Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights condemns Israel’s refusal to allow a UN fact-finding mission access into the devastated Jenin refugee camp.
The Israeli government’s latest action follows a series of demands regarding the mission that the Mezan Center finds unacceptable.
These include: Insistence on a “fact-finding” rather than investigative mission; Refusal to allow the mission to draw conclusions or make recommendations based upon its findings.
Refusal to allow the mission’s findings to lead to possible war crimes indictments against those responsible for the destruction; Veto power over the movements of the mission’s members; Presence of Israeli officials in any meetings with non-Palestinian officials.
  Leading human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, as well as Palestinian and international NGO’s, the European Parliament, United Nations officials have confirmed that the Israeli Occupation Forces committed war crimes in the former refugee camp at Jenin as well as throughout West Bank cities and towns.
Special UN envoy to the Middle East, Terje Roed-Larsen, described the conditions in Jenin as “horrifying beyond belief”.
These crimes follow a pattern of systematic violations of Palestinians’ human rights and other war crimes that have been occurring with even more frequency since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000.
We question the United Nations’ complicity with Israel’s demands at a time when an international monitoring presence should have been sent in immediately to stop all on-going violations.
We ask why the United Nations refuses to insist that procedures taken after the commission of similar war crimes in the Balkans are not implemented with the same rigor in the case of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, especially in Jenin.
It is our understanding that such procedures are standard policy and should therefore serve as the first stage of the investigative process.
Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights calls upon the international community to: Send an investigative team into the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a first step towards bringing the perpetrators of war crimes to justice.
Insist on enforcing international humanitarian law and oppose the continual policy of double standards applied consistently in the case of Israel.
Dispatch an international protection force to the Occupied Palestinian Territories immediately, especially as the Israeli Occupation Forces continue their incursions and grave breaches of the fourth Geneva Convention in these territories.
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