Amnesty: Watchdog Needed for Israel

Vice
Premier Shimon Peres Monday rejected a special Amnesty International
report which urged Israel to dismantle the West Bank fence, declaring
that suicide bombings had been curtailed almost entirely since the
barrier was erected.

In a report timed to coincide with this
week's 40th anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War, Amnesty on Monday also
called for Israel to dismantle West Bank settlements and roadblocks,
for the Palestinians to end attacks on Israeli civilians and for the
international community to monitor both sides.

Peres, speaking
on Israel Radio, said the West Bank barrier had proven its worth as an
obstacle to suicide bombings. "The heaviest damages caused during the
intifada, to Israel from a human standpoint, and to the Palestinians
from an economic standpoint, were the result of buses blown up by
suicide bombers who came into Israel from the West Bank.

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"The
fact is, that since the fence was erected, this has almost completely
stopped. Dozens if not hundreds of lives have been spared."

The
Amnesty report also urged Israel to rescind other measures in the West
Bank, including IDF and police checkpoints. Apart from the fence, "The
movement of Palestinians is constrained by a host of other
restrictions, including over 500 checkpoints and blockades, and a
network of roads for Israeli settlers to use (which are) off-limits to
Palestinians, the 45-page Amnesty report said.

It called on
Israel to lift the "regime of blockades and restrictions, halt the
construction of the fence/wall inside the West Bank, and remove the
sections already built there, and to cease the construction or
expansion of Israeli settlements ... as a first step toward removing
Israeli settlements and outposts."

Peres, referring to the
decision to build the fence, said "Israel did not do this as some sort
of caprice. It was the right way to defend life within Israel,
something that every country is obligated, not only entitled, to do."

The
report also appealed to Palestinian militants to end immediately
attacks on civilians and on the Palestinian Authority to take effective
action to stop and prevent such attacks and bring to justice those
responsible.

Israel's Justice Ministry, however, said the
45-page report made only passing reference to Israel's right to
self-defense and paid insufficient attention to the threat to Israeli
human rights posed by the militants.

"The lack of emphasis on
the centrality of Palestinian terror and the obligation of the Israel
Defense Forces to protect Israeli citizens as a result is unreasonable
and creates a deliberately misleading impression," a ministry statement
said.

Report entitled 'Enduring Occupation'
"For 40
years, the international community has failed adequately to address the
Israeli-Palestinian problem; it cannot, must not, wait another 40 years
to do so," Amnesty regional director Malcolm Smart said in a statement
accompanying the special report, which was entitled "Enduring
Occupation."

"Amnesty International is calling for the urgent
deployment of an effective international human rights monitoring
mechanism to monitor compliance by both parties ... with their
obligations under international law," it said.

"This must be
backed up with a commitment to investigate and prosecute, through the
exercise of universal jurisdiction, those who commit by both sides
highlighted the need for an international watchdog. war crimes or other
crimes under international law.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Israel already had sufficient oversight built into its own systems
.
"Israel
is the only Middle Eastern country where human rights are at the center
of our political culture," he said. "In Israel we pride ourselves on
our strong and independent judiciary. Our respect for the rule of law,
individual freedom and human rights are essential in our society,
regardless of whether we're talking about Jew or Arab, Israeli or
Palestinian."

Raji Sourani, head of the Gaza-based Palestinian
Center for Human Rights said what was needed was a peacekeeping force,
rather than monitors with no mandate to intervene, citing a six-nation
monitoring group deployed in 1994 in the West Bank town of Hebron as an
example of passive observers.

"We are calling for international
protection forces," he said. "We have experienced monitoring in Hebron
and elsewhere. It is not effective at all. It's shown to be
impractical."

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