HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS SPEAK OUT
Grieving survivors say the Israelis buried war crimes in heaps of reeking rubble
By Phil Reeves in Jenin
17 April 2002
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Gaunt and exhausted, tormented with worry about his missing family, Jamal Fayed yesterday wandered round the vast heap of reeking detritus where Israel has buried the war crimes of Jenin refugee camp.
The last time Mr Fayed, a Palestinian science teacher, saw his wife and children, eight-year-old Majed and six-year-old Ahmed, was just after Israeli forces had invaded a fortnight ago. He told the family to leave their house because he feared a nearby Israeli tank was about to begin shelling. He stayed behind, because he thought that if he left with them the soldiers would open fire on them, assuming him to be a fighter.
"Maybe they have gone to another village," he said. "I just don't know where they are." He stood in the dust of what used to be a large residential area, now reduced by Israeli bombardment and bulldozers to a wasteland, fetid with the stench of decomposing human bodies beneath it. Nearby, old women picked through the debris, trying to salvage the pitiful, battered remains of their lives.
International aid workers are beginning the arduous task of establishing how many people were killed in the camp in the Israeli's so-called counter- terrorism operation, a long bout of fighting which culminated with the bulldozing by the army of hundreds of dwellings. Witnesses said civilians were inside. The UN agencies and Red Cross say they find a growing number of refugees who are missing relatives.
Humanitarian aid workers who got into the devastated area of the camp yesterday reacted with deep anger and shock. A large area, about a third of a mile wide, has been flattened. Many other homes, half-wrecked by the heavy fighting, including rocket bombardments from Israeli helicopters, are uninhabitable. One official called the sight "absolutely unbelievable" and a "humanitarian catastrophe".
A senior UN official said: "Given the deplorable and unprecedented refusal to allow international relief organisations in to the camps while people were slowly dying in the rubble of their wounds and thirst, the onus is definitely on the state of Israel to account for the missing thousands of refugees who lived in that camp until a few weeks ago.
"I have not met one person in the international community who had any other explanation for this refusal other than the fact that they were hiding a war crime, in fact, two war crimes: the mass killing and the denial of humanitarian relief."
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