A rchive Date
[ 15-04-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Palestine ]
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[http://canoe.ca/Canoe/canoecnews.html
Bodies retrieved in refugee camp
Sharon calls for Mideast conference
By JAMIE TARABAY - The Associated Press
Monday, Apr. 15, 2002
JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank - Palestinian medics accompanied by Israeli troops began searching for bodies in this devastated refugee camp Monday, as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat conditionally accepted an Israeli proposal for a Mideast peace conference led by the United States.
Ambulances drove along the alleys of the shantytown, which has been the scene of the deadliest fighting in Israel's 17-day-old military offensive. Israel and the Palestinians have argued over who will retrieve the bodies - part of their bitter dispute over what happened in the weeklong battle.
Palestinians have charged that hundreds of people have been killed in the camp, including many civilians, while Israel said dozens died, most of them gunmen.
Fadi Jarar, a medic for the Palestinian Red Crescent, said soldiers were leading the ambulances to the bodies. He said his crew discovered one body under a collapsed three-story building. "We couldn't pull it out because we were afraid the rubble would collapse on us," Jarar said.
In Israel, meanwhile, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called for a Mideast peace conference led by the United States. Sharon told a meeting of business leaders Sunday that he brought up the idea in a meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell, and "this idea is acceptable to the United States."
Sharon proposed that Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco and Palestinian representatives take part. Sharon envisions a conference without Arafat whom he has branded a terrorist, his advisers said.
"It's really possible" to have a conference without Arafat, said Israeli Justice Minister Meir Shetreet. "Arafat is no longer the head of a state or someone who wants to be the head of state, he's the head of a terror organization."
A senior U.S. official said the idea was discussed as part of a way to move forward politically, but more talks were needed.
Arafat expressed conditional acceptance of the idea. In a phone call to Fox News, he said, "I am ready for immediate conference, but at the same time immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces."
However, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat was critical.
"This is an attempt by Sharon to turn the clock many years backward," he said. Erekat said there is an Arab proposal on the table for Israel to withdraw from all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and Golan Heights in exchange for peace, "and what is needed from Sharon is to say yes or no to this initiative."
Powell met separately Sunday with Arafat and Sharon, but no progress toward a truce was reported.
On Monday, Powell left for Beirut and Damascus for talks about growing tension on the Israel-Lebanon border. Hezbollah guerrillas have been firing rockets and mortars at Israeli border posts and villages, drawing Israeli retaliation.
Israel's security Cabinet, meanwhile, approved the creation of "buffer zone" in the West Bank that is to make it harder for Palestinian militants to infiltrate into Israel. Fences and other barriers are to be erected along parts of the buffer zone, including in the Jerusalem area.
Cabinet Secretary Gideon Saar emphasized that Israel was not erecting a border unilaterally. "We are not talking about a continuous fence, but about different types of obstacles at different places," said Saar.
He said National Security Council head Uzi Dayan proposed blocking roads between the West Bank and Israel and authorizing a few crossing points for goods.
The cease-fire line between Israel and the West Bank has never been fortified, as Israeli governments do not recognize it as a border. Lack of a fence means that Palestinians can easily cross into Israel. Thousands enter illegally every day, looking for work, and so do suicide bombers and other attackers.
In the Jenin camp, several convoys of ambulances drove through the alleys Monday - a day after the Israeli Supreme Court rejected an army plan to bury most of the bodies from the camp in an Israeli cemetery, and insisted the Red Cross monitor the gathering of the corpses.
In the camp, medics in surgical masks, latex gloves and white uniforms placed gallons of drinking water in the streets, and residents took them into their homes.
Dr. Tim Keenan, who headed one of the Red Cross teams, said water and electricity to the local hospital had been restored. He said his first priority was to look for wounded people. Before the search began, the medics and ambulances were thoroughly searched by Israel troops, Keenan said.
After banning reporters from the camp throughout the battle, the Israeli military took a group of journalists through on Sunday. Soldiers said so far they had found 40 bodies, most of them gunmen.
Reporters were allowed to walk down the middle of camp streets, warned by soldiers that explosives still littered the area. The reporters, members of a pool allowed into the camp by the military, saw only one body, but soldiers said others were inside houses or buried under rubble.
There was widespread destruction in the camp, where tanks and bulldozers knocked over buildings in their street-to-street fight. In some places, rubble was piled two stories high, with pieces of furniture and personal possessions mixed with broken concrete.
The powerful stench of sewage mixed with garbage strewn on the camp's narrow alleyways. Many houses were empty, some with their front doors open.
Some homes had their windows shut, but the sound of children playing and the aroma of baking bread wafted through, indicating that some people were still around.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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