Vice Premier Shimon Peres Monday rejected a special Amnesty International report which urged Israel to dismantle the West Bank fence, declaring that suicide bombings had been curtailed almost entirely since the barrier was erected.

In a report timed to coincide with this week's 40th anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War, Amnesty on Monday also called for Israel to dismantle West Bank settlements and roadblocks, for the Palestinians to end attacks on Israeli civilians and for the international community to monitor both sides.

Peres, speaking on Israel Radio, said the West Bank barrier had proven its worth as an obstacle to suicide bombings. "The heaviest damages caused during the intifada, to Israel from a human standpoint, and to the Palestinians from an economic standpoint, were the result of buses blown up by suicide bombers who came into Israel from the West Bank.

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"The fact is, that since the fence was erected, this has almost completely stopped. Dozens if not hundreds of lives have been spared."

The Amnesty report also urged Israel to rescind other measures in the West Bank, including IDF and police checkpoints. Apart from the fence, "The movement of Palestinians is constrained by a host of other restrictions, including over 500 checkpoints and blockades, and a network of roads for Israeli settlers to use (which are) off-limits to Palestinians, the 45-page Amnesty report said.

It called on Israel to lift the "regime of blockades and restrictions, halt the construction of the fence/wall inside the West Bank, and remove the sections already built there, and to cease the construction or expansion of Israeli settlements ... as a first step toward removing Israeli settlements and outposts."

Peres, referring to the decision to build the fence, said "Israel did not do this as some sort of caprice. It was the right way to defend life within Israel, something that every country is obligated, not only entitled, to do."

The report also appealed to Palestinian militants to end immediately attacks on civilians and on the Palestinian Authority to take effective action to stop and prevent such attacks and bring to justice those responsible.

Israel's Justice Ministry, however, said the 45-page report made only passing reference to Israel's right to self-defense and paid insufficient attention to the threat to Israeli human rights posed by the militants.

"The lack of emphasis on the centrality of Palestinian terror and the obligation of the Israel Defense Forces to protect Israeli citizens as a result is unreasonable and creates a deliberately misleading impression," a ministry statement said.

Report entitled 'Enduring Occupation'
"For 40 years, the international community has failed adequately to address the Israeli-Palestinian problem; it cannot, must not, wait another 40 years to do so," Amnesty regional director Malcolm Smart said in a statement accompanying the special report, which was entitled "Enduring Occupation."

"Amnesty International is calling for the urgent deployment of an effective international human rights monitoring mechanism to monitor compliance by both parties ... with their obligations under international law," it said.

"This must be backed up with a commitment to investigate and prosecute, through the exercise of universal jurisdiction, those who commit by both sides highlighted the need for an international watchdog. war crimes or other crimes under international law.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Israel already had sufficient oversight built into its own systems
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"Israel is the only Middle Eastern country where human rights are at the center of our political culture," he said. "In Israel we pride ourselves on our strong and independent judiciary. Our respect for the rule of law, individual freedom and human rights are essential in our society, regardless of whether we're talking about Jew or Arab, Israeli or Palestinian."

Raji Sourani, head of the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights said what was needed was a peacekeeping force, rather than monitors with no mandate to intervene, citing a six-nation monitoring group deployed in 1994 in the West Bank town of Hebron as an example of passive observers.

"We are calling for international protection forces," he said. "We have experienced monitoring in Hebron and elsewhere. It is not effective at all. It's shown to be impractical."

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