Burying the truth
By MATTHEW GUTMAN
Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Palestinians are determined to depict the battle of Jenin as a 'massacre' of innocents for maximum propaganda value. Matthew Gutman reports
"Where's the stench?" a German journalist wonders out loud, as he gingerly picks his way through the heap of rubble that is the center of the Jenin refugee camp. Using a stick he prods a bloodstained jacket lying in what used to be someone's living room. Turning to his Palestinian interpreter, the journalist asks: "If there are so many dead bodies underneath us, why doesn't it smell worse?"
Asked about the absence of stench, Dr. Hamed Abu Ghali, director of the Jenin Hospital, says the odor of decomposing flesh so voluminously reported in the past few weeks is now gone because "we began our prevention campaign early, and we put a lot of chemicals on the ruins. If we did not treat the ruins, we would have had a lot of disease. We could have had complications from the massacre, which might be more difficult than the massacre itself."
But for many others who have spent time in Jenin since the end of Operation Defensive Shield, including Israeli soldiers, journalists and most international aid workers, there is a more obvious answer to why there is no smell of corpses: The camp was physically devastated, but there was no massacre.
According to the Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, to "massacre" is "to kill in considerable numbers where much resistance cannot be made; to kill with indiscriminate violence, without necessity, and contrary to the usages of nations; to butcher; to slaughter."
The evidence uncovered thus far even by international rights organizations harshly critical of Israeli army tactics, indicates that the violence in Jenin was neither "indiscriminate" nor without resistance.
"The majority of those killed," says Peter Bouckaert, a researcher at Human Rights Watch posted to Jenin, "were killed by snipers. Only one man, that we know of, was crushed in his home by a bulldozer."
As opposed to the estimates of the Palestinian Authority, which predicted a death toll 10 times as high, aid workers and local doctors have found only 53 corpses so far in the ruins of the camp. They estimate that 21 of them were civilians, including four women, two 14-year-old boys, two invalids and at least three elderly men.
Hospital director Ghali believes that many more bodies lie beneath the ruins of the camp.
Bouckaert, whose group has worked closely with the medical teams at Jenin Hospital, believes that, in fact, very few corpses remain buried beneath the tons of rubble in what has come to be known among foreign rescue workers, Palestinians, and Israeli soldiers alike as "Ground Zero." He is almost certain that the death toll will rise very little as the rescue efforts continue. The rate of the removal of bodies has already slowed significantly in the past week, as no more than two bodies had been pulled from the rubble.
Bouckaert, like other aid workers, fears Israel will try to "whitewash" the massive amounts of "unnecessary destruction" in the camp. But he says plainly: "There was no massacre."
Yet Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza. specially those in Jenin, continue to believe that Israel committed a human rights violation and a crime against humanity by slaughtering dozens if not hundreds of innocent civilians. Already, the myth of what happened in the northern West Bank city has taken hold of the Palestinian national psyche, fueling ever-increasing waves of anger which will gird it for the next stage of the conflict.
"What happened here is obviously a war crime," claims Jenin district governor Zuhair Almanasreh. Pointing to the sheet rock walls of his office riddled with bullet holes, Almanasreh, distinguished by his tall stature and long thin patrician's nose, leans back in his chair. "And it was a crime against humanity," he adds, "because it was committed by a state using the most powerful military in the region to enforce its political will on civilians. It was state-conducted terror addressed to civilians, in a civilian camp."
Dr. Amikam Nachmani, a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Institute for Strategic Studies who just this week delivered a paper at Bar-Ilan University comparing the Palestinian symbols and myths of the first intifada and of the "Al Aksa intifada," is certain that Jenin will be used as another symbol of the Palestinians' national struggle and their national suffering. Through this, he adds, the "Jenin Massacre" will be manipulated to bring pressure on the international community to protect the Palestinians from the Israelis, most likely by demanding that an inter
national force be sent to the region.
"The facts of what really happened in Jenin are actually immaterial," notes Nachmani. "What counts here, is how the Palestinians portray the events in the camp to the world."
ISRAELI concern over attempts by the Palestinians to paint the battle of Jenin as a massacre were a factor in the security cabinet's decision this week not to cooperate with the United Nations fact-finding mission appointed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. According to the IDF, Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp are already trying to inflate the number of those killed during Defensive Shield by adding bodies of residents buried in a local cemetery to a collective grave of those killed during the battle.
