Update | Terms of Reference | Committee Membership
Tangential Note? | Sources | Points to Ponder

Update

The UN fact-finding team investigating the events in the Jenin refugee camp was due to arrive in Israel on Sunday after a short delay. Israel originally gave a green light to a fact-finding mission Friday April 19th, then requested a postponement, following Secretary General Annan's changes to the committee's mandate after he announced the members of the expert panel on April 22nd. There were two days of consultations between Israeli representatives about the UN, which brought some modifications of expert advisers, but other problems have not been resolved and the Israeli Cabinet decision is overshadowed by the implications of refusing to cooperate with the mission.

There are three issues on the table: the terms of reference, its professional members, and the witness and testimony procedures.

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Terms of Reference

The official reason for the Israeli consultations was that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had altered the fact-finding mission's terms of reference from strictly fact-finding to issues linked to other agendas, on which Israel had not been consulted for consent.

Generally, a Fact-Finding Committee is mandated to document events and evidence, and make a summary of these facts; it should be impartial in its acceptance of evidence, but relate only to the area on which it has been empowered. Such a team does not present conclusions, leaving these to other instances.

As these conditions were modified, with Anan calling on the panel 'to be guided by UN resolutions in drawing its conclusion', while the team's evidence hearing terms were changed to a selective agenda, Israel became gravely concerned at the ramifications.

• First and foremost was that this might lead to a recommendation that Annan set up an International Commission of Inquiry - which would mean that depositions might subsequently be used in a War Crimes Trial against individual soldiers, or Israeli government figures.
• This procedure would initiated automatically from the insertion of "conclusions" to the report.
• It also leaves the way open for a UN dispatch of international observers.

Israel is demanding that the committee deal solely with clarifying the facts, as was determined by the UN Security Council decision, rather than drawing conclusions or making recommendations, especially ones that could result in prosecutions.

Israel is also demanding that the mission look not only at the humanitarian issue, but also the terrorist groups who have used the camp as a base for suicide bombings and has demanded that the UN report present facts and no conclusions, especially ones that could result in prosecutions.

"We want to resolve this," said Aaron Jacob, Israel's deputy UN ambassador. "The focus should not be only on the Israeli military operation, but also on why and how civilians in the refugee camp were allowed to become a center of terrorist activities."

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said on Israel Radio Sunday morning that Israel must cooperate with the UN fact-finding committee in order to prove that the IDF did not carry out a massacre in the refugee camp, as the Palestinians have claimed.
"The Palestinians are claiming 3,000 civilians killed, while we know of seven. […] But Israel will determine who will testify on its behalf. That is a central issue."

In Washington, Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Gordon Smith (R-Oregon) expressed their displeasure with the UN's failure to hold the Palestinians accountable for what transpired in Jenin.

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Committee Membership

"The composition of the committee was decided without our consultation or agreement," said a government official last week. "We are a sovereign country and do not have to accept these kinds of dictates."

The members of the team consist of former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, chairman; Cornelio Sommaruga, a former president of the International Committee of the Red Cross; and Sadako Ogata, a former UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Prime Objection
When UN Secretary General Kofi Annan announced the composition of his fact-finding team on Monday night, the inclusion of the former president of the International Red Cross, Cornelio Sommaruga was a major cause of distress in Jerusalem.

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote an article two years ago on the controversy regarding the black-balling of the Magen David Adom symbol at the ICRC, where the Star of David is not a recognized symbol. At the AIPAC Conference in Los Angeles, Bernadine Healy, who was President of the American Red Cross in 1999, confirmed the story. Following her speech to her Federation that year, criticizing the ICRC's continued and inexcusable exclusion of Israel's emergency medical service symbol, the Red Star of David, Mr Sommaruga said (as quoted by Krauthammer), "If we're going to have the Shield of David, why would we not have to accept the swastika?"

