JENIN ATROCITIES COMING TO LIGHT
The Camp that Became a Slaughterhouse
By Justin Huggler, The Independent, 4/14/2002
news.independent.co.uk
A woman with her leg all but ripped off by a helicopter rocket, the mangled remains hanging on by a thread of skin as she slowly bleeds to death. A 10-year-old boy lying dead in the street, his arm blown off and a great hole in his side. A mother shot dead when she ran into the street to scream for help for her dying son. The wounded left to die slowly, in horrible agony, because the ambulances were not allowed in to treat them.
A terrible crime has been committed by Israel in Jenin refugee camp, and the world is turning a blind eye. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, visited the scene of a suicide bombing that murdered six Israelis in Jerusalem, but he did not visit Jenin, where the Israelis admit they killed at least 100 Palestinians. The Israel army claims all of the dead were armed men, that it took special care to avoid civilian casualties. But we saw the helicopter rockets rain down on desperately crowded areas: civilian casualties could not have been prevented.
The Israeli army sealed off the entire area around Jenin yesterday, arresting journalists who ventured into it. That is because they have something to hide in Jenin: the bodies.
The Israeli army has told the Israeli courts that it will not start burying the bodies until Sunday. But there are abundant eyewitnesses who say they have already seen the soldiers piling the bodies in mass graves. Hiding the bodies is what Slobodan Milosevic did in Kosovo.
Either way, the Palestinians are not allowed to bury their own dead, because Israel does not want the world to see what happened inside Jenin refugee camp. The grieving have no way of knowing where to find the bodies of those they have lost.
For nine days, Jenin camp became a slaughterhouse…
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Israel Buries the Bodies, but Cannot Hide the Evidence
By Justin Huggler and Phil Reeves, The Independent, 4/13/2002
news.independent.co.uk
Israel was trying to bury the evidence in Jenin refugee camp yesterday, but it cannot bury the terrible crime it has committed: a slaughter in which Palestinian civilians were cut down alongside the armed defenders of the camp.
Israeli tanks circled journalists menacingly as foreign reporters tried to get into the camp, cutting off their approach. But a man who had just fled the camp said he had seen Israeli soldiers burying the bodies of the dead in a mass grave.
"I saw it all with my own eyes," said the man. "I saw people bleeding to death in the streets. I saw a 10-year-old child lying dead. There was a big hole in his side and his arm had been blown away.
"I saw them burying the bodies. They started work on the grave a few days ago. I recognised some of the bodies in it. I can give you the names."
And he reeled them off: "Mohammed Hamed, Nidal Nubam and Mustafa Shnewa". He said the mass grave he saw was in a neighbourhood called Harat Al-Hawashiya.
"They dug a big hole in the ground. I saw them filling it in today. They had a big bulldozer pushing dirt in on top of it."
And so the grieving of Jenin will not be certain where their relatives lie. They will not return to bury their dead, however the Israeli army will have done that to keep the devastating sight of the carnage away from the eyes of the waiting world.
Yesterday, though, they were unable to stifle the evil smell. The reek of putrefying bodies wafted out of the narrow, rubble-strewn alleys which were barred for a fifth day to international aid agencies trying to send ambulances and doctors to evacuate the many wounded, and recover the dead.
One after another, international officials, angered by Israel's rampant violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the human misery that has resulted, confided to The Independent yesterday that they had reached the inevitable conclusion: a crime has been committed which Israel is trying to cover up.
"It is clear they have something to hide that is the bottom line," said one senior diplomatic source. Red Cross and Red Crescent ambulances waited on stand-by for yet another day, without getting in to the camp…
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Refugee Camp Is a Scene of Vast Devastation
By JAMES BENNET, The New York Times, 4/14/2002
nytimes.com
JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank, April 13 - A three-hour tour here today, made with local guides who picked paths around Israeli tanks, showed destruction on a scale far greater than that seen in the other Palestinian cities that have fallen before Israel's offensive, its biggest ground operation in 20 years…
Palestinians described hiding in caves, hearing a neighbor's handicapped son crying out as a house was demolished on top of him, piling mattresses over children so that Israeli patrols would not hear them wail. They rushed up to strangers to tell their stories.
