Israel ready to let observers monitor conflict says TV

By PHIL REEVES

JERUSALEM - Israel is on the verge of allowing an international team of observers to monitor its conflict with the Palestinians, a television station reported yesterday. But the team would have only limited powers.

Channel One television said Ehud Barak's administration was moving towards approving foreign observers as a "face-saving gesture" for Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, who has been pressing for a 2,000-strong UN protection force.

News of the Prime Minister's about-face emerged as a report by Mary Robinson, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, called for the Geneva Convention signatories to "assume their responsibility," and for the establishment of an international monitoring body.

Ms Robinson demanded that Israel cease building new Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and withdraw from those in densely populated Palestinian areas.

Her report criticised Israel's use of live ammunition and heavy weapons and called for it to pull back from flashpoints.

It recommended compensation for victims of unlawful force, and said Israeli security forces should do more to protect Palestinians from attacks by Israeli settlers.

She said she was "shocked and dismayed and even devastated" at the plight of Palestinians confronting Israeli forces, although she credited Israel for allowing her to make her visit and letting her confront Israeli forces with Palestinian grievances.

"You cannot separate the human rights situation from the reality of occupation," she said.

"That reality means the daily acts of discrimination, inequality, humiliation, powerlessness of occupation."

Although Israel is sensitive to international criticism, it brushes aside attacks on its human rights performance, especially from the UN, which it sees as perennially hostile.

Its reaction to Ms Robinson's report was no exception. Her hard-hitting findings were immediately criticised by Israel's representative to the UN in Geneva, Yaakov Levy.

In remarks that will surprise international human rights groups – which have repeatedly condemned Israel's shooting of demonstrators as war crimes – he said it was "evident to all that the character of the rioting involves the use of automatic firearms, bombings of civilian buses in Israel and the lynching of Israelis".

The violence showed no sign of abating yesterday as the number of deaths edged over 280. More fighting broke out in the West Bank after the shooting of five Palestinians by Israeli troops near Qalqilya. The Israeli army said they were "terrorists"; Palestinian security officials and witnesses said they were unarmed civilians.

Ms Robinson's findings will add to the pressure for an international observer force. While Israel and the US have rejected Mr Arafat's call for a protection force, Mr Barak, now seems to be leaning towards an observer force, if it is strictly limited in scope and not part of the UN.

Channel One said it would be modelled on an expanded version of the international presence in the West Bank town of Hebron – known as TIPH, the Temporary International Presence in Hebron – which was established in 1994 after the massacre in a mosque of 29 Palestinians by a Jewish fanatic.

TIPH has long been criticised outside Israel for being ineffective. Its 84 observers, who patrol the city's troublespots by car, are banned from talking to the press; their findings are sent to a joint Israel-Palestinian committee and to its member governments – Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy and Turkey – whose influence over the Middle East is limited. It cannot intervene in any conflict.

In the past eight weeks, Hebron has seen riots, rocket attacks, gun battles and a long curfew of Arab households. Ms Robinson saw the limitations of the international presence when a TIPH car in her entourage was shot at.

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