Military

DATE=10/16/00

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

NUMBER=2-268017

TITLE=AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL / ISRAEL (L ONLY)

BYLINE=LISA SCHLEIN

DATELINE=GENEVA

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: The human rights group Amnesty International is calling on the United Nations to conduct an independent international investigation into what it calls serious human rights abuses in Israel and the occupied territories. Lisa Schlein reports from Geneva.

TEXT: Amnesty International's Middle East researcher Elizabeth Hodgkin has just returned from a 10-day trip to Israel and the occupied territories. Accompanying her on the trip was a senior British police officer who specializes in demonstrations and crowd control. Ms. Hodgkin says one overwhelming conclusion from the evidence they gathered is that the Israelis used excessive force in quelling the riots.

/// HODGKIN ACT 1 ///

There may have been one or two points where Israeli soldiers had the right to return fire because they were fired on. But there was practically no occasion that we visited which could not have been solved by other policing methods of the riots without the loss of life. That's to say that excessive force was used.

/// END ACT ///

Since rioting broke out on September 29th, about 100 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed. An estimated four-thousand people have been injured.

Ms. Hodgkin says Israeli soldiers and police, in both the occupied territories and in Israel, used military methods that are aimed at eliminating the enemy, rather than policing methods which are employed to serve the community and save lives.

She says in almost every case, riots were put down by a rapid and escalating use of firearms. She says Amnesty also is concerned that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have investigated any of the killings.

/// HODGKIN ACT 2 ///

The failure of both sides to investigate has led to the kind of breakdown in the rule of law that is now leading to a greater deterioration. That is to say you are getting stories of Palestinians being killed by settlers and settlers being targeted or being killed by Palestinians.

/// END ACT ///

Amnesty is asking for what it calls a proper inquiry into the killings and human rights abuses by Israelis and Palestinians. It also wants the United Nations to set up a team that could be deployed rapidly to investigate crisis situations such as this. (Signed)

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