jenin

The United Nations General Assembly today resumed its debate on "Illegal Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory" to consider a report by Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the events that took place earlier this year in Jenin and other Palestinian cities.

Following a request by the United Nations General Assembly, Secretary-General Kofi Annan today released a report on the events surrounding the Israeli military incursions earlier this year into the West Bank town of Jenin and other Palestinian cities in what proved to be the most extensive such operation by Israel in a decade.

A United Nations report on recent events in Jenin and other Palestinian cities is expected to be made public on Thursday morning, a UN spokesman announced today.

A new agreement between the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has paved the way for a $27 million push to rebuild and repair the Jenin camp on the West Bank.

Recent Israeli military operations in the West Bank have caused $361 million in damages, according to new figures released today by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank and the Government of Norway.

The United Nations Secretariat will work expeditiously to prepare a report on recent events in Jenin and other Palestinian cities, as requested by the General Assembly, a UN spokesman announced today.

Following last night's decision by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to disband a UN fact-finding team to the Jenin refugee camp, members of the group today left Geneva where they had been preparing for the mission.

The United has released a letter from Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the Security Council, in which he outlines the reasons underlying his intention to disband a UN fact-finding team to Jenin, whose deployment faced "fundamental" objections from Israel, despite every effort taken by the UN to accommodate those concerns.

With the announced cancellation of a United Nations fact-finding mission to Jenin dominating the discussion, the Security Council today held an extended open debate of the situation in the Middle East, including the question of Palestine.

A United Nations team of experts is working in Jenin to defuse mines and other potentially explosive ordnance, according to the lead UN relief agency in the Middle East.