Rights groups slam Israel over excessive violence

JERUSALEM, (AFP)- Israel came under fire from human rights activists again Thursday for turning a blind eye to Jewish settlers who kill Palestinans, a day after being pilloried for using excessive force against the Palestinian uprising.

Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said settlers have killed six Palestinians during the current Palestinian intifada, with Israeli law enforcement agencies investigating only two of the deaths.

UN human rights investigators also called Wednesday for international monitors to be deployed in the Palestinian territories, where they say Israel has used "excessive and disproportionate force" since the eruption of violence nearly six months ago that has cost more than 440 lives.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has repeatedly blamed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's forces for instigating anti-Israeli attacks and refused to resume negotiations until he orders a halt to the violence.

A US-led commission probing the causes of the intifada is currently in the region holding talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials. In its report, B'Tselem catalogued numerous attacks against Palestinians by settlers, citing witnesses, and highlighted the danger of armed settler patrols becoming an organised militia.

"The violence occurs against the background of leniency and prolonged impotence of the Israeli law enforcement authorities," it said in a 52-page report entitled "Tacit Consent."

"Even if the Israeli authorities do not directly encourage violent acts against Palestinian civilians, their neglect leads to the same results," it said, accusing them of "flagrant discrimination" in the treatment of settlers and Palestinians.

Around 200,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, land occupied by Israel in war 34 years ago, but their presence there is illegal under international law.

There are another 200,000 Jews living in 10 large enclaves built in Israeli-occupied Arab east Jerusalem, but the report does not deal with them. B'Tselem also said that while Palestinian demands for the evacuation of settlements were "legitimate," it did not justify harming residents, and called on Arafat's self-rule authority to take action to prevent deliberate attacks.

Since late September, Palestinians have killed 22 Israeli civilians and wounded many others, B'Tselem said. It said that since the beginning of the first intifada in 1987, 119 Palestinians, among them 23 minors, have been killed by settlers and other Israeli civilians

"In addition, over the past few months, settlers fired at and wounded Palestinians, threw stones at Palestinian vehicles, damaged property, uprooted trees, burned a mosque, harmed Palestinian medical teams, attacked journalists, prevented farmers from reaching their fields and blocked roads," it said.

An Israeli police spokesman said their forces "carry out their duties in an objective, professional manner without making a distinction between religion, race or sex." But Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh, a former deputy defence minister, conceded that the police could do better.

"It is true that small groups of extremist settlers are waging violence," he told army radio, but said it was "unfair to make generalisations and accuse the 200,000 settlers of the incidents presented in the document."

In Geneva, a three-member UN human rights team called Wednesday for the immediate establishment of an "adequate and effective" international presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, saying it was beyond dispute that Israeli security forces had used "excessive and disproportionate force."

"Even in life-threatening situations, minimum force should be used against civilians," it said. However, in a meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday, Sharon underscored his opposition to the deployment of UN observers, echoing his Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

"Israel is not initiating any acts of terror, we are only reacting," Peres said Wednesday. "What will the force do, just mark our reactions to their terror?"