers were jailed in May for up to five months for having engaged in “looting” during the army’s March and April invasion of the West Bank, since when fresh accusations of pillage has arisen, including charges that soldiers swiped goods from Yasser Arafat’s offices during a siege there last month.

The British embassy official said Cowper-Coles “was raising concerns that we have, on instructions from London.”

“The ambassador has been to the occupied territories and was shocked by what he saw there,” said the official, who asked not to be named.

London has toughened up its tone on Israel recently, with Prime Minister Tony Blair calling on October 1 for U.N. resolutions to apply to Israel as much as to Iraq, in a veiled demand for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government to pull back from reoccupied territory.

Last week British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, on a visit to Cairo said: “We accept the need of Israel to ensure its security, but we do not accept a case for Israel to act disproportionately or to put at risk the lives of innocent people.”

According to the British newspaper, the Times, Cowper-Coles’s criticism angered some Israeli officials.

The paper quoted an Israeli Foreign Ministry source saying: “These remarks are to say the least awkward and unwelcome. The Ambassador appears to have forgotten that the days of the British Mandate are over.”

Cowper-Coles said he regretted that his remarks had been leaked to an Israeli newspaper, reported the Times.

“This was a private exchange between friends. We do not believe in megaphone diplomacy and do not believe in lecturing our Israeli friends in public,” he said.