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UNRWA Accuses Israel Of Using Its Buildings As Detention Centres
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Israeli soldiers guard Palestinian men they abducted in West Bank city of Qalqilya last week |
GAZA CITY, March 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) accused Israel Sunday of using the organisation's buildings as detention centres for Palestinians during its reoccupation this month of self-rule areas in the occupied territories.
"In every refugee camp but one in the West Bank that were invaded, the Israelis have been using UNRWA schools as the base to their operations," UNRWA commissioner general Peter Hansen told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Israeli forces transformed schools in the West Bank into "places where they rounded up all males and subjected them to interrogation and blindfolding," Hansen said during a tour of the Gaza Strip.
He accused Israeli soldiers of causing severe damage to the health centre in the West Bank's Al-Amhary refugee camp as well as using it "to shoot from."
Hansen dubbed the army's "systematic" acts in the Palestinian territories as "quite unprecedented ... and totally unacceptable."
He also accused Israeli occupation army of deliberately targeting UNRWA buildings in up to seven refugee camps.
"Nothing justifies the kind of military behaviour we have seen against UN institutions during last week," Hansen added.
Lionel Brisson, UNRWA director of operations, told AFP on March 8 that since the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, erupted in September 2000, 22 UNRWA schools had been damaged, some of them hit five or six times.
Health and food distribution centres have also been hit, causing a total of almost 100,000 dollars in damage, he said.
Meanwhile, Palestinian sources indicated that the Israeli army is constructing a large concentration camp in the Gush-Etzion area along the Hebron-Bethlehem highway, a report said Sunday.
Israel has in recent weeks rounded up thousands of Palestinian civilians, in certain instances, males aged 15-60 and took them into prisons inside Israel, reported the Palestine Chronicle news site.
On March 11, the Israeli occupation army rounded up some 600 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank refugee camp of Dheishe, near Bethlehem, and 100 more from a nearby village Monday, an AFP correspondent and witnesses said.
The 600 were forced to take off their shirts and jackets and put them in a plastic bag before being handcuffed and blindfolded, the correspondent said.
The number of Palestinians still held by Israel is estimated at 5,000, including hundreds of children.
News reports said recently that the "concentration camp has a net area of 10,000 square meters and is surrounded by a three-meter high fence made of barbed wire and other metal hurdles."
It added that "the camp is equipped with numerous torture chambers, including implements and instruments used during interrogations."
The Chronicle reported that Israeli and Palestinian press confirmed last Tuesday that "Palestinian children and minors at the camp were already being subjected to various forms of physical and psychological torture including beating, malnutrition, sleep deprivation and psychological abuse."
"This week, the Israeli army said it was planning to reopen the infamous desert concentration camp, known as "Ketziot" located in the western Negev, not far from the Egyptian borders," the Chronicle reported.
The Hebron camp, which is located to the south of Jerusalem, is reportedly designed to hold 5,000 detainees at a time, it said.
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