Israel Violated Geneva Conv. With Attacks On Civilians

by Thalif Deen

Peter Hansen, commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), appealed to Israeli authorities to stop firing on ambulances and allow his agency to evacuate the wounded and deliver medical supplies to refugee camps.

"We are getting reports of pure horror -- that helicopters are strafing civilian residential areas and that systemic shelling by tanks has created hundreds of wounded," he told reporters today.

"In the name of human decency, the Israeli military must allow our ambulances safe passage to help evacuate the wounded and deliver emergency supplies of medicine and food," he added.

Israel is a signatory to international conventions that protect non-combatants in times of conflict, Hansen said, "but those conventions are worthless if they are not adhered to precisely at times of the greatest bloodletting. The world is watching and Israel needs to end this pitiless assault on civilian refugee camps."

The four Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a signatory, call for the "amelioration of the wounded and sick" in battlefields, humane treatment of prisoners of war, and protection of civilians.

Hansen said Israel was violating all of these conventions, which entered into force in 1949 and 1950, governing wartime emergencies.

Last week Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that forcing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat into exile, as Israeli officials had proposed, also would be a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions because they specifically prohibited deportation during times of war.

Hansen said bulldozers have razed refugee homes and that food and medicine will soon run out. He said the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) had reduced two Palestinian refugee camps -- Balata and Jenin -- to a "hellish battleground."

At a press conference in Jerusalem yesterday, Israeli army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz said that Israeli military forces had killed some 200 Palestinians and wounded more than 1,500 over the previous 11 days. In contrast, the number of Israeli soldiers killed was 13, with 130 injured.

The army had also rounded up some 1,600 Palestinians as suspected terrorists, Mofaz said.

President George W. Bush has demanded that the Israeli military immediately withdraw and that Arafat clearly denounce the use of terrorist tactics by extremists. Neither Arafat nor Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has cooperated, however.

Stephen Cohen, a Middle East expert at the Washington-based Israel Policy Forum, was quoted as saying: "No Israeli prime minister can openly defy the president of the United States -- at least for long."

Speaking to reporters in Madrid where he is attending a UN conference, Annan said today he hoped the Israeli government will heed Bush's call and Security Council resolutions calling for the withdrawal of troops immediately.

"I think we have a very tragic situation -- and from the humanitarian point of view it is really very, very serious when you consider that a large number of people are without water, and short of food and medication," he said.

"The whole world is demanding that Israel withdraws. I don't think the whole world, including friends of the Israeli people and government, can be wrong," he added.

Numerous humanitarian agencies, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Red Crescent, and Doctors Without Borders, have criticised the Israeli military attacks on ambulances, civilian infrastructure, and refugee camps.

"We are quite shocked and worried about these growing incidents," Pierre Sallignon of Doctors Without Borders said. "We've had direct attacks on our ambulances."

The ICRC has described Israeli military behavior as totally unacceptable. "It not only jeopardizes the life-saving work of emergency medical services but also the ICRC's humanitarian mission," an ICRC official said on Apr. 5.

According to UNRWA, its ambulances and food trucks have been repeatedly refused access to camps over the past three days.

Some 30 people are reported to have died at Jenin's hospital in the last 36 hours. The operating theatre there has run out of oxygen, and medicines are about to run out, UNRWA said.

Mouin Rabbani, director of the Palestinian American Research Center in Ramallah, said medical care is being systematically and deliberately manipulated as a weapon of war.

"Emergency services such as ambulances are being explicitly prevented from collecting the dead and the wounded," he said.