Summary Execution Used As West Bank Solution

Summary Execution Used As West Bank Solution

First published on Spectator.co.nz…

By Selwyn Manning.

Summary execution is being used on unarmed men suspected of being Palestinian resistance fighters in Jenin.

Reports have emerged today that Israeli soldiers have “completely demolished” one entire section of the Jenin refugee camp, and then continued a “sweep” through the rest of the camp searching for resistance fighters.

Once those resisting the Israeli advance had run out of ammunition, they were then rounded up and taken for summary execution.

Despite repeated requests by the United Nations to enter Jenin camp on the West Bank - and assurances from Israel that access would be provided - UN and other international relief workers have still not been permitted to enter, according to a UN official in the region.

The Israeli army's chief spokesman, Brigadier-General Ron Kitrey, said on Israel Army Radio that IDF soldiers had killed hundreds of Palestinians in Jenin earlier this week. The Palestinian Authority said the death toll is much higher.

In one incident Israeli soldiers entered Palestinian homes, rounded up around 150 civilians, and then killed two men Waddah Fathi ash-Shalabi, 35 and Abdul Karim Yusif Sa'adih, 38 in front of the group.

The United Nations has been asked to investigate the killings of Palestinians in Jenin camp. UN Secretary General Koffi Annan said he feared wholesale slaughter had taken place as Israeli soldiers rampaged through the camps in the West Bank cities of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Dura and Dahariyah, south of Hebron. The offensive continues.

Click here to see video footage of IDF soldiers storming a house, a mother is killed, her children watch as soldiers ransack the place looking for proof of resistance. http://jerusalem.indymedia.org/uploads/censored.raml0l7e8.ram
"There is an urgent need to investigate the allegations promptly," Asma Jahangir said. Jahangir is the UN’s Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

In a statement from Geneva Jahangir said while Israel has disputed the scale and method of killings in the Palestinian Territiries, she said the area remains off-limits to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the media.
"Independent observers are being urged by the Palestinians to visit the site and verify the allegations, but such initiatives have been blocked by the Israeli Government," she said.

Continued denial of access by Israel "will only lend further credibility to the allegations made by independent sources," the Special Rapporteur pointed out. "It is now urgent that the visiting mission led by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, be allowed to carry out its tasks as mandated by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights," Jahangir said.

But claims have emerged that IDF soldiers have buried dozens of Palestinian bodies killed in Jenin refugee camp in a “huge mass grave” and used bulldozers to cover them up. Residents inside Jenin claim IDF soldiers bulldozed Palestinian bodies into a large, long ditch then bulldozed earth over the top of the mass grave. The IDF however, denied the allegations.

Salman Shaikh, an aide to Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said the UN, the World Bank and the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) had organized a trip to Jenin seeking to deliver humanitarian supplies to the refugee camps. "Assurances were given that they would be granted access yesterday [but] they were not able to get in," he told UN Radio in a telephone interview, adding, "they tried today but still they have not been able to" enter.

Shaikh said the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) asserted it was still not safe to go into the camp because of booby traps. He noted that others "will have a different take." He said the IDF had arrested some 4,000 Palestinians in house-to-house searches.

In Geneva, United Nations Secretary General Koffi Annan said the situation was "so dangerous and the humanitarian and human rights situation so appalling, the proposition that a force should be sent in there ... can no longer be deferred."

"It is urgent, it is imperative," he said. "That capacity exists in the world today. We must now muster the will."
While it would be up to the Security Council to deploy a U.N. peacekeeping force, organizing a multinational force would be up to individual countries. These countries could then go to the Security Council for a mandate if they chose to.

In this case, Annan was calling for the council to endorse such a force before any of its key members suggested it.

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