Brutal, yes. Massacre, no

The Guardian - Observer ^ | April 21, 2002 | Peter Beaumont

[scratchgolfer]

Brutal, yes. Massacre, no

Jenin will not give up its mysteries until more of the bodies have been found. But Israel will struggle to defend itself against the mounting evidence of the suffering its soldiers inflicted on the camp's civilian population.

Peter Beaumont

The Observer

It is easy to be distracted by the presence of the bodies. On Friday, in their white plastic shrouds, they were stacked like stinking chords of wood outside the main hospital in the northern West Bank city of Jenin. Some had been collected from where they had been hastily buried in the back gardens of the refugee camp's least damaged sections, then sprayed with perfume to make the job less awful for those who had to handle them. Others had been collected from their temporary mass grave made by the doctors in a yard outside the hospital.

They were all waiting for reburial in a common grave. By their very weight of numbers laid out on the ground - almost 30 on this afternoon - they suggested themselves as victims of a massacre.

But a massacre - in the sense it is usually understood - did not take place in Jenin's refugee camp.

Whatever crimes were committed here - and it appears there were many - a deliberate and calculated massacre of civilians by the Israeli army was not among them.

And if a massacre did not take place, what did happen in Jenin?

It is a question that will weigh heavily on the future of Israeli and Palestinian relations. Yesterday Israel promised to co-operate with a United Nations fact-finding mission to Jenin, saying it had nothing to hide. Both sides have moved quickly to appropriate the story of Jenin as part of their national narratives of victimhood - the same narratives that have fed the increasingly bloody conflict.

For Israelis, Jenin camp is the 'Capital of the Suicide Bombers', a place that has sent almost a quarter of the bombers who have plagued Israel's towns and cities. It is a place where 13 Israeli soldiers died, in a single bloody incident: the West Bank's own 'heart of darkness'.

For Palestinians, Jenin refugee camp is the place that fought to the bitter end, a symbol of resistance, whose civilians were punished with the destruction of their homes for standing up to, and bruising, Israel's military might.

One thing, however, is beyond question: that the soldiers of Israel carried out an act of ferocious destruction, unparallelled in Israel's short history, against an area of civilian concentration where Palestinian fighters were based.

And what will settle whether what happened in Jenin camp was a war crime is the relationship between those civilians and the Palestinian fighters.

For increasingly at issue is a simple distinction. If the refugee camp at Jenin was a population centre that simply harboured fighters - that had fighters in its midst - then, say human rights advocates, Israel had a duty of care during its attack towards the civilians resident there under international law.

But if Jenin camp could be proved to be something else, say lawyers for the army, the Geneva Convention might not apply.

Already Israel is working hard to define why the destruction in Jenin was something 'other' - exempt from the Convention.

It is that something 'other' that Israeli legal sources advising the army are desperately now trying to establish in international opinion. The refugee camp at Jenin, they say, had become an 'armed camp', booby-trapped and organised for fighting. It is a place, they argue, where the civilian population was effectively being held hostage under military orders. In those circumstances, the Israeli lawyers argue, the laws of war should not, and must not, apply.

It is an argument that holds little water with those who lost their homes. I meet Khalil Talib amid the camp's ruins on Friday, digging with a mattock to retrieve his bedding from the ruins of his house. Talib is 70. His daughters drag cushions and blankets from the dirt. If Talib is a terrorist, then he is an old and frail one.

For at heart of the question of whether Jenin was a war crime are not the bodies stacked at the main hospital. It is what happened to the homes of those like Talib.

For even as the hunt for the bodies goes on, it is increasingly clear from evidence collected by this paper and other journalists, that the majority of those so far recovered have been Palestinian fighters from Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the al-Aqsa Brigades.

Certainly, civilians died. But so far they are in the minority of those who perished.

At the excavation of the bodies at the hospital for reburial, I meet Yassin Fayed whose two brothers, Amjad, aged 30, and Muhammad, 21, both fighters with Hamas, are among the dead. He says they were executed after their arrest by Israeli soldiers, but this is impossible to check. He makes no bones that they were fighting before they died. Elsewhere we come across a bulldozer searching through the rubble for three bodies. The men digging tell me they are trying to recover bodies of dead fighters.

