arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

This morning, April 10, LAW has managed to obtain the following information from Jenin refugee camp. Residents of the refugee camp report that they were first moved from the camp. Eyewitnesses stated that Israeli forces are now digging large holes inside Jenin refugee camp and in surrounding areas. They have stated their fears that these are mass graves, where the several killed (numbers still to be confirmed) in the refugee camp will be buried. Eyewitnesses saw Israeli forces putting bodies inside the holes. The area is located in the middle of the camp, also known as Haret al-Hawarish.

LAW has sought assistance from the international humanitarian agencies to enter the area and document the current activities of Israeli forces and photograph evidence of how the dead were killed, but has been advised that it is currently too dangerous to enter the refugee camp to do so.

LAW believes that these current actions suggest an intention to hide evidence of Israeli war crimes committed in Jenin refugee camp.

They follow statements made by Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres in Ha'aretz, April 9, 2002, that a "massacre" has been carried out in the camps and statements made by Israeli army officers that "the soldiers are almost not advancing on foot. The bulldozers are simply 'shaving' the homes and causing terrible destruction. When the world sees the pictures of what we have done there, it will do us immense damage."

"However many wanted men we kill in the refugee camp, and however much of the terror infrastructure we expose and destroy there, there is still no justification for causing such great destruction."

Peter Hansen, director of UNRWA also confirmed on April 7, 2002, that "We are getting reports of pure horror - that helicopters are strafing residential areas, that systematic shelling by tanks has created hundreds of wounded, that bulldozers are razing refugee homes and that food and medicine will soon run out. In the name of human decency the Israeli military must allow our ambulances safe passage to help evacuate the wounded and deliver emergency supplies of medicine and food."

These statements confirm reports received from Jenin refugee camp earlier this week, reported by LAW in its press releases of April 8 and 9 and LAW's Weekly Round ups.

LAW's attorney Hanan Khatib has lodged a pre-petition with the Israeli State Attorney's office to stop these mass grave burials and allow access for LAW's legal team to investigate the circumstances of their deaths.

Yesterday evening, LAW received reports directly from Jenin and Nablus of an escalated military assault, including in Jenin refugee camp, bombardment from Apache helicopter gunships; F15 and F16 war planes shelling the old city of Nablus and Balata refugee camp; and further deployment of Israeli tanks.

LAW reaffirms that these military assaults targeting civilians throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including Jenin and Nablus amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. LAW condemns as well these ongoing attempts to prevent access for human rights monitors, journalists, and humanitarian agencies to these sites of mass killings to investigate and document evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

LAW urgently appeals again to member states to apply effective measures, including in the form of economic sanctions, to pressure Israel to accept an international protection presence, end its gross violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and genuinely commit to final peace negotiations.

LAW welcomes the recent moves by states to impose an arms embargo, including by the Government of Germany, but believes that stronger measures, in particular, economic sanctions and immediate deployment of an international protection force is vital for the protection of civilians.

LAW calls again on member states, including as High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, to comply with their obligations under article 146 by searching for, investigating and bringing to trial perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity, under universal jurisdiction and through a War Crimes Tribunal and calls for an end to all acts by member states aiding and abetting the perpetration of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including by ending supply of all arms used to perpetrate such crimes.

Reports from witnesses in Jenin refugee camp to LAW indicate that from those Palestinian fighters resisting the Israeli military assault on Jenin refugee camp, a number of those sought to surrender to Israeli forces and were summarily executed. It has been difficult to confirm exact numbers of those executed, due to the fact that Israeli forces prevent any of the residents of the refugee camp or any independent monitors from returning or entering the refugee camp.

However, LAW has received the names of two of those fighters, who were apparently executed after their surrender: Ala' Sabagh and Mahmoud al- Hilou.

Reports indicate that other fighters remaining within the refugee camp, who have stopped their resistance, and seek to surrender, are being summarily executed.

Witnesses report that when leaving the refugee camp, they saw bodies of residents that appeared to be run over by military bulldozers and bodies within the rubble of homes and shelters that had been destroyed. They expressed their fears that they did not know whether all the bodies in the rubble were dead or injured persons.

LAW understands that the majority of the residents from the camp, after being forcibly expelled by Israeli forces, earlier today, have still not been allowed to return. These refugees are now currently scattered throughout the area, surrounding the refugee camp.

Various sources from the refugee camp, estimate that at least 30 percent of the total area of the camp, including homes and shelters, have been totally destroyed.

LAW calls for an international protection force to protect civilians to be deployed immediately in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and for an international investigative body to be immediately despatched to investigate this apparent evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, perpetrated by the Israeli forces, including in Jenin refugee camp

JENIN, West Bank — Edgy Israeli occupation troops mopped up what they called the West Bank's meanest streets on Thursday as Palestinian residents emerged during a break in a strict curfew imposed by the invading army.

Automatic weapons fire chattered sporadically in central Jenin, the northernmost of West Bank towns invaded by Israeli forces during a 13-day-old offensive with the stated aim of rooting out suicide bombers.

An Israeli tank officer said Jenin remained a "closed military zone" where some Palestinian resistance fighters were still holding out in and around the main refugee camp, where 13 soldiers died in an ambush on Tuesday.

"I think we're close to the end of it. We are mopping up now. There are only hardcore, diehard elements left," he said after disembarking from his armoured personnel carrier (APC).

Moments before, his unit had fired a round over reporters' heads. He said they had mistaken a television camera for a long-barrelled weapon.

Inside the camp, after days of fighting house-to-house and alley-by-alley, the army said the last major pocket of Palestinian resistance fell to its troops on Thursday when 36 resistance fighters walked out and surrendered.

