c. 2003 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ A coalition of international human rights organizations has called on Israel to lift restrictions imposed recently on human rights and humanitarian aid workers in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Meanwhile, Israeli human rights workers held a press conference Thursday (May 29) complaining of new patterns of harassment of their activities.

In a statement released simultaneously in New York and four European capitals, the international organizations, including Amnesty International, the Euro-Mediterranean Network for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch (HRW), the International Commission of Jurists, the International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organisation Against Torture, expressed “deep concern” over the pattern of new restrictions and harassment of international workers operating in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The organizations also condemned a recent remark by Israel’s Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom on the links between the human rights workers and terrorism.

On May 21, Shalom alleged that “most human rights offices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip provide shelter for Palestinian terrorists.”

“We fear that such unsupported allegations are intended to intimidate local and international human rights defenders, and to prevent them from carrying out their daily work,” the international organizations said in a statement.

“In light of the minister’s comments we fear such intimidation and harassment will further increase. Recently, threats to personal safety and restrictions on the activities of local and international human rights and humanitarian workers and peace activists have sharply increased,” the groups said.

In the past year, the Israeli army has killed a foreign peace activist, Rachel Corrie, and gravely injured two others, Tom Hurndall and Brian Avery. A foreign journalist, James Miller, was also shot dead by Israeli soldiers. A military investigation undertaken into Corrie’s killing reportedly found no wrongdoing, although the full findings have not been made public. No findings on any of the other incidents involving foreign nationals have been publicly released.

At least two international human rights workers have been deported in recent weeks, and several others are facing deportation orders, against the climate of a general Israeli government crackdown on visas for tourists and foreign workers.

Israel has also clamped down recently on the travel of international human rights and aid workers in and out of Gaza and the West Bank. That crackdown followed the late April suicide bombing of a popular Tel Aviv cafe by two British nationals who had entered Israel from Gaza.

Those who are permitted to enter the Palestinian territories are obliged to sign a “waiver” that seeks to absolve Israel from responsibility for any death or injury caused by Israeli soldiers.

In a news conference Thursday, a coalition of Israeli human rights organizations said they, too, are facing new military restrictions on their activities.

“Despite the acceptance of the `road map’ by Israel, an escalating campaign of harassment and intimidation by the Israeli government has been initiated not only against international human rights organizations, observers and journalists, but also against the activities of Israeli human rights groups,” the coalition said in a statement.

“After the moves to clear international organizations out of the territories, the new move seems to be targeting Israeli organizations,” said Rabbi Arik Asherman, executive director for the Israeli-based Rabbis for Human Rights.

Asherman, an American-born Reform rabbi, was arrested by Israeli police last Monday as he helped rebuild a Palestinian home that had been destroyed in Arab East Jerusalem, where building restrictions are usually applied with much greater severity than in Jewish parts of the city.

“The family had a letter from the municipality saying that the area was zoned for residential building, and they had been trying to get a permit for the past six months,” Asherman said. “We had been in intensive discussions with the city over delaying the demolition but the police suddenly went ahead and destroyed the house anyway last Monday morning.”

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A week earlier, Asherman said, he was detained and questioned by the Israeli security services and warned about a coming crackdown on the activities of his organization, which includes rabbis from all streams of Judaism, including Orthodoxy.

Ya’acov Rosenberg, assistant director for Rabbis for Human Rights, who is a former sergeant major in the Israeli army reserves, said there seems to have been a change in army behavior over the past few months in potentially conflictual situations such as roadblocks.

“There is more of a tendency to stop Israeli activists, not only internationals, who are monitoring army behavior at roadblocks and engaging in such activities as the escort of Palestinian children to school,” said Rosenberg. “The feeling seems to be, `The fewer witnesses we have around, the better it will be.”’

Rosenberg, an Orthodox Jew who is also a native-born Israeli, recalled his own experience traveling recently with a group of Israeli peace activists to a village in the northern West Bank where the group helped Palestinian villagers replant olive trees that had been uprooted by the construction of the new Israeli security fence, which is eventually to extend around much of the Palestinian territories.

“The soldiers at one roadblock stopped our bus in the middle of the road,” Rosenberg said. “When I approached to speak to them _ and I am this middle-aged, Hebrew-speaking Israeli _ they stopped me two meters away, and made me pull up my shirt to show that I wasn’t carrying any bomb.

“Whereas in the past, many soldiers whom we met at roadblocks thought we were crazy but still behaved cordially … the feeling now seems to be, `The fewer witnesses we have around, the better.”’

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