"My father, my brother, my son I have no one!" wailed a woman in a pink housecoat and pale blue head scarf, standing on the debris in the midday sun. "There are many bodies, many bodies, under the stones, under the sand!"…
The evidence of the fighting was everywhere. Children had collected spent cartridges, some, from helicopter machine guns, the size of cans of frozen juice concentrate.
A grenade pin lay in the dust, not far from a missile's steel fins.
Palestinians displayed 18-inch rockets, marked in English as Tow missiles, that they said were fired into their homes. The slender filaments used to guide rockets hung from buildings and power lines…
Beneath one house, its second floor pierced by a missile, was a dark cave. It was carved from the rock and it smelled of damp earth. Thirty-five people hid here for at least two days, according to Fatmeh Ahmed, who said she had stayed there with her four children.
"Whenever we wanted to go out of the cave to bring water or food for the children, they opened fire on us," she said…
Another resident of the camp, Umm Samir Sabbagh, said that a neighboring family escaped to her home when a bulldozer approached their house. They left behind a handicapped son, she said. She said she returned with his mother to retrieve the man, Jamal, but arrived in time only to hear him crying out as the house collapsed…
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Jenin Prisoner Executed After Arrest
Palestinian Militant Killed in Jenin
United Press International, 4/14/2002
A leading Palestinian militant was shot dead after he was arrested by Israeli troops in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin on Saturday, Palestinian eyewitnesses said Sunday.
The witnesses said that dozens of Israeli troops found Abu Jandal, the leader of militants in the camp, hiding in one of the houses. They said he was executed by Israeli troops in the center of the camp after being taken into custody.
There was no immediate comment by Israeli officials.
"I know Abu Jandal, I saw him being arrested, then the soldiers took him to a yard in the center of the camp and shot two bullets at his head after his hands were tied and his eyes were blindfolded," said the witness.
Palestinian National Authority officials said that at least 500 Palestinians were killed in Jenin refugee camp since the Israeli army entered into Jenin area two weeks ago, and thousands were detained…
Several international humanitarian organizations warned Sunday that disease would spread in the camp if the bodies left in the narrow streets of the camps were not removed immediately.
The officials said that most of the bodies were buried in mass graves and their families were not allowed to receive the bodies and bury them.
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Is this Proof of an Israeli Massacre?
By BOB GRAHAM, Mail On Sunday, 4/14/2002
mailonsunday.co.uk
A CHARRED and deformed corpse lies amongst the rubble of what was once a family home.
One arm clutching her chest, the other supporting herself in her terrible grief, stands an elderly woman…
By yesterday, stories that Israeli soldiers had carried out indiscriminate slaughter in Jenin led to a growing international outcry and demands that the extent of their operations be revealed.
As dusk fell over the refugee community of Palestinians, the Sharon government finally allowed journalists to see the devastation.
Survivors interviewed by The Mail on Sunday spoke of cold-blooded assassinations of unarmed men - at least one carrying a white flag of surrender - and of systematic destruction of the camp, inhabited by around 10,000 people.
One blind woman, Sabha Abu Sayidieh, wept openly as she told how her son and grandson were missing after leading her to safety when her house was attacked. 'Please, tell me you have found my son and his son,' she said.
One of the original settlers in Jenin Refugee Camp in 1948, she sat in the house of a friend in a suburb of Jenin weeping and rocking backwards and forwards in prayer. 'I could not see the tanks or the soldiers but I could hear them,' she said. 'They were breaking everything with their explosions. I could hear them shooting and I could hear people screaming. I could also smell death, from bodies that had not been buried, that's how bad it was.'
