No proof of massacre in Jenin yet
Dan Brett | 02.05.2002 21:28
Overview of arguments surrounding the investigation of the Jenin "massacre". Doubt is being cast on Palestinian claims that there were more deaths than claimed by Israel. However, none deny that war crimes did not occur in the refugee camp and calls are mounting for an investigation, despite Kofi Annan's decision to stand down the UN team headed by Maarti Atahari.
In an interview with Washington Post, Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch stated that: "we have not found any evidence to suggest that hundreds of people were 'massacred' by Israeli forces in Jenin. We have found at least 51 people were killed in the offensive including 21 civilians -- many of whom were children, women and old men." (
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liveonline/02/world/world_bouckaert0426.htm)
These estimates were confirmed by British military expert David Holley, a Major in the British Army, although he speculated that the final death toll could be as high as 80. He said: "I think massacre is a word that is too often used in these sorts of situations and it doesn't really help. What we have got here is possibly 54 bodies found so far, with possibly 20 or 30 unaccounted for but we can't really verify these figures until the whole site is cleared. Talking to people and talking to witnesses, even very credible witnesses, it just appears there was no wholesale killing. Clearly the... civilians who died in the battle were caught in crossfire and there have been one or two civilians who were shot and executed." ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1957000/1957862.stm)
Nevertheless, both agree that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) were responsible for denying medical services and basic amenities and that this constitutes a war crime. Said Bouckaert: "Even though some of the worst allegations about Jenin have not been proven to have occurred we do think that the abuses which did take place are extremely serious and warrant the attention of the international community."
He added that four types of abuse occurred in Jenin
1. Significant number of civilians who were killed in circumstances directly related to the forceful methods used by Israel during its offensive.
2. The massive destruction of civilian homes and sometimes indiscriminate use of helicopter fire used in the camp.
3. The use of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army to carry out some of its most dangerous tasks in the camp.
4. The blanket denial of medical and humanitarian access to the camp during and after the military operation.
Holley said he spoke to 'credible witnesses' who confirmed these abuses: "The hard fact is that water and electricity were cut off to the town. That cannot be denied and that is a crime. Another fact is that for nine days no wounded were taken to the hospital, the Israelis blocked it. That is a fact, that is a war crime. You cannot stop medical services from administering to the wounded. These are facts we have at the moment that cannot be disputed and need to be investigated."
The extent of physical damage was far higher than announced by Israel. Holley said: "There is an extensive area - about 200 metres (600ft) by about 100 metres (300ft) - that has been completely flattened. It is just like a building site or the aftermath of an earthquake. No houses, just rubble." Bouckaert estimated the number of people from the refugee camp left homeless by the IDF attack was over 4,000 out of a population of 14,000.
However, Bouckaert and Holley disagreed on how the international community was handling the crisis. Human Rights Watch has consistently called for a UN investigative team in Jenin to examine and document war cimes. It's call is backed by Amnesty International, which stated on 2 May that it "strongly criticised what it described as unacceptable Israeli demands that led to the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan informing the Security Council of his intent to disband the fact-finding team which he established to investigate what occurred at Jenin refugee camp." ( http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/Index/MDE150732002?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIES\ISRAEL/OCCUPIED+TERRITORIES)
Yet Holley claimed Israel "has a point" in rejecting a UN inquiry: "I think it is unfair for a lawyer to go to Jenin to then build up a military picture of what happened. You do need a soldier's perspective to say, well, this was a close quarter battle in an urban environment, unfortunately soldiers will make mistakes and will throw a hand grenade through the wrong window, will shoot at a twitching curtain, because that is the way war is." However, he still called for an inquiry, possibly made up of military experts - like him!
Both human rights organised added their condemnation of suicide bombings and the summary executions of so-called 'collaborators' by armed Palestinian groups. In an earlier statement, Amnesty condemned the attack on the hotel in Netanya, which killed 19 civilians and injured over 100 during Passover celebrations. "Deliberately targeting civilians is a grave breach of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law," the organisation said. "This is an unacceptable tragedy and we call on armed Palestinian groups to immediately cease killing civilians."
