"Translat" <kongaead@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:1150225694.541170.136240@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Israel er uden skyld i eksplosionen, som dræbte syv personer på en
Gaza-strand i fredags. Den israelske avis Haaretz skriver følgende i
artiklen:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/726162.html 13/06/2006
IDF probe:
GAZA BEACH BLAST NOT CAUSED BY WAYWARD ARMY SHELL
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent
An Israel Defense Forces committee has concluded that the deaths of
seven members of a Palestinian family at a Gaza beach last Friday were
not caused by an errant IDF artillery shell.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz, IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz and Major
General Meir Kalifi, who headed the committee, held a press conference
in Tel Aviv Tuesday evening to present the probe's findings.
"We have enough findings to back up the suspicion that the intention to
describe this as an Israeli event is simply not correct," Peretz said,
continuing, "The accumulating evidence proves that this incident was
not due to Israeli forces."
The committee found that the Palestinians were not killed by an Israeli
artillery shell, as had been assumed by the foreign press and much of
the Israeli media. The probe concludes that the blast was probably
caused by an explosive device buried in the sand, but does not
determine categorically whether it was planted by Palestinians or was
an old IDF dud.
The conclusions of the panel came after days of debate, and relies on
an analysis of the exact time of each artillery strike, the location of
each shell's landing and the shrapnel extracted from the bodies of
wounded Palestinians evacuated to Israeli hospitals.
IDF gradually moves away from accepting responsibility
Shortly after the incident occurred, the army was leaning toward
accepting the assumption that the disaster was caused by an errant
Israeli artillery shell. While the IDF spokesman's initial announcement
did not formally accept responsibility, it expressed deep regret for
the deaths and announced an end to the artillery fire on Gaza until the
incident had been investigated. The foreign media unequivocally blamed
Israel for the deaths, and the Israel media (including Haaretz) tended
to do the same.
But as time passed, and more data was amassed, the IDF's assessment
changed: Some pieces of data seemed to rule out the possibility that an
Israeli shell was responsible, while others bolstered the theory that a
Palestinian mine was to blame.
The importance of the committee's findings are obviously mitigated by
the fact that ultimately, the IDF is being cleared by an IDF
investigation. This is not an international inquiry, or even an
external, civilian inquiry. Thus the next step will be leveraging these
findings to affect public opinion - Israeli (where the battle is
already largely won; even human rights organizations cast doubt on the
Palestinian claims on Monday), international and even Palestinian.
Kalifi's committee examined a great deal of material, including film
footage shot by Arab television stations at the scene. Some of the
findings have already been reported: that five of the shells definitely
landed some 250 meters from the beach, and that the explosion occurred
at least eight minutes after the missing sixth shell was fired.
However, this evidence has now been bolstered by three new findings:
* The shrapnel. Three people wounded in the blast are now hospitalized
in Israel. Shrapnel was apparently removed from their bodies, and this
is likely to reinforce the conclusion that the explosion was caused by
a bomb rather than a shell.
* The crater. Based on photographs, the crater left on the beach by the
blast seems to have been made by an explosion from below (a mine), not
a hit from above (a shell).
* Intelligence. Israel has amassed considerable information indicating
that over the past few weeks, ever since Israeli commandos infiltrated
Gaza and killed a rocket-launching cell, Hamas has been systematically
mining the northern Gaza beach in an attempt to keep Israeli commandos
from landing there again.
The main hole in the army's evidence is the missing sixth shell, the
first to be fired whose landing site has not been determined. From an
examination of the cannon, the army is convinced that the shell could
not have fallen on the beach, almost half a kilometer from its intended
target. But there is no firm proof of this, only an educated guess.
Moreover, the Palestinians will have their own experts analyzing the
shrapnel removed from the wounded treated in Gaza, and they will
doubtless present conclusions contrary to those of the Israeli experts.
In the past, Israel has occasionally succeeded in refuting
responsibility for casualties. A good example is the now discredited
claim that Israel massacred Palestinians in Jenin in April 2002. This
time, however, the game may already be lost.
Nevertheless, the IDF intends to appeal to Palestinian public opinion
as well, hoping that doubts about the cause of the blast will undermine
public support for Hamas, and specifically for its resumption of
attacks on Israel. This method worked last September, when Hamas
weaponry exploded during a rally in Jabalya and killed 20 bystanders.
Hamas accused Israel and launched a rocket barrage, but the Palestinian
public did not buy that explanation and Palestinian doubts, combined
with the IDF's harsh response, caused Hamas to cease its fire two days
later
Ja bæ og bræk, og hvis UN, eller andre fordømmer Israel, så stemmer USA nok
VETO, igen igen igen igen igen igen?
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?referrerid=22705&t=196634
http://www.caabu.org/press/documents/vetoes.html