nolympics writes "The following article by Mouin Rabbani was posted by the Students for Justice in Palestine listserve:

The Only Truth About Jenin is the Cover-Up

by Mouin Rabbani

April 12, 2002

On the morning of Wednesday 10 April, reports began to emerge from
the Jenin refugee camp in the extreme north of the Israeli-occupied
West Bank that its Palestinian defenders had run out of ammunition
and were thus no longer able to resist the Israeli offensive that
began on 2 April. While this appeared to put a conclusion to the
most furious battle to be waged on Palestinian soil since 1948,
subsequent developments indicated otherwise. As night fell, one of
the camp's few remaining field commanders issued a dramatic, live
appeal to the world through the Qatari Al-Jazeera television
network, in which he stated that the Israeli military was summarily
executing defenseless fighters as it advanced and was refusing to
accept the surrender of those still alive. Calling for immediate
intervention by the international community and human rights
organisations, he concluded by asking viewers to read the Fatiha
(the opening chapter of the Qur'an) for his and his comrade's souls.
The claim of yet more atrocities being perpetrated by the Israeli
military in Jenin was considered sufficiently credible that within
an hour the Secretary-General of the Lebanese Hizballah
organisation, Hasan Nasrallah, offered to release an Israeli colonel
being held by it since October 2000 if Israel would cease its
assault on the camp and guarantee the safety of those remaining
within it. Forceful interventions by the leading Israeli human
rights organisation B'Tselem, Arab members of the Israeli
parliament, and others threatening the possibility of severe
judicial repercussions against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,
Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz,
and others directly involved in the planning and execution of the
Jenin operation appear to have saved a number of those most at risk,
and the orderly surrender of several dozen fighters was reported by
the International Committee of the Red Cross later that night.

Yet, as of the morning of 12 April, more than 48 hours after the
battle for Jenin refugee camp apparently ended, the camp remains
strictly off limits to outsiders by virtue of one of the most
tightly enforced exclusion zones in Israeli history, and the sounds
of gunfire continue to be heard from within. Virtually every
journalist, human rights worker, and humanitarian relief official
has concluded this is because Israel has perpetrated a major
atrocity in the camp and is currently busy removing the evidence.
The city of Jenin has been a thorn in Israel's side since before the
establishment of the Jewish state. In the 1930's, its environs
served as a base for the radical Syrian cleric Izz-al-Din Qassam,
from whom the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement,
HAMAS, takes its name and whose death in a firefight with British
troops in November 1935 served as a prelude for the 1936-1939 Arab
Revolt. During the 1948 War, Jenin was the only Palestinian city
Israeli forces initially managed to conquer but were subsequently
expelled from, in this case by an Iraqi expeditionary force. During
the first Palestinian uprising (1987-1993) the Jenin district was
the most active arena for paramilitary groupings such as the
Palestine National Liberation Movement (FATAH) Black Panthers and
the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Red Eagles.
And during the current uprising which commenced in September 2000,
and with the increasingly tenuous control exercised in the northern
West Bank by the Palestinian Authority (PA), militias such as the
FATAH-linked Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades, the Izz-al-Din Al-Qassam
Brigades of HAMAS, and Islamic Jihad's Jerusalem Brigades have been
operating within Jenin virtually at will. As has been often noted, a
good portion of Palestinian suicide bombers have emerged from Jenin
refugee camp as well. While the endemic poverty of the northern West
Bank may explain this in part, it is primarily a function of
location; Jenin is close to the boundary with Israel, and despite
unprecedented Israeli measures to seal this off, its militants have
had little trouble infiltrating proximate cities such as Netanya and
Haifa.

Situated on a lot of approximately one square kilometer, most of
Jenin camp's 15,000 residents originate from the city of Haifa and
its surrounding villages, from which they were forcibly expelled
during the 1948 War. Located within the largest of the West Bank's
autonomous enclaves established pursuant to the Oslo agreements, the
camp has been the object of repeated Israeli attempts to re-occupy
it since the Sharon government came to power in March 2001. In each
instance Israeli forces were repulsed, although the camp was
eventually occupied for several days in March 2001 in the context of
Israel's 'Operation Journey of Colours'; after initially offering
resistance, its defenders slipped out en masse in order to conserve
their forces and fight another day.