And the tales of civilian slaughter are simply less credible in their accounts. Mr G, as he asks me to call him, tells me that a handicapped boy was 'buried alive by the Israelis'. He translates this in Arabic to the men surrounding him, and they 'correct' him. He tells me then that, in fact, five handicapped residents of the camp were buried by Israel's bulldozers.

I hear many accounts like this. Numbers of the missing and the dead that will not bear scrutiny, horror stories that are impossible to check, and in some cases, in all likelihood, concocted.

Colleagues tell me too of being told of the death of so-and-so by neighbours, only to meet him or her alive and well.

All of which brings the focus back to the sheer intensity of the devastation of the camp.

You see it the moment you enter what once was the heart of Jenin camp. The aerial photographs of the demolition of the centre of the camp, produced by the Israeli army, do not convey the shock of what you see. Filmed from above - a place the size of several football pitches where over 100 houses once stood - is rendered a blank and texture-less expanse.

On the ground, however, it is the detail of ordinary life destroyed that catches the eye. Tangled mounds of concrete and reinforcing rods climb up a gentle slope. The eye alights on a shoe here, the leg of a doll, bedding, pages from the Koran, pictures and shards of broken mirror.

It is, somehow, most shocking at the very the edges of the devastation where the destruction is partial. Here whole walls of buildings have been peeled off to reveal the still occupied homes inside - pictures, beds and bathrooms - daily life stripped bare.

The true crime of Jenin camp is this act of physical erasure. It is covered by Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention in its prohibition on 'the extensive destruction or unlawful appropri ation of property, not justified by military necessity committed either unlawfully or wantonly.'

Article 147 mentions other crimes that may be applicable to Jenin: the alleged taking of hostages for human shields by the Israelis; the same army's refusal of access for humanitarian and emergency medical assistance and the deliberate targeting of civilians, particularly by Israeli snipers. But it is the sheer scale of the destruction that Israel will most likely have to answer for.

I am reminded of this prohibition on 'wanton destruction' of civilian homes by Miranda Sissons, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, whom I meet walking through the rubble and who has the Fourth Geneva Convention on her Palm Pilot. She is with Manaf Abbas, a human rights worker with the Palestinian human rights group al-Haq.

'Whether or not there appears to have been any mass killing here,' says Sissons, who appears inclined to be cautious of this claim until better evidence is provided, 'there have been very serious violations of the rules of war that need to be investigated.

'Those key issues are the disproportionate use of force; the excessive use of force and the extensive destruction of property. There has been a total lack of respect for the rights of civilians. And those breaches are still continuing. Israel is still blocking the facilitation of humanitarian access and continuing to shoot on civilians here.'

Abbas is also cautious about using the word 'massacre'. 'We need to find out if those reported missing have been arrested, fled, are living with relatives - or are buried under the rubble.'

An hour later I run into into Eyad and Jawad Kassim, two brothers who lived with their family in four houses at the edge of the destruction. Eyad's house and his mother's have been reduced to rubble. Jawad's still stands but one outside wall has been demolished and two missiles hit the building.

Eyad and Jawad deny that they are fighters. 'We had four homes,' says Eyad. 'Now they're destroyed.' He admits there were fighters and heavy fighting in the camp, but believes his house and those of others were destroyed as punishment for the deaths of 23 Israeli soldiers.

'They are lying when they say there were gunmen in all of the buildings they destroyed.' He seems a gentle man. After a while he lights a cigarette, excuses himself and walks off to cry.

'Liar' is the word you hear most about what happened in the refugee camp. I hear it used in almost every conversation. On Thursday on a ridge overlooking the city, Colonel Miri Esin, a senior intelligence analyst with the Israeli army, uses it with the same bitterness as Eyad Kassim.

She says the 'Palestinians are liars' in their descriptions of what happened. She tells us the Israeli version 12 hours before the army withdraws from the camp to the city limits. The point of Esin's presentation, I later realise, is to make the same case as the lawyers advising the army: that the destruction of the homes of men like Eyad and Fawad was not a war crime but an act 'justified by military necessity' - an act, in other words, exempt from the Geneva Convention.

She tells us the army is 'not proud of the destruction', that the 100 out of 1,100 homes destroyed is not 'a lovely figure'. But Esin insists that for all the Israeli regrets the destruction was justified by the 'harsh fighting', the levels of resistance and infiltration by the Palestinian fighters of the camp.

