SWITZERLAND: South Africa's Tutu says he feels honoured to have been asked to head UN mission to Gaza's Beit Hanoun

South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu will head a U.N. fact-finding mission to Gaza's Beit Hanoun where 19 civilians were killed earlier this month by Israeli shelling, the United Nations announced on Wednesday. "I am myself honoured to have been asked and hope so very much that it is a mission that might contribute to bringing solutions to an unacceptable situation," Tutu said as he was meeting with the Luis Alfonso De Alba, U.N. Human Rights Council President. The former archbishop of Cape Town and winner of the 1984 Peace Prize for his fight against apartheid will report back to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council by the middle of December. Earlier this month, the 47-state Council approved a resolution that condemned "gross and systemic" human rights violations by Israel in the occupied territory and ordered an investigation into the Beit Hanoun incident. "And the intention of the resolution is not only to find the facts as they happened, but also to identify ways and means to avoid those situations to happen again," De Alba explained. Israel said it regretted the deaths in Beit Hanoun on November 8 but it blamed violence in Gaza on Palestinian gunmen and rocket crews. On the streets of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, rubble remains. Some Palestinians who witnessed last month's killing by Israeli tank shells of 19 civilians, most from the same family, expressed doubt that the U.N. fact-finding mission would prevent further Israeli attacks. Ilham al-Athamna, a member of the extended al-Athamna family who lost more than a dozen relatives in the shelling, is bitter. "They say that an investigative committee is coming to investigate who was a terrorist, investigate our school pupils. They want to bring us back Mahmoud, Khlail, Arafat or Mahdi... Bring us back the school children who read their school books and do their homework!'', Ilham Al-Athamna, a surviving relative still under shocked, pleaded before adding: ''They kill them and cut them pieces and the next day they say 'we want to send you an investigative committee'" Israel blamed the incident on technical failure that caused a targeting error for its artillery fire. It has expressed regret and said the shelling was aimed at curbing militant rocket attack. Munir al-Athamna, a relative of the same family said Tutu's mission should investigate Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. "...They should have seen the massacre during the exact moment (when it happened). How the medics and civil defence were removing the skin and pieces of the dead stuck to the wall. Really, it all stuck and the pool of blood running underneath the dead and everything scattered around. What kind of benefit would the investigative committee going to bring here? Does he wants to substitute us? We don't want anything. Let them go and raise a law suite against Olmert and investigate him to see how he committed this ?" said Munir al-Athamna as he was looking through the debris left standing at the empty house. Fourteen names sprayed in red graffiti on an exterior wall of the al-Athamna family welcome those who visit the street where a four-storey building and three other homes were hit in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. Tutu was born in October 1931 and ordained an Anglican priest in 1961. He was thrust into the limelight in 1978 when he was appointed secretary-general of the South African Council of Churches. A small figure with a puckish sense of humour and an infectious giggle who radiated genuine warmth, Tutu often used his sharp wit to make serious points. Talking and travelling tirelessly throughout the 1980s, Tutu forced the West to focus on the suffering of South Africa's black majority under white rule, urging sanctions against a government clinging to power in the face of rising international opposition. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his non-violent campaign to win racial equality for his people and used it as a shield to work beyond the grasp of the white-minority government. In spite of failing health and undergoing treatment for potentially terminal cancer in recent years, Tutu continued in his role as the nation's moral guardian.

ITN Source | December 4, 2006

Tags:. .error. .empty. .cape. .sanctions. .massacre