With Sharon's determination to eliminate the Palestinian leadership,
destroy the PA, and dismantle the Palestinian national movement as
represented by its various factions, it was obvious this fight would
come sooner rather than later. And indeed, assured of full support
for such a venture by the Bush administration, Sharon grabbed his
opportunity immediately after the 27 March suicide bombing by HAMAS
of a Netanya hotel which killed 27 Israelis attending a Passover
meal.

The ferocity of 'Operation Defensive Shield' which unfolded within
24 hours could hardly have come as a surprise. The architect of the
1982 invasion of Lebanon and the September 1982 Sabra-Chatilla
refugee camps massacre, Sharon's record of deliberate and
indiscriminate attacks against civilians stretches back to at least
the early 1950's when he commanded Unit 101, notorious for "reprisal
raids" against West Bank villages. The records of Peres (e.g. the
deliberate 1996 shelling of a UN camp full of Lebanese and
Palestinian refugees in southern Lebanon's Qana, killing over a
hundred), Ben-Eliezer, and Mofaz are also distinguished in this
regard. In the more immediate background, the extraordinary savagery
of Operation Journey of Colours in February-March 2002, which left
some 200 Palestinians dead and included massacres in the West Bank's
Tulkarm refugee camp as well as in the Jabalya refugee camp and the
village of Khuza'a in the Gaza Strip, also served as a harbinger of
things to come.

Furthermore, on the eve of Operation Defensive Shield, a senior
Israeli military officer was quoted by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth
Ahranot as stating that in view of the character of the upcoming
Israeli operation, the Nazi campaign to subdue the Warsaw Ghetto
uprising in 1943 required careful study as an example of succesful
urban combat. At the very least, the interview revealed that a
primary purpose of the campaign would be to decisively break the
Palestinian population's will to further resist Israeli rule. And
with specific regard to the civilian residents of Jenin refugee
camp, a senior Israeli military officer involved in the assault was
quoted by the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz as stating that mothers who
raise suicide bombers could not expect to be immune from the
consequences.

Until the invasion of Jenin, Operation Defensive Shield had been a
clear success from Israel's point of view. The re-occupation of
Ramallah and Bethlehem by massive armored columns simply overwhelmed
resistance which was in any case light and - particularly in
Ramallah - poorly organised. Israeli losses were minimal, the Bush
administration unconditionally supportive, the Europeans more subtly
so, and the Arab states overwhelmingly silent. Although the various
militias operating within Jenin had decided to make a stand in the
camp, and had more or less unified their forces and been joined members of the PA security forces, there are no indications that
Israel expected anything less than a walkover in its determination
that Jenin's defenders were able to adapt their tactics on the of both Operation Journey of Colours the previous month and what
had transpired in other Palestinian cities occupied the previous
week. Not less importantly, Israel's policy of providing no quarter
to Palestinian militants and security personnel in other cities only
stiffened their resolve to resist.

This said, the disparity between the opposing forces remained
overwhelming; Israel is a nuclear power with a massive arsenal full
of sophisticated American weaponry, whereas the Palestinians - who
possess neither an army, air force, or navy, nor even a single
armoured vehicle - fought back with light automatic weapons, and
limited quantities of bombs and grenades which are in many cases
locally improvised devices. One side had Apache helicopters in the
air throughout the battle firing missiles and heavy machine guns
virtually without interruption, the other did not possess even a
single rudimentary anti-aircraft weapon.

While the re-occupation of Jenin proceeded relatively smoothly the
Israelis were simply unable to make any headway into the camp.
Despite extensive shelling from air and land, and the use of dozens
of tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and armoured bulldozers, the
camp's defenders, ensconced in its maze of narrow alleyways, offered
ferocious resistance. The available reports suggest they were
capable of decommissioning armoured vehicles with some regularity,
and inflicted heavier casualties on the invading forces than Israel
has been prepared to admit.