Another survivor, carpenter Nidal Abdul Rashid, spoke of watching his best friend Jamal al Samagh gunned down in cold blood by Israeli soldiers…
Rashid, 32, who left his wife Rasha and two young children, Abdul, eight, and Maram, six, in the house to surrender believed he, too, would die. Instead, he endured a public humiliation, forced to strip naked and parade along the camp street in front of a tank.
'They were using us all as human shields in case the road had been booby-trapped or it was shot at,' Rashid explained.
For 36 hours he was forced to lie naked on the ground, his hands tied behind his back, and bound together with four other men. Mousa Hasan Ali Ghoul, a 60-year-old grocer, told of soldiers and tanks firing indiscriminately. 'There was heavy shelling and firing of automatic weapons, hitting buildings and anyone in its way. They had no certain targets although there were some Palestinian fighters trying to stop them. If I had a gun I would also have fought...
Ali Ghoul said that bodies were piled up and taken away by lorry. 'We believe they have been taken away to a place in the Jordan Valley where the army buries people they call terrorists. It is closed to the outside world.
'The soldiers are now treating us the way the Germans treated their ancestors. They should know better than to do this...'
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Days of Bloody Fighting Leave Jenin Refugee Camp in Ruins
By Mark Heinrich, Reuters, 4/14/2002
philly.com
JENIN, West Bank - A Reuters news team slipped past tanks roaring back and forth around the walled camp to find the closely packed concrete houses and labyrinth of alleyways smashed by tank and helicopter gunship fire and riddled with bullet holes.
The contorted bodies of four Palestinian men lay in the ruins of a living room that had apparently been hit by a missile.
In a room of a house 100 yards away, the bloated body of a middle-age man lay next to a bookcase…
Some houses not damaged in the fighting appeared to have been ransacked…
From the shattered upstairs window of one house, reporters could see the camp's central square. It had been pulverized to rubble and dust. It was not clear whether it had been destroyed in battle or bulldozed.
But many residents said bulldozers had been busy in the camp for days. They could be heard at work overnight by reporters a few hundred yards from the camp entrance…
No males from the ages of around 15 to 50 were seen in the camp. Women said males of that age had either been killed or taken prisoner.
Women said they were surviving on basic food stores and had some access to well water, but there had been no electricity for over a week. Children were filthy and some looked ill…
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Israeli Army Accused of Atrocities
Mideast: Residents of Jenin say soldiers targeted civilians and gunmen alike.
By RICHARD BOUDREAUX, The Los Angeles Times, 4/13/2002
latimes.com
JENIN, West Bank -- Khadra Samara, her family and closest neighbors lived in three adjacent cinder-block houses on Rwabe Street, a relatively quiet corner of the Palestinian refugee camp here.
For 17 terrifying hours this week, she says, the 30 unarmed neighbors fled on hands and knees from one three-story home to the next, huddling together as Israeli helicopter gunships, tanks and bulldozers reduced the buildings to rubble in methodical succession…
According to the accounts, which couldn't be independently verified, the Israelis fired on unarmed civilians, used them as human shields and obstructed medical workers trying to save the wounded. One camp resident, Ali Ramile, a 40-year-old truck driver, said he watched Israeli soldiers kill seven or eight disarmed Palestinian fighters execution-style and dump several loads of bodies in a mass grave within 100 yards of his home…
But interviews with more than a dozen Palestinians from the Jenin camp indicated a heavy loss of civilian life there. Nearly everyone interviewed said they had watched neighbors die from Israeli shelling or sniper fire, or at least seen bodies in the street.
And Palestinian human rights organizations, citing reports that they said came from camp residents and witnesses, have accused Israeli troops of executing prisoners and digging graves in the camp…
When Israeli troops entered the camp on foot to search homes for armed militants, they sent captive Palestinian men ahead of them at gunpoint to knock on the doors or break through the walls. The army has acknowledged the practice, saying it discourages armed resistance…
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BBC Shows Israelis Preventing Aid for Elderly Woman in Jenin
news.bbc.co.uk
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Powell Cautions Israelis on West Bank Operations
Agence France Presse, 4/13/2002
US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Saturday expressed concern over the humanitarian situation in the Jenin refugee camp and other Palestinian areas and called on Israeli forces to "refrain from the excessive use of force" on the West Bank…
"Israeli forces must exercise their utmost restraint and discipline and refrain from the excessive use of force in the conduct of military operations in order to ensure that civilians are protected and to avoid worsening the already grave conditions inside Palestinian areas."
