What your local news services don't report: from The Economist of 4 May 2002:
Quote:
The ugliness and danger of the confrontation with the UN took Israeli ministers by surprise. They had been given to believe that a convenient deal had been worked out with the United States, whereby the siege of Yasser Arafat in his headquarters in Ramallah would be lifted in return for America ensuring that the Jenin inquirey would give Israel no grief [that the above recommendations of Human Rights Watch would be ignored]. This was the backdrop to Israel's acceptance on April 19th, of a Security Council resolution [UN 1405?], drafted by America, empowering Mr Annan to set up the Jenin fact-finding team.
Mr Arafat was freed from his confinement on May 2nd after Ariel Sharon was subject to a brief and rare application of insistence by George Bush. Israel's prime minister then rammed the decision to end the siege through the full cabinet on April 28th. ...
Cabinet hardliners had balked at this and the prime minister himself admitted it was a zig-zag: only a week before he had sworn "to go to elections if need be" ... In fact, the extradition demand was itself a zig-zag. ...
Mr Sharon has been invited, as part of the general quid pro quo, to visit Washingtion next week. But the curious deal seems to have come nastily unstuck over the UN and its fact-finders. ...
All week, recriminations have been flying around Israel's cabinet. David Levy, a former foreign minister, accused the present incumbent, Shimon Peres, of botching the negotiations with Mr Annan. Mr Peres, for his part, criticised the army's near frantic anxieties over the fact-finding team. The chief of staff, General Shaul Mofaz, had reportedly threatened to resign should a single soldier be summoned to testify. And, most important, a senior general, Amos Gilad, gave warning that the fact-finders would "pave the way to the internationalisation of the conflict".
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Notice what Israel fears. Honest testimony by its own soldiers of its army's actions. International settlement of the conflict. International peace keepers. Each means that the current Likud government could be subject to international law - crimes against humanity - and that Israel could not annex the occupied territories. Both of these events are directly in opposition to real objectives of Likud in general, and of Sharon in particular. Currently, Israel answers to no one even though crimes against humanity have been commited either by Israeli soldiers or upon orders from their Likud government. Most important, Israel's extremists do not want their real objectives publicized - the annexation of occupied territories in direct violation of UN 242, 338, Oslo Accords, and Madrid peace conference.
These serious accusations require public airing and international investigation; all of which Likud extremists fear since currently they have carte blanc and a series of green lights from Washington. One of those HRW recommendations would eliminate those green lights.