Israel, according to this official, is also unhappy that three of the four members of the committee are political officials, rather than military officers, trained in analyzing battlefield events in a detached manner.

Subsequently, Israel requested that the team's military adviser, retired US Maj.-Gen. William Nash, be made a full team member. Annan refused, and Nash remains an adviser.

UN spokesman Fred Eckhard confirmed that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who met Thursday April 25th at the UN headquarters in New York with a legal delegation from Jerusalem, has added Peter Fitzgerald of Ireland as a police adviser, to the mission together with another military adviser following a request by Israel, and this was also stated by Anan on Friday.

Israel is no less dismayed by the following choice and the hand that played it, because it appears designed to frame Israel for charges at the new International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague.

The "expert, impartial" Forensic Adviser named to the Jenin team is Dr. Helena Ranta, whose 1999 EU Commission report on the Racak events in Kossovo deliberately ignored the documented reports and evidence (with AP live film) that those allegedly executed at close range by the Serbs were, in fact, armed Muslim KLA terrorists who were shot in combat. The other evidence was suppressed. The upshot was an immediate NATO decision to bombard the Serbs from the air and this report was presented intact and unquestioned at the War Crimes Tribunal.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27423

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Tangential Note?

To the foreign observer, there may be nothing wrong with sending a Panel of experts to Jenin, and objections might be centered on the fact that the present committee does not have any experts as full members, and the identity of those who are full members.

However, Israel sees this within the context of Arafat's campaign to internationalize the jurisdiction of the conflict, supported by the Europeans. That, it feels, would be an infringement of Israeli sovereignty; moreover, the Peacekeeping and Observer forces have exhibited indifference to incidents against Israelis (which their remits do not cover), and infringement of their own impartiality in collaboration with Hizbullah.

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Sources

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Points to Ponder

1. There have been many examples from around the world of persecution of / atrocities against civilian populations, yet the UN has maintained silence on all these issues.

Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer accused the Palestinians of committing a massacre in attacks on an Israeli nightclub in Tel Aviv and in other places.

"In the last month, 137 (Israeli) people were slaughtered and almost 700 were wounded. Is anyone investigating that?" he asked.

• Why does this happen?
• What large-scale events do you think the UN should have investigated to date?
• What should other countries be saying and doing about these violations?
• Read More

2. Arab media accounts of the battle in the Jenin refugee camp were translated by MEMRI and give interviews with gunmen and open accounts of terrorist-laid booby traps.

http://www.memri.org/news.html#1019657885 and Jonathan Cook published a similar interview for Al Ahram (Egypt).

• Hold the internal Palestinian versions against what the western media are reporting and evaluate the differences.
• What grounds are there from this for a Fact-Finding Committee?
• How do you rate the Committee's chances of and competence in receiving and analyzing factual evidence impartially?
• Draw conclusions and recommendations…

3. Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposed the acceptance of the UN committee, telling Israel Radio last week that it, "will produce results that will damage Israel. It is completely illegitimate."

• To which two separate issues is he referring?
• Is it helpful to place these issues side by side?
• Do you agree with either, or both, of these statements - and why/not?

4. The UN condemns and singles out the State of Israel disproportionately; it is the only democracy in a region of Arab dictatorships, but accused of engaging in "massacres", "atrocities"… Why? And UNRWA Commissioner General, Peter Hansen, is one of the prime purveyors of on-the-spot "reports" about "carnage".

• What is your theory?
• Could it be connected to UNWRA interests, influence with the UNCHR, or tactics to prevent inquiry into its own record, together with tacit UN agreement to this?
• How has either point been taken up elsewhere?
• What pro-active and reactive measures do you recommend?

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5. The U.N. has consistently allied itself with terror organizations, like the PLO and Hizbullah, witholding material evidence from the world, which would help capture known terrorists.

• What do you know about the UN record on terror incidents and Israel?
• What do you know about UN involvement in the abduction of Israeli soldiers?

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