With its three-month mission completed, the international observer force that was dispatched to Hebron in the spring officially took its leave of the troubled West Bank town this week.
About 100 members of the force flew home on Monday, leaving behind a skeleton staff to sell off its equipment or donate it to local charities.
Lt. Col. Bjarno Sorensen, a member of the Danish army who served as spokesman for the force – known officially as the Temporary International Presence in Hebron — said Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat had asked for an extension of the force’s mission, but Israeli officials had rejected any extension.
Sorensen added that the force would not have remained, even if both sides had requested it, unless Israel and the Palestinians agreed to give the force more powers.
The unarmed 114-member observer force, recruited from Norway, Denmark and Italy, arrived in Hebron on May 8 for a three-month period, which was renewable if both Israel and the Palestinians agreed to it.
The presence of an international observer team was agreed to by Israel and the PLO in late March following the Feb. 25 slaying of 29 Palestinians at a Hebron mosque by Israeli settler Dr. Baruch Goldstein.
The agreement on the presence of an international team of observers had paved the way for the resumption of Israeli-PLO negotiations, which the Palestinians had suspended immediately after the Hebron massacre.
Palestinians, who had wanted the force to protect them from additional attacks by Israeli militants, have been critical of the observer force because it could only observe and report on clashes in Hebron, which has been a hotbed of unrest since the massacre.
In June, frustrated members of the force said they were considering an early end to their mission because they felt they were not accomplishing anything.
However, there has been a decrease in clashes within Hebron over the last three months.
And Sorensen said he thought the international force had “definitely lowered the tension” in Hebron.
“Before we came here, there were no official meetings between the PLO and the Israelis,” he said. “Now they have a Hebron committee, and we hope this will continue after we have left.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