"We are particularly concerned at the humanitarian situation in Jenin," he said, referring to the refugee camp in the northern West Bank where fierce fighting left hundreds of Palestinians dead.
Powell called upon Israel "to allow full and unimpeded access to humanitarian organizations and services to provide basic humanitarian services, including the evacuation of the wounded and deceased."
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Tanks Bar Aid Agencies and Journalists from Camp
By Suzanne Goldenberg in Jenin, The Guardian, 4/13/2002
guardian.co.uk
The stench of death rose from the Fashafshe family home on Old Castle Street, or what remains of it: a five-foot high mound of rubble topped by a television aerial.
A few days ago an Israeli army tank and a bulldozer prowling the narrow lanes of the town's main square were boxed in by this old stone house. So they demolished it, burying a Palestinian family of five beneath its two-foot thick stone walls.
"They got stuck so the tank fired a shell at the house. I could hear the kids screaming," said Issam Fashafshe, a cousin who lives diagonally across from the home. "Then the bulldozers came and started bulldozing. The wall fell on people, and their blood was here," he said.
The bodies of Ahmed Fashafshe, his wife Samira and their son Bassam were interred in the ruins until Thursday when a brief relaxation of the curfew allowed for a hurried burial. Two other children survived.
The battle of Jenin is over. But a day after the Israeli army said it had crushed the last resistance from the Palestinian gunmen inside the refugee camp there was no clear picture yesterday of how many people were killed there, or where the bodies were buried...
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Israel’s War of Words Gets Dirty
By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem, The Independent, 4/14/2002
news.independent.co.uk
Joel is a reserve captain in the Israeli army. He has a warm handshake and a line in rapid-fire patter that betrays his New York upbringing.
He introduces himself as a "military source", but it swiftly emerges that he is a headline machine, churning out slurs.
Joel is in the front line of a multi-million dollar propaganda drive by the Israeli government to try to prevent an international backlash over its military invasion into Palestinian-run parts of the occupied West Bank.
They face their toughest challenge yet: limiting the damage to Israel over the atrocities committed in the Jenin refugee camp, where its army has killed and injured hundreds of Palestinians…
We cut straight to the question of Jenin. "Believe me, we would love to let you guys into Jenin, but unlike the Palestinian terrorists, we respect the dignity of the dead," he said. "They want to gather up the bodies and show them off to the international media as evidence of a massacre that is typical of the sort of PR tricks they play."
The press was also not being allowed into Jenin because of the "abundance of terrorists" looking for "Western targets". The Israeli army has frequently shot at journalists, injuring more than 40 and killing one. Suddenly, it was concerned for our safety…
The propaganda war between the Israelis and Palestinians has always been a dirty business, but now it has sunk to new depths. Israel's media centre issued a statement boasting of "countless examples" of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. This will be staggering news to the Red Cross and Red Crescent, who have been barred from entry, shot at and repeatedly humiliated, all in violation of the Geneva Convention...
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Despite Court's Decision, Israeli Forces Move Bodies from Jenin
14 April 2002 - LAW
Statements from eyewitnesses, collected by LAW, confirm that despite Friday's Israeli High Court's interim order, Israeli forces have continued moving bodies outside Jenin refugee camp. Eyewitness accounts confirm reports that an Israeli truck was seen with bodies inside plastic bags. The bodies were taken out of the truck and put in holes dug by bulldozers.