Israel's military tactics were initially similar to those employed
elsewhere in the West Bank. In addition to the use of vastly superior firepower, snipers occupied buildings all along the camp's
perimeter and consistently shot at anything that moved - combattants
and civilians, adults and children alike. Water, electricity, and
telephone communications to the entire camp were severed. No food or
medicine of any sort was permitted entry. Ambulances and emergency
services, humanitarian organisations, and the media were
systematically prevented access.

The military initially tried to use the tactic it termed
"mouseholing" - cutting through breezeblock walls to move from the
interior of one building to that of the next - deployed during
Journey of Colours. Faced with well-laid booby-traps this time
around, it instead resorted to the tactic of "shaving", by which
homes and buildings were either blown apart with high explosives or
levelled with the ground by armoured bulldozers to facilitate the
military's advance. In some cases the army first went in and
forcibly removed inhabitants. According to numerous eyewitness
reports, there are also many cases in which the military simply
collapsed structures over the heads of their inhabitants, killing
those inside.

By 5 April, Chief of Staff Mofaz was already claiming victory,
stating that the battle would be over that night. He was forced to
make similar statements on each of the subsequent four days - during
which he personally took command of the operation from the vantage
point of an American-made Apache helicopter, only to be eventually
replaced by the Minister of Defence. On the fifth day - 10 April -
at least 13 Israeli soldiers were killed and perhaps as many wounded
in a highly sophisticated ambush, with two more killed in subsequent
exchanges. It was the military's single bloodiest day since the
beginning of the current Palestinian uprising, and one of its worst
since the 1973 October War.

Heavy Israeli losses in Jenin - officially 23 dead and 150 wounded -
and the small camp's ability to withstand the full might of the
Israeli military for three days longer than did the entire Arab
world in 1967, has elevated it to legendary status throughout the
region, which closely followed the unfolding drama by means of
detailed reports provided by Al-Jazeera, Hizballah's Al-Manar, and
other sattelite television stations. Such reports routinely included
live interviews with field commanders and camp residents, as well as
activists, PA officials, medical professionals, and others located
elsewhere in Jenin.

The intensive coverage of the Jenin refugee camp battle from its
very outset despite the hermetic exclusion of journalists and
humanitarian agencies also meant the Arab public - and thus the
entire world - was from the outset keenly aware of the unfolding
catastrophe. This necessarily means that the international community
- and specifically the United States and European Union which
clearly had more information available than the Arab viewing public
and which alone have the requisite influence on Israeli policy and
actions - consciously refused to undertake any effective measures to
prevent or halt Sharon's work in progress. Indeed, when UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan on 10 April pronounced himself "frankly appalled"
by reports he was receiving from the occupied territories at a joint
press conference in Madrid, Secretary of State Colin Powell
clarified that Annan was speaking for himself and that the US was
merely "concerned".

This said, international organisations have also failed miserably.
The Jenin refugee camp is administered by the United Nations Relief
and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA);
although UNRWA Director General Peter Hanssen spoke of "horrific
reports" emanating from Jenin suggesting a "humanitarian
catastrophe", Annan resolutely failed to use the authority of his
office to publicly and explicitly voice concern about a massacre in
the making. Similarly, at the very height of the crisis the
International Committee of the Red Cross simply folded its tent and
called it a day, stating that it could not guarantee the physical
safety of its staff from Israeli attack. Palestinians viewed this as
a gross dereliction of duty, and openly questioned whether as has
been the case with Palestinian ambulance workers Israeli soldiers
would use widespread violence against their foreign colleagues.
That atrocities which in scope and scale extend well beyond those
committed elsewhere in the West Bank have took place in Jenin is
beyond question. On 9 April, in fact, Ha'aretz quoted Peres as
characterising Israeli conduct towards the residents of Jenin
refugee camp as "a massacre" - albeit in the context of the Nobel
Laureate's concern over international reaction rather than the
massacre itself - while military officers were in the same article
quoted as stating that "when the world sees the pictures of what we
have done there, it will do us immense damage." The following day,
Ha'aretz reported that the Israeli Foreign Ministry established a PR
committee to deal with the consequences, another indication that the
world best prepare for the worst.

