Jordan Times
Wednesday, October 6, 2004
End offensive, King tells
Israel
Army arrests 13 UN employees for `terrorism'
Agencies
HIS MAJESTY KING Abdullah called Tuesday on Israel to immediately halt its
offensive and pull troops out of the Gaza Strip, reiterating that such an
escalation threatens the entire peace process.
At a 10 Downing Street meeting with British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, King Abdullah said reviving the stalled Middle East peace
process requires immediate action by all involved parties, including the Quartet
and the international community, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.
King Abdullah also called on the Palestinians to take serious steps towards
unifying their efforts to help create a favourable climate that would pave the
way for the resumption of peace negotiations and end the bloodshed.
King Abdullah and Blair agreed that a comprehensive implementation of the
roadmap to peace was the only way to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and
ensure justice.
Achieving peace in the region will help eliminate extremism and terrorism, Petra
quoted the King as telling Blair during the talks.
Jordan, Spain condemn incursion
In a related development, Spain and Jordan on Tuesday condemned Israel's
incursion, calling it “unjustified” and urging the international community to
help end violence between the Israelis and Palestinians, The Associated Press
reported.
“We all have condemned the death of two Israeli children, but we also agree that
this operation cannot be justified and that the number of deaths in Palestine is
reaching an unacceptable figure for this 21st century,” said Spanish Foreign
Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos in a joint press conference in Madrid with his
Jordanian counterpart, Marwan Muasher.
Muasher called for an immediate end to the Israeli offensive. “Israel should
immediately stop the killing of a large number of Palestinians, there's no
justification for this policy of fear,” he said.
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Both Moratinos and Muasher called for international intervention to end the
violence and urged the so-called Quartet, comprising the United States, European
Union, United Nations and Russia, to return the Israelis and Palestinians to
peace negotiations.
“We want more dialogue, more political action and less military acts,” said
Moratinos, who is also the former European Union envoy to the region.
Spain holds the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council, and Arab nations
at the world body are pressing for a resolution condemning the Israeli
operation.
Death toll rises to 80
In Gaza City, meanwhile, a leading Palestinian fighter was killed in an Israeli
air strike Tuesday as troops pressed a deadly week-old incursion into the
northern parts.
The dead commander was identified as Bashir Al Dibsh, 40, Gaza leader of the Al
Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad.
Fellow fighter Dharif Al Arir was also killed in the attack on their vehicle
just outside a Gaza refugee camp, medics said. A third person was wounded.
The violence raised to 80 the number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip
since Israeli armour poured into the north of the territory on Sept. 28.
In the Jabaliya refugee camp, epicentre of the fierce fighting sparked by the
incursion, a Palestinian man was killed by an Israeli tank shell.
Further south, Israeli troops shot dead a 13-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl
from an observation tower in the town of Rafah, on the Israeli-controlled border
with the Gaza Strip.
Ali Musa, head of Rafah hospital, said the body of Eman Al Hams was riddled with
20 bullets, including five to the head.
But Israeli military sources insisted troops had fired at the girl after she
crossed into a restricted zone and was spotted planting “what seemed to be an
explosive charge.”
In northern Gaza, troops pressed their mission to carve out a buffer zone inside
the territory to keep Palestinian fighters out of rocket range of neighbouring
Israel.
The UN Security Council was due to hear calls for urgent action to halt the
Israeli onslaught later Tuesday amid mounting international concern over the
civilian casualty toll.
Even close Israeli ally the United States delivered a mild rebuke, saying it
hoped to see a swift end to the incursion, which Israeli leaders have warned
might last for weeks.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell repeated Washington's position that Israel
had a right to defend itself, but called on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
for a “proportionate” response. “Mr Sharon finds the need to respond to that,”
Powell said before arriving in Brazil. “I hope it does not expand. I hope that
whatever he does is proportionate to the threat Israel is facing and I hope this
operation can come to a conclusion quickly.”
