Plea for more help in Middle East

Date: 18/04/02

By Khaled Diab

ISRAELI human rights groups have voiced grave concerns to the European Union over the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Occupied Territories.

The groups, who took part in talks in the medieval Belgian city of Ghent, urged the EU and international community to do more to protect Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

They also lambasted the Israeli army's refusal to allow them into the Occupied Territories as independent observers.

'It's in everyone's interests that we be allowed in so that we can gather factual and accurate information,' said Nimrod Amzalak of B'Tselem, a human rights group set up during the first intifada in the late 1980s.

Another activist, Noam Lubell, of Physicians for Human Rights, said he had received reports of wounded civilians being left to bleed to death, ambulances being turned back or shot at, hospitals running out of supplies and those needing medical treatment unable to reach hospitals.

Commission President Romano Prodi and Development Commissioner Poul Nielson announced a €6.7 million aid package for the Palestinian Authority earlier this month.