Jerusalem | Sunday
ISRAEL was deciding on Sunday whether to accept a UN fact-finding mission into the carnage at the Jenin refugee camp but signalled it was not ready to give the team carte blanche to interview whomever it wants.
The issue was at the top of the agenda of the weekly cabinet meeting with UN officials expecting approval and the approximately 20-member team of fact-finders and advisors standing by in Geneva for the green light.
The discussions came as Israel again mulled its security needs following an attack on a Jewish settlement that killed four people, and talks were set to resume on the 27-day-old Israeli siege at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
Before the cabinet met, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres announced the Jewish state still had reservations about the UN mission to gather facts on nine days of fierce fighting and destruction at the Jenin camp.
”Israel cannot accept the demand by the United Nations mission to decide which military people it will question,” Peres told Israeli military radio.
He said the issue was currently the ”main point of divergence” with the United Nations after several rounds of talks last week, and suggested that if the question was resolved Israel would not block the mission.
The controversy over Jenin has raged for weeks. The Palestinians say hundreds of residents, mainly civilians, were massacred at the camp and the Israelis insist some 50 Palestinians, mostly fighters, were killed in pitched battles with ”terrorists”.
The Israelis first accepted the arrival of a UN team but balked last week amid fears here the mission could turn into a public-relations disaster for them and provide material for an international court.
Peres said the United Nations had agreed that Israeli military personnel would be allowed to testify anonymously with a guarantee of immunity against prosecution for war crimes.
”Israel is not in the dock, but in the witness stand and should not give the impression of having anything to hide,” he said.
Armed forces chief General Shaul Mofaz, quoted by the daily Maariv, for his part said no soldiers should be summoned to testify.
The UN team, led by Finland’s former president Martti Ahtisaari, waited at the world body’s headquarters in Geneva and was prepared to leave for the region once it got the nod from the Israeli cabinet.
Meanwhile, Irene Kahn, secretary general of the rights group Amnesty International arrived in Jenin on Sunday to visit the camp along with a team of legal and military advisers.
Amnesty last week called for an international inquiry into possible war crimes in the battle for the camp and urged Israel to drop its reservations and allow a UN fact-finding mission into the camp.
Israeli officials were on edge after the killing on Saturday of four Israelis, including a six-year-old girl, by three Palestinian gunmen who went house-to-house in a shooting spree in the West Bank settlement of Adora.
The shooting near the city of Hebron was the first deadly Palestinian attack in two weeks and drew an angry response from Israel a day after coming under heavy US pressure to immediately end its military sweep on the West Bank.
”It is obvious Israel will have to continue its fight against terrorism and take all necessary measures to this end,” representative Arie Mekel said. ”After a two-week lull, the attacks are starting again and we will have to reconsider our policy.”
Israeli officials said on Sunday they had thwarted a major Palestinian attack but would not give any details, though a military source said an unidentified gunman had been caught trying to infiltrate the West Bank from neighbouring Jordan.
In Bethlehem, officials said talks to end the standoff at the Church of Nativity would resume on Sunday after the chief Palestinian negotiator met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in his besieged Ramallah base and said he had received new instructions.
Salah al-Taamari would give no details but he rejected speculation that a deal on ending the siege had already been struck. ”There is no agreement. When we meet with the Israelis, we will convey our position.”
Four rounds of negotiations last week produced no end to the blockade of one of Christianity’s holiest sites where about 200 Palestinians have sought refuge, including 30 wanted by Israel.
Lebanon’s fundamentalist group Hezbollah on Sunday suggested exchanging four Israelis in its custody for Palestinians besieged in Bethlehem and Ramallah. But the proposal was rejected by an Israeli representative as ”not serious.”
Outside the region, US, Saudi, Palestinian and Israeli officials kept up contacts over the weekend on a Saudi plan to halt 19 months of violence between the Israelis and Palestinians and re-launch peace talks, US sources said.
During his meeting with US President George Bush in Texas on Thursday, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz outlined an eight-point plan designed to defuse the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.
The plan included an Israeli pullback from re-occupied Palestinian areas, creation of a multinational peacekeeping force for the region, a halt to Israeli settlement construction and a withdrawal from Arab lands seized in 1967. Sapa-AFP