THE LUNAR LANDSCAPE THAT WAS THE JENIN REFUGEE CAMP
By Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian (UK), 4/16/2002
guardian.co.uk
A fortnight ago, before Israeli forces invaded, this was a crowded,
bustling place. The narrow alleys between the cinderblock homes - spanning
barely the width of outstretched arms - were packed with children.
Yesterday, the Hart al-Hawashin neighbourhood, the heart of the Jenin
refugee camp, was a silent wasteland, permeated with the stench of rotting
corpses and cordite.
The evidence of lives interrupted was everywhere. Plates of food sat in
refrigerators in houses sheared in half by Israeli bulldozers. Pages from
children's exercise books fluttered in the breeze...After the 13 soldiers
were killed, Israel appears to have abandoned foot patrols. Instead, the
army began knocking houses down indiscriminately, creating a vast plaza of
rubble in the centre of the camp, a crossroads for the Israeli tanks.
"They just started demolishing with the people inside," said Hania
al-Kabia, a mother of six whose flat is on the edge of the lunar landscape.
"I used to hear them on the loudspeaker saying come out, come out. Then
they stopped doing that, but they went on bulldozing..." |
