Annan Declares Israeli Denial ‘Odd,’ But Will Not Elaborate

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The New York Sun

UNITED NATIONS – Secretary-General Annan signaled his impatience yesterday with Israeli fact-finding shortly before an official Israeli report cleared its army of any wrongdoing in last Friday’s deadly explosion on a Gaza beach that killed Palestinian Arab civilians.

Just before the publication in Tel Aviv of the results of the Israeli forensic investigation – and based on no independent findings of his own – Mr. Annan said blaming the event on a Palestinian Arab-planted mine sounded “odd.”

The image of 8-year-old Huda Ghalia weeping as she ran along the Gaza beach after the explosion killed her family was broadcast around the world, and ensured that the blast became an iconic event that Mr. Annan urged Israel to investigate thoroughly.

As Israel claimed innocence in the attack, it nevertheless said its missiles were involved in a separate deadly incident yesterday. At least 11 people were killed during an air-launched Gaza attack on a terror cell preparing to launch rockets into southern Israel.

Two missiles were fired at a car carrying Katyusha rockets on a busy Gaza street. One destroyed the car and the rockets. A second missile, launched several minutes later, was aimed at members of a terrorist cell responsible for rocket-launching operations. It killed the cell members, along with onlookers that included at least two children. Mr. Annan said he was “shocked and saddened” by the event.

The Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot reported that Prime Minister Olmert was “angered” by a phone conversation with Mr. Annan last Friday, in which the secretary-general accused Israel of violating international law.

“Is the firing of hundreds of Kassam rockets in accordance with international law?” Mr. Olmert was quoted as asking Mr. Annan. “Why didn’t you phone me after 30 rockets were fired at Israel and say you wanted it investigated?”

According to the newspaper, Mr. Annan replied that he wasn’t aware of the barrage of rockets that has intensified in recent weeks. He said yesterday, however, that “with regards to the attacks by the Palestinians, I have always condemned it and ask them to stop doing it.”

Mr. Annan said he talked about the Kassam rockets with the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas. He added that it was “only last weekend that I spoke to the Israeli prime minister about this issue when the incident at the beach occurred.”

As for the Israeli findings on the Gaza beach attack, Mr. Annan said, “One would need to look at the investigation – how thorough, how competent it is, and how acceptable it is for one to extrapolate from there.”

He did not expect to sanction an independent U.N. investigation, Mr. Annan said, but added, “To find a mine on the beach is rather odd.” Israeli officials have said they believe a mine or old ordnance could have caused the explosion.

“We have enough findings to back up the suspicion that the intention to describe this as an Israeli event is simply not correct,” Defense Minister Amir Peretz told reporters in Tel Aviv. The army chief of staff, Dan Halutz, added, “We can say, surely, that the Israel Defense Force is not responsible for the incident.”

Mr. Peretz is a resident of Sderot, a southern town targeted by the Kassam rockets. Hamas officials yesterday threatened to widen the rocket attacks to include larger cities, and launch a campaign that will include suicide bombings.

An inquiry committee headed by Major General Meir Kalifi, the deputy head of the IDF Ground Forces Command, accounted for “each and every shell …fired from the sea, the air, and from the artillery on the land,” Mr. Halutz said. “We can track each and every one according to a timetable and according to the accuracy of where they hit the ground.”

The committee also relied on shrapnel that was removed from the bodies of three Arab victims who were injured in Friday’s incident and sent to Israeli hospitals. According to the Foreign Ministry’s Web site, the quality of the shrapnel was consistent with an explosion caused “by a bomb rather than a shell.” Photographs of the crater left on the beach were caused by “an explosion from below (a mine), not a hit from above (a shell),” according to the Web site.

In addition, Israeli intelligence officers “amassed considerable information” indicating that “Hamas has been systematically mining the northern Gaza beach in an attempt to keep Israeli commandos from landing there again,” the three-day investigation found.

Mr. Abbas said, however, that Israel is deliberately attacking civilians, attempting to “wipe out the Palestinian people.”

“Every day there are dead and injured, all innocent, all passers-by,” he said.

Israel is attempting to “destabilize the Palestinian Authority on all fronts,” the Palestinian permanent observer at the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, told The New York Sun, saying yesterday’s air attack is proof that Israel wants to kill civilians. The object is “so that Prime Minister Olmert can pave the way for his unilateralist plan, by saying that there are no partners” on the Arab side, he added.


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