Israeli armour rules Jenin's streets

Tanks, APCs with guns swivelling furiously and huge, armoured bulldozers raced through dusty streets of the town, their treads churning up the asphalt. The few cars that ventured out had to swerve to one side to let the heavy vehicles pass.

Helicopter gunships whirred overhead.

Aside from broken glass, some charring from fires and scattered holes from tank fire, buildings were largely intact in the centre of town, nestled in a verdant valley with olive and cypress groves five kilometre from the Green Line boundary with Israel.

But tanks and APCs had left a trail of destruction — broken utility pipes, crushed cars and uprooted street signs.

"I appeal to the Americans who say they are kind and educated, to recognise that we are not terrorists, we are occupied," said Fathieyeh Asfour, a teacher and wife of Jenin's Palestinian civil defence director.

"They must intervene. Our entire population has been under siege for 10 days now," she said. "The Israelis have vandalised and ravaged our streets. They have forced out camp residents in order to destroy houses. We're not allowed to get to the camp to bury the bodies."

She added: "It is Israeli terrorist acts against our population which the world should notice and which will create a new generation of suicide bombers in the future."

None of the accounts given by Jenin residents about Israeli actions in the camp could be independently verified because the army has declared the area off-limits to journalists.

Captain Sharon Feingold, an army spokeswoman, denied charges of Israeli atrocities and said soldiers were doing their utmost to avoid civilian casualties in Jenin, which the army regards as a stronghold of resistance groups behind attacks on Israelis.

"The fact so many Palestinians are surrendering in Jenin in itself refutes their lies about `massacres' ... Otherwise they would fight to the death," she said.

The army said its task had been complicated by resistance fighters hunkering down in narrow, densely populated and cluttered streets of Palestinian towns and refugee camps.

Responding to residents' reports of bodies left lying in the streets and alleyways, army officials maintain resistance fighters have been mainly to blame for refusing to hold their fire.

Epicentre of fighting

Jenin's concrete refugee quarter and its vicinity has been the epicentre of the bloodiest resistance by freedom fighters to the Israeli invasion of West Bank cities and towns turned over to Palestinian rule under interim peace deals starting in 1993.

Residents said bulldozers were continuing to demolish homes in the camp. Hospital sources and witnesses said several thousand of the camp's 13,000 inhabitants had fled or been forced out.

On the fringes of the camp, medics were lifting a stretcher bearing a seriously wounded 65-year-old woman into a Palestinian ambulance.

An angry crowd gathered around. "All the Israelis want to do is torment the Arabs! They are killing our children!" an elderly woman in a Muslim scarf yelled.

The army lifted its curfew for two hours in the morning and a few dozen residents appeared on otherwise desolate streets, standing warily outside their homes or stocking up on necessities at a few dingy convenience shops.

13 April 2002
Middle East

Jerusalem suicide bomber kills six

Woman suicide bomber strikes as Powell sees Sharon

Israel buries the bodies, but cannot hide the evidence

International force must be deployed, says Annan

Explosion at Tunisian synagogue was a deliberate attack, claim Germans

Fergal Keane: President Bush has reached the limit of his abilities
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.

The agencies have been tirelessly collecting information in the face of Israel's news black-out, building up details of the scene inside the half-wrecked, water-starved camp – a sprawl of tightly packed homes over one square kilometre. In effect, it has been turned into a prison where thousands of refugees are still in hiding, terrified that the soldiers will add them to the three-figure death toll.

A grim, if incomplete, picture is forming. Electricity supplies in Jenin Hospital are so low that the morgue's refrigerators are not running. Decomposing bodies, retrieved from other parts of the West Bank town, have been buried in the hospital gardens.

But yesterday morning corpses lay unburied in the camp itself, where 15,000 refugees, half of them under 18, lived before the assault, and the ensuing battles, began.

"People who got to the edge of the camp found it incredibly smelly," one UN official said. How much of the camp still stands is unclear; reports say that bulldozers have cut a swath through homes near the entrance – a tactic which the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, used against the refugees of Gaza 30 years ago, when he was an army commander trying to subdue the same forces that have now reared up against him anew.

Some accounts say that a third of the camp has been flattened.

The besieged Palestinians of Jenin fall into three categories. There is an unknown number in hiding in the refugee camp itself. These are without water, medicines, and risk being shot by Israeli snipers if they step outside, violating the curfew.

There are also an estimated 2,000-3,000 who have fled the camp, and are living in schools and mosques in poor conditions, with limited supplies.

Finally, there are the many thousands of residents of the rest of the town, parts of which have been devastated by tanks, bulldozers and rockets from helicopters.

All of them have been under the army curfew, placing the sick and elderly in serious jeopardy.

Tracing all the dead is likely to be a long and complex task. UNWRA, the United Nations relief agency for refugees, keeps a computer list of the residents of the densely populated camp. When its officials are finally allowed access to the camp, this will be used to identify the number of missing – either in detention, hiding or dead.

Israel may be able to hide the bodies of the dead but it cannot hide all the evidence. Hundreds of refugees have poured out of Jenin camp, many with harrowing stories to tell. The Palestinians are not going to let these stories be buried under the rubble.

Volunteers are compiling meticulous records of the testimony of every refugee who staggered beaten and humiliated by Israeli soldiers out of detention. The Independent has seen the laborious hand-written notes, of which several copies have been made.

Among them lies the story of Jamal Wardun. He was detained in the refugee camp when he tried to take his wife to hospital. She was pregnant and going into labour. The last time he saw her was when he was forced to leave her behind in the street.

If I may believe other media, the Israëlian Supreme Court has stated that Tsahal may not move corpses in Jenin untill the investigation of a commission has ended.