Hanny Megally, Executive Director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, said: "It doesn´t matter whether you call it resistance, self-defense, or a war against terror. No political or security objective can justify targeting and punishing the civilian population of an adversary."
It is time to talk justice and peace, not retribution and war. Neither side will be served by inflicting violence on civilians of the other. Now everyone must be brought before the law as equals, regardless of their standing with the US or their military might.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liveonline/02/world/world_bouckaert0426.htm) These estimates were confirmed by British military expert David Holley, a Major in the British Army, although he speculated that the final death toll could be as high as 80. He said: "I think massacre is a word that is too often used in these sorts of situations and it doesn't really help. What we have got here is possibly 54 bodies found so far, with possibly 20 or 30 unaccounted for but we can't really verify these figures until the whole site is cleared. Talking to people and talking to witnesses, even very credible witnesses, it just appears there was no wholesale killing. Clearly the... civilians who died in the battle were caught in crossfire and there have been one or two civilians who were shot and executed." (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1957000/1957862.stm) Nevertheless, both agree that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) were responsible for denying medical services and basic amenities and that this constitutes a war crime. Said Bouckaert: "Even though some of the worst allegations about Jenin have not been proven to have occurred we do think that the abuses which did take place are extremely serious and warrant the attention of the international community."
He added that four types of abuse occurred in Jenin
1. Significant number of civilians who were killed in circumstances directly related to the forceful methods used by Israel during its offensive.
2. The massive destruction of civilian homes and sometimes indiscriminate use of helicopter fire used in the camp.
3. The use of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army to carry out some of its most dangerous tasks in the camp.
4. The blanket denial of medical and humanitarian access to the camp during and after the military operation.
Holley said he spoke to 'credible witnesses' who confirmed these abuses: "The hard fact is that water and electricity were cut off to the town. That cannot be denied and that is a crime. Another fact is that for nine days no wounded were taken to the hospital, the Israelis blocked it. That is a fact, that is a war crime. You cannot stop medical services from administering to the wounded. These are facts we have at the moment that cannot be disputed and need to be investigated."
The extent of physical damage was far higher than announced by Israel. Holley said: "There is an extensive area - about 200 metres (600ft) by about 100 metres (300ft) - that has been completely flattened. It is just like a building site or the aftermath of an earthquake. No houses, just rubble." Bouckaert estimated the number of people from the refugee camp left homeless by the IDF attack was over 4,000 out of a population of 14,000.
However, Bouckaert and Holley disagreed on how the international community was handling the crisis. Human Rights Watch has consistently called for a UN investigative team in Jenin to examine and document war cimes. It's call is backed by Amnesty International, which stated on 2 May that it "strongly criticised what it described as unacceptable Israeli demands that led to the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan informing the Security Council of his intent to disband the fact-finding team which he established to investigate what occurred at Jenin refugee camp." (
http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/Index/MDE150732002?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIES\ISRAEL/OCCUPIED+TERRITORIES) Yet Holley claimed Israel "has a point" in rejecting a UN inquiry: "I think it is unfair for a lawyer to go to Jenin to then build up a military picture of what happened. You do need a soldier's perspective to say, well, this was a close quarter battle in an urban environment, unfortunately soldiers will make mistakes and will throw a hand grenade through the wrong window, will shoot at a twitching curtain, because that is the way war is." However, he still called for an inquiry, possibly made up of military experts - like him!
Both human rights organised added their condemnation of suicide bombings and the summary executions of so-called 'collaborators' by armed Palestinian groups. In an earlier statement, Amnesty condemned the attack on the hotel in Netanya, which killed 19 civilians and injured over 100 during Passover celebrations. "Deliberately targeting civilians is a grave breach of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law," the organisation said. "This is an unacceptable tragedy and we call on armed Palestinian groups to immediately cease killing civilians."
Hanny Megally, Executive Director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch, said: "It doesn´t matter whether you call it resistance, self-defense, or a war against terror. No political or security objective can justify targeting and punishing the civilian population of an adversary."