Later, eyewitnesses saw bulldozers coming back to the location, which is outside Jenin refugee camp, taking out an estimated thirty bodies from the holes and loading the bodies back on the truck. Reports indicate that the bodies were then taken in the direction of the 'Green Line', the demarcation line between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Individuals, including next-door neighbors, have seen bulldozers demolishing homes and shelters in which there were still people, including women and children. Various eyewitnesses have seen bodies, including bodies of women and children, in the rubble of demolished homes. Eyewitnesses have seen bulldozers driving back and forward over bodies in Jenin refugee camp.
Eyewitnesses told LAW they saw a family trying to flee from their home, that was about to be demolished by Israeli bulldozers. When the family, including a woman carrying her child, stepped outside their home in Jenin refugee camp, they were fired upon from an Apache helicopter with heavy machinegun fire. In this attack a 14-years old boy was killed.
There have been consistent testimonies from residents of Jenin refugee camp who have been used by Israeli forces as human shields. These are similar testimonies to reports we received from other Palestinian cities, towns and refugee camps, describing similar use of human shields by the Israeli occupation forces…
LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment is a non-governmental organisation dedicated to preserving human rights through legal advocacy. LAW is affiliate to the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), the Federation Internationale des Ligues de Droits de l'Homme (FIDH) and the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT).
LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, PO Box 20873, Jerusalem, tel. +972-2-5833530, fax. +972-2-
5833317, email: law@lawsociety.org, web: www.lawsociety.org
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ISRAEL REOPENS NOTORIOUS DESERT PRISON CAMP
14 April 2002 - Palestine Center For Human Rights
This week, Israeli authorities reopened the Ketziot prison camp in the Negev desert in southern Israel, popularly known as “Ansar 3.” During the 1980s and
1990s, thousands of Palestinian prisoners were held in the facility. PCHR fears that the reopening of Ansar 3 indicates that mass arbitrary detentions in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) will continue and is deeply concerned that detainees transferred to Ansar 3 may be subject to torture or other forms of ill-treatment.
PCHR has received information that Ansar 3 is due to receive approximately 70
Palestinians currently being held in administrative detention in Megiddo prison in Israel. A further 281 Palestinians placed in administrative detention during
Israel’s current military offensive in the West Bank will also be transferred to the facility. This latter group is currently being held at the Ofer military base in the West Bank. Administrative detention orders are issued by the military and allow Israeli forces to place Palestinians in detention for indefinitely renewable periods of six months without charge or trial. The transfer of Palestinian prisoners from the OPT into Israel is a grave breach under the Fourth Convention.
Ansar 3 was opened on 16 March 1988 to absorb increasing numbers of Palestinians arrested during the first Intifada. At its peak, it was the largest prison in Israel, holding approximately 7,000 Palestinians, including 3,000 in administrative detention. At one time or another during its six years of operation, approximately 170,000 Palestinians were detained at the facility.
The prison camp is administered by the Israeli army rather than the civil penal system. It consists of tents surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers. Prisoners are confined with little or no protection from the harsh weather conditions of the Negev desert, including temperatures ranging from 54 degrees during the day to 0 degrees at night. Hygiene and sanitation conditions at the facility fail to meet minimum international standards of conditions of detention, including those specified in Article 85 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
According to PCHR’s documentation, guards at the camp regularly abused detainees when it was in operation. In a number of cases, soldiers in watchtowers fired at prisoners, including Asad Jaber Shawa from Gaza city, shot and killed on 16 August 1988. For years, Israeli authorities denied detainees in Ansar 3 the right to receive family visits. Palestinian lawyers seeking to visit their clients inside were regularly subject to degrading treatment and even beatings.
PCHR believes that the reopening of Ansar 3 indicates that Israeli occupying forces will continue mass arbitrary detentions, especially under Israeli Military Order 1500, which grants army officers wide latitude to detain Palestinians without charge or judicial review. Israeli occupying forces are holding an estimated 4,000 Palestinians detained during the current offensive in the West Bank military bases of Ofer, Etzion (near Hebron), and Hawara (near Nablus). |
