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Amnesty accuses Israel of grave war crimes against Palestinians
Jerusalem, Nov 06: The human rights group Amnesty International has accused Israel of war crimes, saying there had been unjustified killings and maltreatment of Palestinians during an army offensive in the West Bank.
Jerusalem, Nov 06: The human rights group Amnesty International has accused Israel of war crimes, saying there had been unjustified killings and maltreatment of Palestinians during an army offensive in the West Bank.
The London-based group on Monday said few of the abuses reported last spring had been impartially investigated.
The army reoccupied Palestinian West Bank cities in April with the declared aim of rooting out militants behind a campaign of suicide bombings that have killed scores of Israelis.
''The relationship of the conflict to the deteriorating human rights situation has led to a growing understanding that there can be no peace in the region until human rights are respected,'' Amnesty International said in a 76-page report.
The report detailed what Amnesty called unlawful killings and abusive treatment of detainees in two West Bank cities where Palestinian militants put up the fiercest resistance to the army crackdown on their two-year-old uprising for statehood.
Cases described included a paralysed detainee beaten by soldiers, demolitions of homes in which a family of eight and a wheelchair-bound man died, and a woman in labour struggling to walk to hospital after troops stopped her ambulance.
Other incidents reported included released detainees forced to walk home through a battle zone, using civilians as human shields, blocking of ambulances and humanitarian aid even where fighting had ceased, and the destruction of commercial, religious and residential buildings without military necessity.
Amnesty has previously accused Israel of brutalising Palestinians under occupation, but in July condemned Palestinian suicide attacks on Israeli civilians as crimes against humanity. It has denied Israeli accusations of pro-Palestinian bias.
''Amnesty believes some acts by the Israeli army described (here) amount to grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are war crimes,'' said the report, entitled ''Shielded From Scrutiny: Israeli Violations in Jenin and Nablus''.
Cases described included a paralysed detainee beaten by soldiers, demolitions of homes in which a family of eight and a wheelchair-bound man died, and a woman in labour struggling to walk to hospital after troops stopped her ambulance.
Other incidents reported included released detainees forced to walk home through a battle zone, using civilians as human shields, blocking of ambulances and humanitarian aid even where fighting had ceased, and the destruction of commercial, religious and residential buildings without military necessity.
Amnesty has previously accused Israel of brutalising Palestinians under occupation, but in July condemned Palestinian suicide attacks on Israeli civilians as crimes against humanity. It has denied Israeli accusations of pro-Palestinian bias.
''Amnesty believes some acts by the Israeli army described (here) amount to grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are war crimes,'' said the report, entitled ''Shielded From Scrutiny: Israeli Violations in Jenin and Nablus''.
Bureau Report