Israeli chief of staff, General Moshe Yaalon, said Monday that the Gaza
operation and, in an interview published Tuesday, Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz
made clear the operation would be stepped up, and not cut short in the face of
international pressure.
“We will intensify our activity on the ground and in the air,” Mofaz told the
Yediot Aharonot daily. “The only way to lower the level of terror is to strike
at it, to strike at it and again to strike at it.
“I can't say exactly how many weeks the operation will continue. We will take
every course of action, and we will persevere with it as long as necessary ...
The deeper the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) activity is, the more limited the
fire on (the nearby Israeli town of) Sderot will become.”
Behind the scenes
Israeli and Palestinian security officials made initial contacts on halting the
fighting, Israeli and Palestinian security sources said.
Palestinian officials said Egypt was acting as an intermediary and was also
pressing Hamas, an Islamic group sworn to Israel's destruction, to stop firing
its makeshift Qassam rockets at Israeli towns. An Israeli general flew to Cairo
for talks on the Gaza situation.
An Israeli security source said discussions were expected to accelerate but that
Israel remained sceptical of the willingness of Palestinian security men to
confront Hamas.
“Their record in this area is not good,” the source said.
Palestinian Cabinet minister, Saeb Erekat, said he was unaware of contacts with
Israel, which refuses to talk directly to the Palestinian Authority. But he
welcomed any move by Israel “to speak to the Palestinian Authority instead of
destroying it.”
In what appeared to be a signal to fighters to halt rocket attacks, Palestinian
President Yasser Arafat urged them on Monday to “avoid giving the occupation any
pretext” for raids.
Some officials of Hamas, the driving force behind a campaign of suicide
bombings, suggested they might be ready to stop firing rockets if Israel halts
its Gaza offensive.
But Hamas spokesman Mushir Al Masri said Israel first had to stop “all sorts of
aggression against our people.”
Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said Israel could not accept any kind of
agreement while rocket fire persisted.
Despite Powell's call for restraint, political analysts say Washington has
little leverage to stop the offensive. The spike in violence comes amid a US
presidential election campaign in which both candidates are battling for Jewish
votes.
Army arrests 13 UN employees for `terrorism'
In Jerusalem, the Israeli army said Tuesday it has recently arrested 13
employees of the United Nations on suspicion of “terrorist activities.”
“We have in hand a list of 13 arrested people against whom charges have been
brought,” General Israel Ziv said in remarks from a press conference broadcast
on Channel Two television.
“They are UN people against whom charges are provided on their implication in
terrorist activities.”
Ziv gave no details on the jobs or nationalities of those detained.
The Israeli army backed away from an accusation that Palestinian fighters used a
UN ambulance to transport a rocket to be fired at Israel, a charge that raised a
stir within the world body.
A blurry video taken by a military drone aircraft of the alleged incident has
been removed from the army's website amid “an internal discussion of the
authenticity of our assessment”, a military source told Reuters.
“The Israel defence forces are reviewing the analysis of the footage in which
UNRWA vehicles are seen involved in suspicious activity in the combat zone in
Gaza,” a terse army statement said. UNRWA is the UN agency caring for
Palestinian refugees.
The video showed men running towards a vehicle with “UN” painted on its roof.
One of them carried a long thin object that Israeli officials said was a Qassam
rocket but which UNRWA vigorously insisted was a portable stretcher.
“(Israel's) finding is not conclusive, there's now some doubt within the
military as to whether it was really a missile or not,” a security source said.
“In the footage you see a person lifting the object very easily into the
ambulance, which indicates it was not heavy enough to be a missile. We can't say
for sure either way yet. An official statement will come in due course,” the
source said.
The controversy added a chapter to the history of rocky
relations between the United Nations and Israel, which sees the world body as a
bastion of anti-Israel bias and is especially suspicious of UNRWA's activities
in the West Bank and Gaza.