It is time to talk justice and peace, not retribution and war. Neither side will be served by inflicting violence on civilians of the other. Now everyone must be brought before the law as equals, regardless of their standing with the US or their military might.
Dan Brett
Comments
Hide the following 4 comments
no evidence
02.05.2002 22:26
dh
4 fuck snakes
03.05.2002 10:01
You are part of the well 2 Do 4 B 2 middle/Upper class possee
that will always back Israel through anything they do,they are free to what the fuck they like ..
Chipping away there with your well written articles and your
intellectual snobbery ... sure Israel will get away with everything, only a few more people have wised up to how they operate, media manipulation an all ... and your part of the
that soft under belly of oh so radical plonka pullers, you do your bit to make sure the fascist state of israel continues to thrive, on the blood of others, the poor
garcon
U WoT
Stupid reaction
03.05.2002 10:32
Dan Brett
oh yeah
03.05.2002 14:44
Working to Prove the Jenin Massacre
by Conversation with Brian Wood in Jenin Refugee • Friday May 03, 2002 at 12:08 AM
I think the number of dead is a lot higher than any of the official estimates. There is a lot of evidence that Israelis removed bodies from the camp. There are even reports that the Israeli military admitted removing bodies. So there is an unconfirmed number of bodies that were taken by the Israeli military, an unconfirmed number in prison, an unconfirmed number of people under the rubble, and I don't even know if there is a confirmed number of people dead.
April 29, 2002 * 9 am (Palestine time)
CCMEP: Do you need internationals in Jenin?
Brian Wood: No, there is not much to do here, besides taking
testimonies.
CCMEP: Did you meet [?] from Human rights watch?
BW: He is reluctant to use the word "massacre" because it doesn't really have meaning. Since he used the same word for Sabra and Chatila, there is some definition in his mind. Unfortunately, there is a report that is going to come out on Thursday that is probably going to be pretty weak. Internationals interviewed him for hours. He is a really a nice guy, very patient, answering all the questions they wanted to ask. But our analysis is that what happened here is going to be covered up, even by Human Rights Watch.
He said that there are only 52 people that were killed in this refugee camp, and only 21 were civilians. He said they might be 80, or maybe 100. But he said he has no evidence of people buried under their homes, even though people have been uncovered from their homes every single day.
CCMEP: How can he say that?
BW: I don't know. In his estimate, there were only 52 people killed. But the day I got here two weeks ago, I saw six corpses rotting in their homes, corpses on the street. We were walking over dead bodies all the time.
CCMEP: Where are all the dead bodies?
BW: I don't know, it's still difficult to get numbers. A lot of people said that the Israelis took bodies. There is a mass grave at the hospital in Jenin-- 39 bodies were buried there because the morgue was full. Two were buried in the street. There are at least 15 corpses that have been taken from the rubble�and that is a very conservative estimate. I'm going to work on it in the next days. It
is really difficult to get numbers because of the lack of
organization here. It is a big problem, that's why we think it's going to be covered up at the official level. So we are going see what we can do about it.
CCMEP: How many have disappeared, and how many are dead?
BW: Unfortunately, the UN school is a disaster, chaos. People are putting in their names in order to get food. It's going to be inefficient. Part of it is internal. For example, the bomb experts from the Red Cross, they were supposed to remove all the unexploded ordinances. But one of the reasons they left after being here only three days is because the Israelis would not allow them to bring in the proper equipment they needed to remove the devices. Then they
told us that they needed to dispose of them in Israel, and the authorities wouldn't allow them to do either, so it really curtailed their efforts, and they left. Now the UN is taking [the job] over.
This signals to me that the UN is trying to do stuff that is
politically sensitive. In just three days, these [other] people removed over 300 unexploded bombs.. But all of them are still here. Now they are re-buried around the Jenin refugee camp. There are a lot of booby traps.
CCMEP: How many internationals are still there?
BW: There are people coming and going [?]. The group was reduced to three today.