If Israel had limited its actions to those perpetrated elsewhere in
the West Bank these past two weeks it would already be guilty of
"grave breaches" of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention - i.e. war
crimes. Most obviously in this respect is the systematic denial of
medical care to combattants and non-combattants alike. Reports
abound of casualties bleeding to death from treatable wounds and
bloated bodies littering the streets, while ambulances were
forcefully prevented from entering the camp. It was in fact only on
9 April that the first ambulances - three in total - were permitted
in. After being obstructed for almost half a day, with their medics
subjected to humiliating searches and abuse, each ambulance was
permitted to remove only one casualty. Of the three so collected,
two were promptly kidnapped from the vehicles by the army. Dr.
Muhammad Abu Ghali, director of the nearby hospital, on 10 April
reported that despite the many hundreds of dead and wounded in Jenin
his facility remained virtually empty, and that a number of
casualties were to be found in its direct vicinity - forbidden from
either entering or being brought inside.

Inside the camp, residents reported extreme hunger and thirst, and
that they had resorted to drinking sewage so as to stay alive. Those
whose homes were physically invaded by the military spoke of summary
executions, violent abuse and humiliation, property theft and
destruction, and of entire families (sometimes numbering dozens of
people) being herded into a single room for days on end without
supplies of any sort. In addition to mass arrests, in which men,
women, and children were separated from each other, many reports
also state that civilian camp residents were ordered to strip to
their underwear and march in front of tanks as human shields. Those
kept in detention have reported abuse, humiliation, and depradations
of the worst sort, and that they were systematically denied food,
water, and medical care.

Already prior to the fall of the camp, residents reported that
virtually every building within it had been either severely damaged
or entirely destroyed by incessant Israeli missile, artillery, and
heavy-calibre machine-gun fire. Although Israel claims that the
Palestinian casualty toll stood at 100 "terrorists", Palestinians
sources insist the toll is at least double that and perhaps much
higher, the majority of them being civilians.

It appears that reports of bodies strewn along the camp's streets,
confirming Peres' characterisation of the Israeli army's conduct,
will never be properly investigated. On 11 April, it was reported
that at least 10,000 residents - two-thirds of the original
population - had been forcibly evicted from the camp, men and women
separated from each other and transported to Jenin and surrounding
villages, humiliated, abused, and left to fend for themselves. The
scattered inhabitants were shown desperately seeking to contact
loved ones to discover their fate, and spoke of horrific conduct by
Israeli soldiers. Within the camp, Israeli bulldozers were said to
be systematically reducing what remained of it to rubble, and
according to various accounts disposing of corpses in the sewage
system, burying them in mass graves within the camp, and loading
them onto trucks and burying them in mass graves within Israel
and/or the Jordan valley. The latter allegation has been made with
particular force by Arab members of the Israeli parliament, who
claim to have documented the practice as well.

On the morning of 12 April, Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman
to visit
the camp later that day, but refused to guarantee this would happen.
According to Meir, the only reason the hermetic closure remains in
force and may be extended is Israel's profound concern for the
physical safety of the journalists, many of them seasoned war
correspondents eagerly prepared to risk their lives if permitted to
do so.

Concerning what really transpired in Jenin refugee camp there are
Palestinian claims of the biggest Israeli massacre since
Sabra-Chatilla and categorical Israeli denials that anything
untoward could possibly have transpired. It at this point appears
reasonable to assume that the full truth may never emerge. In the
meantime, the only uncontested facts are that Israel is working
around the clock to prevent examination of allegations of war
crimes, while the Palestinians insist upon immediate access to stop
> > a bloodbath that may well be continuing and to permit the
independent verification of their claims. All indications are that a
genuine chamber of horrors is being concealed.

Students for Justice in Palestine, Berkeley, California

http://www.justiceinpalestine.org