GAZA: U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour says Gazans suffering 'massive' human rights violations as Palestinians gather in targeted building to stop Israeli strike

A senior United Nations official described Gaza as suffering "massive" human rights violations during a visit to the territory on Monday (November 20) and urged all sides to be bold in trying to end the violence. Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, who is on a two-day trip to the region, spent time at the house of a family that lost more than a dozen members in the shelling on November 8, when Israel says a mistake led to a barrage of artillery shells hitting the neighbourhood. Arbour told reporters during a visit to Beit Hanoun, "I came here first of all to express my sympathies, my condolences and to show the concern of the whole of the United Nations for civilians that, I think this speaks for itself, how exposed and vulnerable they are. The, the violations of human rights, I think in these territories is massive from economic and social rights to this vulnerability, to this violence that is totally out of control," she said, while visiting the town the Israeli army shelled earlier this month, killing 19 civilians. Asked what she planned to do about the rights violations, Arbour said she will help to "keep the conscience of the many who care about what happens in this part of the world alive". More than 350 Palestinians, almost half of them civilians according to Palestinian doctors and human rights workers, have been killed since Israel launched an offensive in Gaza in late June, following the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. The offensive was designed not only to try to trace the captured soldier, who was seized by militants including members of the governing Palestinian faction Hamas, but also to stop militants firing rockets into Israeli territory from Gaza. Israeli authorities say militants have fired more than 300 of the rockets into southern Israel this year, targeting towns like Sderot, just across the frontier from Gaza. Last week, a woman resident of Sderot was killed in a barrage, the first death since July 2005, and others have been wounded, while scores are treated each week for panic. While Arbour made her statement in Beit Hanoun, in the town of Beit Lahiya, scores of Palestinian men gathered on and around a house of the family of Wael Rajab, head of the Hamas-led police force in Beit Lahiya, to prevent the Israeli airforce from attacking the building. On Sunday (November 19) Israel's air force cancelled a planned raid on the home of a Gaza militant after hundreds of Palestinians barricaded themselves inside the building, an Israeli military spokesman and witnesses said. Israel had issued a warning to the family of a militant of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) in Jabalya refugee camp to evacuate their home because it would soon be bombed, the spokesman and Palestinian witnesses said. The PRC is one of several militant groups behind daily rocket attacks from Gaza against southern Israel. Hundreds of neighbours and protesters gathered at the site, many barricading themselves inside the house and on its roof in defiance of the warning, witnesses said. Hours after the successful "human shield" protest, an Israeli aircraft attacked a car carrying Hamas militants on a crowded Gaza City street. Hospital officials said an elderly passer-by died of his wounds after being hit in the strike. An Israeli military spokesman confirmed the raid had been called off because of the gathering.

ITN Source | November 20, 2006

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