CCMEP: Are there are systematic efforts to unbury homes or find more bodies?
BW: All lot of these 200 homes had people inside of them when they were bulldozed, so they're bound to keep uncovering corpses. I wouldn't call it systematic, but when people have an idea that one of their relatives are in there, or if a Red Crescent volunteer thinks there's someone there, then they bulldoze the rubble and scoop it by hand�it's just an incredibly slow process. You had four; five-story
buildings that were bulldozed, and all that rubble came down in a pile, so there's a lot of rubble to go through. There are a lot of homes that haven't even been touched yet, to see if there are people under them. But I don't think that there's been a day since the military left that they didn't find corpses buried under rubble--and dig them out piece by piece.
CCMEP: Do you hear any more estimates about the number of people they think they'll find?
BW: Nobody has any idea. Human Rights Watch estimates that 4000
people have been made homeless, 200 homes destroyed. I think about 15 percent of the camp was razed. But there are a large number of houses that have other problems now�like gaping holes in walls, tank shells.
People might still be living in them, but they are unsafe, or heavily damaged. Human Rights estimates that there were 14,000 people living in here, so if 4000 people are now homeless, then one quarter of the camp became homeless because of this invasion.
CCMEP: Where are they living now?
BW: With family in other parts of the camp, or other cities.
CCMEP: Do you have any idea how many are still in prison?
BW: A lot. Just in the last few days, a few people started coming out of the two main prisons in the camp, and we're going to start talking to them, hopefully today. The treatment in prisons is really bad.
Beaten constantly. A lot of them are in their underwear still from weeks ago. They are given very little food, beaten, interrogated, beaten. But nobody really knows the numbers that would tell the story.
CCMEP: How's the food and water situation in the camp?
BW: There are still people who really don't have anything�everything they had was either stolen or destroyed. There's just a little bit of running water. There's still no electricity. Since the military pulled out, then you can get more food into the camp, or go into the city, so the food situation is better. But there are still people
whose resources have been completely destroyed.
CCMEP: Is there still a presence of Israeli military?
BW: (chuckles) Yeah, they still make their presence known. F-16's are always flying overhead, Apache helicopters just to scare us, especially in the morning. There are still tanks all around. On a daily basis, they let people know that they are still there.
CCMEP: Do you believe there was a massacre?
BW: Yesterday we were talking casually to a Palestinian, and he said, "All I do all day is think about my friends. I found a picture yesterday of me and six or seven of my friends, and they're all dead." I think the number of dead is a lot higher than any of the official estimates. There is a lot of evidence that Israelis removed bodies from the camp. There are even reports that the Israeli military admitted removing bodies. So there is an unconfirmed number
of bodies that were taken by the Israeli military, an unconfirmed number in prison, an unconfirmed number of people under the rubble, and I don't even know if there is a confirmed number of people dead.
There are only families who know that their members are missing�they don't know if they're dead or in prison. Our work here is to gather the evidence, and show that there was a massacre.
CCMEP: Any idea how long you are going to be there?
BW: I think I'm going to be here for a little while, at least a couple more weeks. The Jenin Refugee Camp is not like any other place I've been in Palestine. The people here are strong, they're informed and alert�they're fighters. They're going to stand up to the Israelis�
they'll get bulldozed, but they're going to stand up to them. Great, great people.
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the latest from the massacre field
by mourner • Friday May 03, 2002 at 01:06 AM
JENIN, the hidden massacre!
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israel=terrorisme
by bill • Friday May 03, 2002 at 01:39 AM
lorsqu'on tue des enfants , on n'est pas seulement des terroristes mais des monstres...
sharon le boucher et bush le charognard sont de vrais vampires qui sucent le sang de toute la planète terre
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Oui Bill!
by # • Friday May 03, 2002 at 05:11 AM
C'est vrai. Sharon a été prévu par Nostradamus. Il est l'homme avec l'"chapeau" bleu et cette chose bleue est son
yamakah. Il est un homme des mensonges et de la déception.
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reed dis