But other Israeli soldiers, speaking anonymously, have a different view. Their version of events is this: the commanders of the operation were complacent. An arrest raid against the camp a month before had gone without a hitch so they assumedJenin would be relatively easy. Instead it turned into vicious fighting on both sides.

After the 13 Israeli soldiers were killed in a booby-trapped bomb and crossfire ambush, say these reservists, the soldiers simply lost control. It is a version, curiously, given credit by the Palestinian residents of the camp. For their accounts, taken together, describe a breakdown of command at the height of the fighting.

Some describe one group of soldiers calling to them to evacuate their homes before destruction then being threatened with being shot by other soldiers who insisted that a curfew was still in force. What they describe is a panic that seems to have taken hold of the Israeli army in Jenin camp, and in its panic it laid the camp to waste.

But panic is not an excuse for gross violations of human rights. And as international pressure mounts for a full investigation of what happened in Jenin camp, many insist it must go beyond President George Bush's calls for an inquiry 'to find the facts'.

Two British lawyers in Jerusalem - Patrick O'Connor QC and Olivia Holdsworth - are investigating violations of human rights in the present campaign. O'Connor is tough in his assessment. 'The duty to investigate state responsibility for events such as the Jenin incursion is triggered by credible allegations of violations of fundamental human rights. That investigation must be prompt and effective. It must be capable of leading to the prosecution and punishment of those responsible.'

[Travis McGee]

The engineer Al-Ahram Weekly (Egyptian) 18 - 24 April 2002 | Jonathan Cook

The 'engineer' An engineer of the fiercest battle waged by the Palestinians during the invasion of the West Bank spoke to Jonathan Cook about the days of defiance in Jenin.

Omar sits restlessly on his chair in the safe-house. He is an "engineer" from Jenin refugee camp: one of the revered bomb-makers from the City of the Bombers. To the Israelis he is the most lethal, and wanted, of terrorists. The poison from the Cobra's head.

We meet late last Thursday, hours after he escaped from the camp as Israeli soldiers took control of the area. We are still close enough to Jenin that we can see the constant stream of illumination flares, three launched by the army at a time, that light up the soldiers' dark work in the city below.

But Omar will not be staying here long. He is going to ground deeper in the West Bank before regrouping with his comrades from Jenin.

There may not be too many. Even according to Israeli army sources, at least a hundred fighters were killed and hundreds more wounded and captured during the eight days of savage fighting.

Omar will not give his name or age. He is slim, in his mid-20s, with a closely cropped beard. He is a member of Islamic Jihad, but says in Jenin all the factions were loyal to only one cause: liberation or death.

Visible beneath a blue bomber jacket is the tightly bandaged stump of his right arm, the end of which he rubs distractedly.

How did he lose it? During the previous invasion of Jenin by the Israeli army several weeks ago, he says. He was hiding with only his arm visible as he tried to throw a 'kwa' -- a home-made pipe bomb -- at a tank. Shrapnel from a shell severed it, he says.

But as a bomb-maker, one of the most highly respected positions in the Palestinian resistance, he could equally have lost the arm in less glorious circumstances: in one of the explosions that are a professional hazard of his job.

Omar admits he is one of only a few dozen fighters not to emerge either dead or in plastic handcuffs from the fiercest battle waged by the Palestinians during the Israeli army's invasion of the West Bank.

Of his group of 30 gunmen, only four escaped from the camp on Wednesday, after the Palestinian arsenal ran dry. Most of the others were shot dead.

"Of all the fighters in the West Bank we were the best prepared," he says. "We started working on our plan: to trap the invading soldiers and blow them up from the moment the Israeli tanks pulled out of Jenin last month."

Omar and other "engineers" made hundreds of explosive devices and carefully chose their locations.

"We had more than 50 houses booby-trapped around the camp. We chose old and empty buildings and the houses of men who were wanted by Israel because we knew the soldiers would search for them," he said.

"We cut off lengths of mains water pipes and packed them with explosives and nails. Then we placed them about four metres apart throughout the houses -- in cupboards, under sinks, in sofas."

The fighters hoped to disable the Israeli army's tanks with much more powerful bombs placed inside rubbish bins on the street. More explosives were hidden inside the cars of Jenin's most wanted men.

Connected by wires, the bombs were set off remotely, triggered by the current from a car battery.

