Amnesty Says Israel Shutting Out Foreign Scrutiny

Amnesty Says Israel Shutting Out Foreign Scrutiny
Fri May 9, 2003 01:05 PM ET

BEIT SAHOUR, West Bank (Reuters) - The rights group Amnesty International accused Israel on Friday of trying to prevent outside scrutiny of its army after a military clamp down on foreign activists working in Gaza and the West Bank.

Israeli troops raided premises in the West Bank used by the International Solidarity Movement on Friday, arresting three people, the ISM said.

Separately, the Israeli army said it would now oblige foreigners entering Palestinian-ruled Gaza to sign a waiver absolving Israel of responsibility for their safety, a procedure already in place for Israeli civilians.

"This comes as a result of recent events in which foreign nationals abused their status to carry out terror attacks," the army statement said, referring to a deadly attack by a British suicide bomber and his accomplice last week in Tel Aviv.

ISM has deployed dozens of foreign volunteers in the West Bank and Gaza combat zones to protect Palestinians from Israeli military actions during a 31-month-old Palestinian uprising.

George Rashmawi, an ISM coordinator in the West Bank, said three women were arrested in Friday's raid -- a U.S. volunteer for the group, an Australian member of Human Rights Watch and a Palestinian who was released shortly afterwards. There was no immediate comment from Human Rights Watch.

Israel maintains that groups like the ISM endanger themselves and soldiers with their actions and disrupt the army's efforts to thwart attacks by Palestinian militants.

The ISM denies any links with the British bomber and his accomplice, who had entered Israel from Gaza and attended an ISM gathering.

Amnesty International said in a statement that it feared the new restrictions aimed "to prevent outside monitoring and scrutiny of the conduct of the Israeli army" and that they could lead to "more killings in Gaza."

Recently in Gaza, a British cameraman was shot as he approached Israeli troops in the dark and an Israeli bulldozer crushed an American ISM member to death as she tried to block the demolition of a Palestinian home.

The raid in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, appeared to be part of a crackdown on the ISM.

Ghassan Andoni, director of Beit Sahour's Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People, a group that helped found the ISM, said the army sent a truck and 15 vehicles to the center.

"There were three women there at the time," he told Reuters. "They (the soldiers) took our servers, laptops and files."

Military sources confirmed the raid. Gil Kleiman, an Israeli police spokesman, said two foreigners had been detained after violating a military order banning them from the area.

He did not identify them, but said their details would be given to the Interior Ministry after they were questioned by police. The ministry is in charge of expulsions from Israel.

The ISM said one of its members had also been detained by Israeli forces at the Israel-Gaza border on Friday.