Israel Defies UN Investigation

by Thalif Deen

"Suspects shouldn't be able to choose their investigators," said Hanny Megally of Human Rights Watch. "It is in everybody's interest that the true record of what happened in Jenin be established."

Marty Rosenbluth of Amnesty International said both sides should feel confident in the impartiality of the UN team but neither should be given veto power over the composition of the mission.

"If the Israelis are given a veto power, then the Palestinians too could make a similar demand," he told IPS.

Controversy has raged since Apr. 22, when UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan named the team's three members. Led by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, the team includes former UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata and Cornelio Sammaruga, former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Annan said he consulted several member states before naming the team. These included Israel, which assured him it would cooperate with the mission. But the Israeli government reversed its decision to cooperate and said the team lacked military and counter-terrorism experts.

Last weekend, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson rejected three proposed UN officials as fact-finders: Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN's Special Coordinator for the Middle East; Peter Hansen, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA); and Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. All three have been outspoken in condemning Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories.

Israeli Ambassador Yehuda Lancry said he told Annan his government wished to send representatives from Israel to brief the Secretariat staff "to make sure that the government's point of view was understood."

Following a meeting with Lancry Apr. 23, Annan decided to postpone the team's departure to allow further consultations. UN spokesperson Fred Eckhard told reporters today that if it transpires that Israel demands additional experts, "we will bring them too."

"But the team expects to be in the Middle East by Saturday (Apr. 27)," he added.

Although the primary team will consist of only three members, the United Nations has appended several experts, including legal and medical advisers, to the team.

Rosenbluth said Amnesty International was "profoundly disappointed" with the Israeli decision and urged the government to reconsider.

"An impartial investigation is in everybody's interest," he said, adding the team members are "well known for their impartiality."

In a statement issued in London, the human rights organization also said: "Given that the (Israeli) government has stated that it has nothing to hide, Amnesty International calls on the Israeli government to permit the UN fact-finding team to undertake its vital task as planned and without delay."

Last week, the Israeli government also refused to issue visas to a team led by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson to visit Israeli-occupied territories and report to the Commission on Human Rights, currently meeting in Geneva.

Amnesty International said the Israeli government's decision to challenge the composition of the fact-finding team and its refusal to cooperate with Robinson's visit "flies in the face of the desire of the international community to find out the facts of what happened in Jenin."

Megally said that, like Israel, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had objected to the appointment of Roberto Garreton to investigate human rights violations in that country and Burundi had opposed the appointment of Sergio Paulo Pinheiro to head an inquiry there.

"The United Nations and the international community have not bowed to such pressures in the past and they should stand firm today," Megally added.

Phyllis Bennis, of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, said that since Israel is the occupying power and the main subject of the fact-finding mission, it has no right to determine the composition of the UN team.

"There are precedents here, especially in Iraq, where Baghdad tried to impose restrictions on the composition of the UN Special Commission to exclude Americans and Britons," she told IPS.

"Israel has no right to pick and choose its human rights interlocutors. The attempt to exclude Roed-Larsen and Hansen, two of the UN's most experienced diplomats in the region, and Robinson, the UN's top human rights official, is particularly egregious," said Bennis.

"Now that the tide of international and growing domestic pressure has forced the (George W.) Bush administration to accept the international consensus, and allow the United Nations to send an investigation team," she added, "we must insure that the ability of the commission to work unhindered to uncover the reality of what Roed-Larsen called horrifying must not be compromised."

After a visit to the Jenin refugee camp, Roed-Larsen said: "Let me be very clear. I have not and am not accusing anyone of massacres; we do not have the full facts from Jenin. But what I saw yesterday was truly appalling. The destruction was massive; the stench overwhelming."

Roed-Larsen also said that combating terrorism does not give the Israelis "a blank check to kill civilians."

Last Sunday, The New York Times quoted an unnamed Israeli official as saying that Roed-Larsen's action was "something the foreign ministry should consider so serious that we have to consider serious measures."

[Editor's note: On Sunday Apr. 28, Israel reversed itself once again as an Israeli spokesman said that the cabinet felt "conditions are not ripe" for a UN visit. Associated Press reported a spokesman saying, "This awful United Nations committee is out to get us and is likely to smear Israel and to force us to do things which Israel is not prepared even to hear about, such as interrogating soldiers and officers who took part in the fighting," he said. "No country in the world would agree to such a thing."]