While the numbers of those killed and exact percentages of homes destroyed are somewhat unreliable, the sheer scale of destruction is evident even to the untrained eye. Few of the refugee sector's poorly-built buildings do not bear the deep scars of structural damage. Trudging along the muddy, rutted roads and alleys of the sector - burst pipes have turned the lower ends of the camp into murky swamps - one has an unobstructed view into the living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms and toilets of scores of homes.
The IDF claims that no more than 10 percent of the houses in the refugee sector were destroyed, but a cursory glance indicates otherwise. Almanasreh, estimates that about 40 percent of the refugee camp's buildings were destroyed and another 20% rendered unlivable. He says that as many as 3,500 people have been left homeless as a result of the operation.
How can such a large chunk of a city be leveled, and only 53 people be killed? The answer is simple. The IDF entered the Jenin refugee camp almost a week after it started its operations in Ramallah. Just as the fighters had prepared in advance for the force of over 150 tanks that entered the city and its environs, so too were its civilians, most of whom fled into the nearby villages. Those who stayed through the initial stages of the battle either hid in cellars or were evacuated on buses by the IDF, also to the nearby villages, before the bulldozers were warmed up.
The IDF's mission stipulated that terror much be torn from its roots. These roots were firmly embedded in this refugee camp as in other Palestinian refugee camps across the West Bank. It was therefore necessary, say soldiers, to enter and search the home of almost every Palestinian in the sector.
Consequently, even in areas of the sector far removed from what is now universally called "Ground Zero," gaping holes exposing teeth of shredded metal were blown into many of the houses when the IDF forced its way in. Even in the city of Jenin, several hundred meters away from the camp, there are few buildings that don't bear bullet-hole marks, and the IDF also toppled many buildings there.
Despite the concern of UNWRA (United Nations Works and Relief Agency for Palestinian Refugees) and other aid organizations to begin to dig out the homes and start administering to the lives of their charges in the camp, the search and rescue work, says deputy director of UNWRA, Charles Capes, has been delayed by the large number of unexploded ordinances (UXOs) lying about the camp and a Palestinian interest in not rehabilitating the camp before the arrival of an international fact-finding commission.
Chomping on a cigar, Capes adds that while British and Norwegian sapper teams had last week attempted to remove some of the UXOs, when their short mandate ended they returned home with a majority of explosive devices left undetonated in the camp. A squad of the French Civil Guard rescue team began last Friday to try to mark and isolate buildings or areas believed to have munitions inside.
Capes said that Palestinian fighters planted many of the UXOs while others were left by the Israeli army after its April 16 pullout from the camp. Since April 19 one person was killed and at least 12 wounded by unexploded ordinances in the camp.
Sappers such as those from the "Rapid U.K." force left early because of the terrible working conditions.
"You can hardly keep people away from the rescue workers trying to defuse the bombs. As long as there is no control over the civilian population in the camp, it will be very hard to get rid of all the mines."
Lately, the Palestinian "Blue Police" have been keeping a semblance of order as various de-mining units work to rid the camp of munitions. However, the most immovable object blocking the rehabilitation of the camps is the refusal of many of the refugees, the Jenin Governorate and other Palestinian Authority bodies to remove the debris before the arrival of the UN fact-finding commission.
"Why even begin the search," says Almanasreh, "when we don't even know how many of our sons have been detained by the Israelis? These crimes need to be documented. Also there is still no order. How can there be a central power in this city when every police officer carrying a gun fears that Israel will come and take him away."
As opposed to the majority of Israelis who hear of only 53 dead and throw their hands in the air in exasperation at the mention of the word "massacre," Almanasreh sees it differently. For him it was a "qualitative, if not quantitative massacre."
IN THE army's ever-changing lexicon, Jenin of late came to be known as "the launch pad of 23 suicide bombers." But it was also the graveyard of 23 Israeli soldiers who died in operations in the camp.
The signs of the ferocity of people willing to blow themselves up, the intensity of the fighting and the bravery of IDF soldiers darting through tortuously narrow gauntlets in pursuit of people all too willing to die for their cause, are indelible. These signs are permanently tattooed in the refugee camp in blood-stained walls and in pock-marked buildings and in the countless homemade bombs littering the rubble.
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