According to Omar, everyone in the camp, including the children, knew where the explosives were located so that there was no danger of civilians being injured. It was the one weakness in the plan.

"We were betrayed by the spies among us," he says. The wires to more than a third of the bombs were cut by soldiers accompanied by collaborators. "If it hadn't been for the spies, the soldiers would never have been able to enter the camp. Once they penetrated the camp, it was much harder to defend."

And what about the explosion and ambush last Tuesday which killed 13 soldiers?

"They were lured there," he says. "We all stopped shooting and the women went out to tell the soldiers that we had run out of bullets and were leaving." The women alerted the fighters as the soldiers reached the booby- trapped area.

"When the senior officers realised what had happened, they shouted through megaphones that they wanted an immediate cease-fire. We let them approach to retrieve the men and then opened fire.

"Some of the soldiers were so shocked and frightened that they mistakenly ran towards us."

On Wednesday, after the fighters ran out of ammunition, he says, armoured vehicles roamed the streets calling out to them in Arabic: "You are finished and can't win against us. We are more powerful than you. Surrender."

He saw one fighter who went down to the street with his hands in the air shot dead by snipers. He chose to flee the camp, although he will not say how.

Using his left arm, Omar shot a revolver during the gun battles.

With a new intensity on his face, he leans forward to ask a question. Do I think the doctors will be able to give him a strong new artificial arm with fingers he can operate. I don't know, I say. Why?

"Because I want to be able to hold a heavy rifle again. That way I can kill more Israeli soldiers. It's that or become a suicide bomber."

[vbmoneyspender]

Is that a movie still of Robert Blake in the colorized version of Our Gang Meets the Jihadi Knights?

[Travis McGee]

Very rarely. And to be balanced, when they show photos of the aftermath of Jenin, they should show the last months bomb carnage in Israel, and mention why the IDF went into Jenin.

[Lent]

I haven't seen aerial photos but only the oft pictured limited area where the firefights took place. In the distance you can see vast areas untouched. I'd like to post up some pictures of what the Russians did (and are doing) in Chechnya and what they did in their Soviet incarnation in Afghanistan. Of course Russia can't be picked on with the same ferocity of propaganda, calls for International tribunals, etc. because of her size, military power, etc. The lesson: the global half-wits, EUrotrash, U.N. the Arab Islamics are hypocrites and bullies.

[Travis McGee]

That does look like Baby Robert Blake, doesn't it?

He was perfect for "In Cold Blood". Just ask his dead wife.

[freebilly]

"We had more than 50 houses booby-trapped around the camp. We chose old and empty buildings and the houses of men who were wanted by Israel because we knew the soldiers would search for them," he said.

But all the damage to the houses in Jenin were caused by those brutal genocidal Israelis. < /sarcasm >

[crystalk]

TWICE AS MANY PEOPLE WERE KILLED by government power at Waco, Texas in 1993 as were killed in Jenin last week.

Furthermore, 90% of those killed in Jenin were uniformed fighting men of Islamic Jihad.

At Waco, seventeen of the 80-odd dead on 4-19-93 were children under 8 years of age.

And at Waco, all the dead were intentionally killed. The kids were NOT BYKILL!!!

Where was the Guardian and the weeping Eurotrash THEN? If they want to investigate something, the dead of WACO are crying for justice!

[Travis McGee]

When the Russians pulverized Grozny with artillery, they had only given the inhabitants a brief warning to get out or else.

I think that about 25% of the dead civilians in Grozny were ethnic Russians, the "left behinds" of the empire with no money and no where to go, who died in the rubble with the rest, thousands of them.

Blasted to bits or buried alive or burned to death by blind Russian arillery fired from 20km away for days on end.

Where was the UN? Where was the 24/7 media coverage?

[crystalk]

WHERE was this bleeding heart Eurotrash scum, when 3000 Americans were much more brutally murdered on 9-11-01, and they were guilty of nothing, not even of opposing Islam!

Many of them were liberals, who would gladly have died for political correctness. Looks like maybe they DID!

[MJY1288]

"when they show photos of the aftermath of Jenin, they should show the last months bomb carnage in Israel, and mention why the IDF went into Jenin."

Agreed, But as we all know, this is not over yet, and when the truth about Jenin is told, it will show that the Israeli soldiers did not massacre innocent people and Arafat will be exposed for the terrorist he is.

