nolympics writes:

Israelis trained US troops in Jenin-style urban warfare
The Independent( London)

By Justin Huggler in Amman

29 March 2003

The American military has been asking the Israeli army for advice on
fighting inside cities, and studying fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin
last April, unnamed United States and Israeli sources have confirmed.
Reports that US troops trained with Israeli forces for street-to-street
fighting have been denied. If the US army believes the road to Baghdad lies
through Jenin, there is reason for Iraqi civilians to be concerned.

During fighting in the Jenin refugee camp last April, more than half the
Palestinian dead were civilians. There was compelling evidence that Israeli
soldiers targeted civilians, including Fadwa Jamma, a Palestinian nurse shot
dead as she tried to treat a wounded man. A 14-year-old boy was killed by
Israeli tank-fire in a crowded street after the curfew was lifted. A
Palestinian in a wheelchair was shot dead, and his body was crushed by an
Israeli tank. Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances from reaching the
wounded and refused the Red Cross access. Using bulldozers, the Israeli army
demolished an entire neighbourhood -- home to 800 Palestinian families --
reducing it to dust and rubble.

Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history and strategy at
Jerusalem's internationally respected Hebrew University, has told reporters
that, following his advice to US Marines, the American military bought nine
of the converted bulldozers used in the Jenin demolitions from Israel.
Professor van Creveld said he gave advice to marines last year in Camp
Lejeune, North Carolina. He said he was questioned about Israeli tactics in
Jenin, and told them the giant D9 bulldozers, manufactured for civilian use
in the US but fitted with armour-plating in Israel, were among the most
useful weapons. Israeli troops at first found they could not get their tanks
and armoured vehicles into the narrow alleys of the refugee camp, so they
bulldozed wide swaths through houses to get them in.

If the US military intends to use converted D9 bulldozers in Iraqi cities,
there is cause for concern. When reporters got into the Jenin refugee camp,
we found the fronts of houses neatly scythed off so the insides of the
houses were visible from the street, with personal belongings, sofas, beds,
children's toys, hanging precariously from half-collapsed floors. Israeli
use of the bulldozers has not been limited to clearing the way for tanks.
They have also been used in collective punishment, such as the destruction
of an entire neighbourhood in Jenin after the fighting ended. In Nablus last
April, eight members of the al-Shubi family were killed when an Israeli
soldier bulldozed their home, burying them alive, despite shouted warnings
from neighbours that they were still inside.

The Israeli military has supplied US forces with video of incursions by
Israeli soldiers into Palestinian cities, said unnamed "security sources".
They added that Israeli officers have given their American counterparts
extensive briefings on Israeli tactics. One of the tactics identified was
the Israeli army's practice of moving from house to house by knocking holes
in connecting walls to avoid being exposed in the streets, a practice that
has wrecked the homes of thousands of Palestinians. The Israeli army has
also routinely used Palestinian civilians as human shields to protect them
as they advance, a practice that has continued despite Israeli court rulings
forbidding it. There was no word on whether Israeli officers had briefed
American troops on this tactic. There were reports in the US and Israel
media last November that American troops had been trained by Israeli
instructors in a mock-up of a Palestinian city inside an army base in
Israel. Those reports have been denied, but an unnamed Israeli source told
the Associated Press that US officers did visit the mocked-up Palestinian
city and attended a briefing on Israeli training methods.

There have also been reports that Palestinians who have fought against
Israeli forces in Jenin and other Palestinian cities during Israeli
offensives last year have telephoned friends and acquaintances in Iraq to
advise them on tactics to use against American and British forces if
street-to-street fighting begins.

There is another lesson to drawn from Jenin. The Palestinians who defended
the city were armed only with assault rifles and crude, home-made
booby-traps and pipe-bombs, against the massively better-equipped Israeli
army. But they held out for 11 days, and managed to kill 23 Israeli
soldiers, 13 of them in a single ambush. When the Palestinians ran out of
ammunition, they kept fighting and started throwing stones at the Israeli
soldiers. If the much better-equipped Iraqi forces take the same attitude to
defending Baghdad and other cities the battles could be bloody.

28 March 2003 23:18"