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| Israel-Palestine |
| UNRWA chief accuses Israel of inciting hatred against his work |
| 2004-11-02 |
| EFL The head of the UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees accused Israel on Monday of a smear campaign against his agency and crippling its work by destroying its property, blocking aid convoys, and keeping Palestinians from work. In extremely candid remarks, Peter Hansen said Israel incited distrust toward the UN Relief and Works Agency with a barrage of accusations the group is never given a chance to respond to. "We are working under very dangerous circumstances and we don't need false stories to make these circumstances even more dangerous than they already are," Hansen told a breakfast meeting with members of the UN Correspondents Association. Hansen has asked for - and so far has not received - an Israeli apology after it admitted it wrongly accused the agency of allowing an ambulance to be used to smuggle Palestinian rockets and had claimed he was anti-Israeli. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has backed Hansen in the dispute, what a surprise and Hansen rejected the notion that he or his agency - known as UNRWA - was biased. "We aren't anti-Israel, we hate all Jews equally." "They call me a hater of Israel," Hansen said. "If they are drawing a caricature of me, the caricature has to have a certain likeness to reality. I don't find any likeness between the caricature they're drawing of me and when I look at myself in the mirror. Of course not. To do that there would have to be a reflection. He also said his complaints were perfectly reasonable and questioned whether Israel would ever find anyone else acceptable for the job. Probably true. Nobody acceptable would want to take on that job. "Many have told me - and I tend to agree - that anybody doing it with conscience could not have done things much differently than I have," he said. So you are saying you have no conscience? The agency provides health, educational and other services to some 4.2 million Palestinians and their descendants scattered across the Middle East. Israel has long accused UNRWA - and the United Nations generally - of bias toward it. On its Web site, the Israeli mission says many UN agencies spread anti-Israeli propaganda and accuses the UN General Assembly of undercutting the Middle East peace process with frequent resolutions condemning Israel, which pass thanks in part to the heavy influence of Arab and Asian nations. Among the allegations Hansen leveled against Israel were blocking Palestinian teachers from going to UN funded schools, costing them about 200,000 teacher days of class. He repeated previous complaints that Israel delays hundreds of containers of relief goods and has detained UNRWA staff without charges. The latest affront, Hansen said, was that Israel has distributed a 29-slide PowerPoint presentation, received by at least four nations' foreign ministers, attacking UNRWA. "Needless to say nobody from Israel ever showed us the slide show," he said, offering to make a point-by-point refutation of the Israeli claims. Ah. His complaint is that he's not in the loop. Hansen made the remarks several hours before delivering his annual report on UNRWA's work to a General Assembly committee. Dated to June 30, 2004, it accuses Israel of violating international law, including the Geneva Convention and the UN Charter by its movement restrictions on UNRWA personnel. But the Palestinians operate well within International Law. Got it. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #2 This dork is an anti Isreal cheer leader. He is lucky Isreal doesn't detain him. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2004-11-02 6:32:07 PM |
| #1 Thought the Geneva Convention only applied to prisoners of war. What is the application to the Palestinian "refugees"? |
| Posted by: RWV 2004-11-02 6:03:17 PM |