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Israelis Deliberately Targeted U.N. Agency : U.N. Official
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| Israeli forces target U.N. agencies. |
OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, March 26 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A senior
United Nations relief official said Israel targeted U.N. facilities
during recent military incursions into Palestinian refugee camps, the
English edition of the Israeli daily newspaper, Ha’aretz, reported.
U.N. official Peter Hansen also said that despite repeated complaints,
Israel had not explained or apologized for assaults that caused nearly
four million dollars in damage to U.N. installations, smashed dozens
of Palestinian refugee homes and traumatized thousands of refugees.
Hansen said Israeli occupation forces had deliberately gone against
U.N. facilities, turning U.N. school rooftops into snipers positions
and using their yards as tank bases or temporary detention centers to
interrogate suspects. Occupation soldiers had also fired at other
facilities, including service centers and ambulances.
"Incursions were often directed very deliberately against UNRWA
installations," Hansen, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency
for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), said in an interview.
Israel denied targeting U.N. facilities and said its operations were
aimed at Palestinian resistance activists.
Hansen said his field visits to refugee camps, UNRWA clinics and
hospitals gave him a different picture.
"Armed activists who were there obviously slipped away before the
Israelis moved in. So the exercise of force was mainly vis-a-vis the
civilian population and it was unfortunately quite indiscriminate,”
he said.
"The
firepower from helicopters, in the nature of things, is not very
precisely targeted,” Hansen added. “In the hospitals and clinics I
had a chance to witness the nature of wounds, multiple wounds and
there were many women and children who were wounded.”
UNRWA, set up to care for Palestinians displaced by Israel's founding
in 1948, has said that 22 schools, four clinics, two ambulances and
four service centers were damaged by Israeli incursions in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip in March.
An UNRWA guard was among more than 100 Palestinians killed by Israeli
occupation troops during the incursions.
Hansen said the incursions cost UNRWA $3.8 million in damage, not
counting the costs to 141 refugee homes destroyed during the Israeli
army operations. "We are going to send them [Israelis] a very
itemized bill down to the last window that was broken, the walls that
were bulldozed and the gates that were blown open."
High
unemployment and a severe economic recession in the Palestinian
territories, blamed on occupation army roadblocks ringing the West
Bank and Gaza, have also made UNRWA's task more difficult.
Hansen said UNRWA, which looks after 3.8 million Palestinian refugees
across the Middle East, including about 1.5 million in the West Bank
and Gaza, had been pushing donor countries to provide $117 million for
the agency's 2002 relief program.
"The response was rather disappointing. The first one we launched
was fully subscribed. So far this year we have pledges for only $34
out of the $117 million and we have actually received less than half a
million dollars so far," he said.
"If we don't see a real change in the degree and speed with which
these commitments are implemented, we could face a very difficult
situation in the emergency program."
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