Lots of people want president Bush to label Arafat a terrorist from day one. but sometimes it's better to let the facts come out in the light of day and allow the world to see for themselves rather than making a statement that doesn't paint quite as clear a picture as cold hard facts. Especially since Clinton entertained Arafat at the White House 17 times while he was in office. The press would say that the President has refused to get involved. Sometimes it's better to just sit back and be quiet while the truth is unfolded.

[Travis McGee]

I hope it plays out that way.

Disgusting to see that our former disgraced ex-prez had Arafat to the Whitehouse more times than any other foreign "leader" (sic), and saw Monica more times than the director of the CIA, who could not get an appt to see him.

[MJY1288]

"Disgusting to see that our former disgraced ex-prez had Arafat to the Whitehouse more times than any other foreign "leader" and saw Monica more times than the director of the CIA"

ROTFLMAO, Another cold hard fact that can't be disputed. LOL

[Travis McGee]

True fact: on the very day that Mohammed Atta was slipping back into the USA on an expired visa, Tenet was celebrating "Gay Appreciation Day" at CIA HQ. I kid you not.

[MJY1288]

The article you posted is sure a good insight to what the Israeli soldiers had to face when entering Jenin. I am surprised at the low amount of IDF casualties considering what the IDF was up against, when considering they were going into their turf and the amount of time "The Engineer" had to prepare.

Thanks for posting it, Definately the most informative I've read so far.

[MJY1288]

"on the very day that Mohammed Atta was slipping back into the USA on an expired visa, Tenet was celebrating "Gay Appreciation Day" at CIA HQ. I kid you not" Do you have any idea why President Bush chose to keep Tenet around?, I often wonder if G.H.W. Bush had something to do with it. I didn't follow Tenet's career under "The Coward" X42, but from what I can figure, no matter who was in there, their hands were tied. My hope is that Tenet is a victim of X42 and not a enabler

[Deb]

Yes, incredible how the "...intensity of the devastation..." produced only 30 bodies, isn't it?? Maybe that's because the Israeli army told everyone in the camp to evacuate before they bulldozed.

A reporter on the radio yesterday said the soldiers had removed dishes and personal property for some of the people before the tanks moved in. Of course, the Palestinians said that was "looting".

It will be interesting to see which American news outlets report there was no "massacre". FOX News said it two days ago. Today they reported that the story of Israeli soldiers shooting and killing a Catholic priest leaving the Church of the Nativity was a lie.

[ladyinred]

What a profound statement you made.
I saw all day long the so called "massacre" on the news channels. Those buildings were bulldozed, not blown up with planes full of lives and jet fuel.

Since the building codes there are lax to say the least, knocking them down did not require violence.
Also, the people there were aware the Israeli's were coming, they didn't suddenly have two huge aircraft crash into them while they were just busy making a living for their families.

The disgusting media reports about this are just driving me to madness. This was a war, it was declared by Arafat, not the Israeli's, just as our war was declared by Muslim terrorists, not us!
The pictures of our demolished Twin Towers is forever burned inside my brain and my heart, and nothing the Israeli's did there will ever match that horror we must live with inside our minds forever more!

This is without even mentioning the horror the families of flight 93 endured yesterday!
Massacre indeed!

[MJY1288]

By any chance did you get to hear the pro-palestinian protestors today in Washington D.C.?

They were claiming that Israel killed over 10,000 innocent civilians in Jenin. They also called for the continuation of the "Global Infatada"(sp). I watched it on C-Span just to see what they had to say. We definately live in a free society, because if I was in charge of the policies of this country, I'm not sure I would allow such distortion of the facts to be spewed to such a large crowd of unwashed minions.

[anapikoros]

Bump for more British looney left presstitute backpedalling

[rmvh]

Re your # 5.... (The Jews) are a well disciplined, effective, and ETHICAL force.

In a British Commons debate Gerald Kaufman, a veteran Labour MP who is Britain's most prominent Jewish parliamentarian, launched a ferocious attack on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, denouncing him as a "war criminal". Kaufman said Sharon had "ordered his troops to use methods of barbarism against the Palestinians". Expressing fear that something dreadful had happened in Jenin, he said: "It is time to remind Sharon that the Star of David belongs to all Jews and not to his repulsive government. His actions are staining the Star of David with blood." With the Israeli army still blocking full access to Jenin it is impossible to establish even a rough body count.