more reports and commentary on Jenin atrocities (compiled)

The Israelis are attempting to snow the world with a blizzard of semantic
bullshit about the precise meaning of the word "massacre."  In any case,
it's undeniable that the Israelis committed severe atrocities in Jenin.  Of
course some Palestinian accounts were bound to have been exaggerated, but as
Avnery points out in the opening commentary to this collection, "What is the
height of cynicism? When one blocks free access to a place, and then argues
that no one has the right to say what happened there, because he has not
seen it with his own eyes."

Arm yourselves with this information and tell the world the truth, because
what we know already (even before all the evidence is in) is bad enough.

John Lacny

**********
From: Gush Shalom <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
April 20, 2002

Jenin-II 

Something Stinks
by Uri Avnery

There is full agreement between all those who were in the Jenin refugee camp
on only one thing. A week after the end of the fighting, foreign journalists
and IDF soldiers, UN representatives and hired hacks in the Israeli media,
members of the welfare organizations and government propagandists all report
that a terrible stench of decomposing bodies lingers everywhere.

Apart from that there is no agreement on anything. The Palestinians speak
about a massacre amounting to a second Sabra and Shatila. The IDF speak
about hard fighting, in which "the most humane army in the world" did not
intentionally hurt even one single civilian. The Palestinians speak about
hundreds of dead, the Minister of Defense asserts categorically that exactly
43 were killed.

So what is the truth? The simple answer is: nobody knows. Nobody can
possibly know.

The truth lies buried under the debris, and it smells atrociously.

But some facts are uncontestable. They are sufficient for drawing
conclusions.

First: During two weeks of fighting, the IDF did not allow any journalist,
Israeli or foreign, into the camp. Even after the fighting had died down, no
journalist was let in. The pretext was that the life of the journalists
would be endangered. But they did not ask the army to save them. They were
quite ready to risk their lives, as journalists and photographers do in
every war.

Simple common sense would hold that if one forcibly denies access to
journalists, one has something to hide.

Second: During the fighting and afterwards, ambulances and rescue teams were
not allowed to get close. Those that tried to approach were shot at. The
result was that the wounded bled to death in the streets, even if they had
relatively light injuries. This is a war crime, a "manifestly illegal
order", over which "the black flag of illegality" flies. Under Israeli law,
and even more so under international law and conventions to which Israel is
a party, soldiers are forbidden to obey such an order.

It makes no difference whether civilians or "armed men", one person or a
hundred, died in these circumstances. As a method of warfare it is inhuman.

Some journalists justified this method in advance when they alleged that
they had seen "with their own eyes" Palestinian ambulances carrying arms.
Even if there was such an incident, it would not justify the use of such
methods in any circumstances. (Until now, only one instance has been proven:
this week Israeli journalists reported proudly that undercover soldiers used
an ambulance in order to approach a house in which a "wanted person" was
hiding).

Third: Even after the end of the fighting, and until now, heavy equipment
and rescue teams have not been allowed in to remove the debris and corpses,
or, perhaps, save people still alive under the ruins.

The pretext was again that the corpses could be mined. So what? If foreign
and local teams want to risk their lives for this noble purpose, why should
the army prevent them from doing so?

Fourth: During all the days of fighting, no one was allowed to bring in
medications, water and food. I myself took part in a mass march of Israeli
peace activists who tried, after the fighting was over, to accompany a
convoy of trucks carrying such supplies to the camp. The trucks were
allowed, so it seemed, to pass the road-block which stopped us - but it
later became apparent that the supplies were unloaded in an army camp and
only four could reach their destination.

What does all this indicate? An objective person could only draw the
conclusion that the army wanted to prevent the entrance of eye-witnesses
into the camp at any price. The army knew that this would give rise to
rumors about a terrible massacre, but preferred this to the disclosure of
the truth. If one takes such extreme measures to hide something, one cannot
complain about the rumors.

What is the height of cynicism? When one blocks free access to a place, and
then argues that no one has the right to say what happened there, because he
has not seen it with his own eyes.

The most damning evidence about what happened is the fact that immediately
after the end of the fighting, top government and army officials started to
discuss ways of preventing a shock reaction in Israel and abroad once the
facts became known. This was no secret discussion, it was held in public, in
the media talk shows. All of us heard.

The decisions made were extremely effective in Israel, and extremely
ineffective abroad. I happened to be in England when the news finally broke.
They filled the first page of every important British newspaper. The
front-page headline in the Times was "Inside the Camp of Death". Underneath
was a giant photo and a report by a star war correspondent, who wrote that
in all the wars she had covered, such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya and
others, she had never seen such a terrible sight as this. In almost all
European countries the reaction was the same.

In Israel, however, the government propaganda machine, in which all the
media are now voluntarily integrated, did everything possible to prepare the
public in advance. It was said beforehand that the Palestinians were about
to spread a horrible lie, that they were ready to heap dead bodies (from
where?) in the streets. It got almost to the point of saying that the
Palestinians had blown up their houses over their families in order to
create a blood libel.

The IDF did "clean" part of the camp, removing the bodies and ordering the
ruins somewhat, and that is where compliant journalists and innocent foreign
visitors were brought. There they met humane officers who assured them that
there had not been any massacre. After all, only a tiny part of the camp had
been destroyed, so-and-so many yards by so-and-so many yards, nothing
really. It all reminds one of the methods of certain regimes.

The result is that again a huge gap was created between Israelis and the
rest of the world. Around the world, many were horrified that Jews, of all
people, were capable of doing such things. Jews were again confirmed in
their belief that all Goyim are anti-Semites.

I hope that there will be a serious international inquiry, and that the
truth - whatever it may be - will emerge. But if even a part of the rumored
atrocity is confirmed, a question will be asked: What was the intention? Why
did the civilian and military leadership decide to deal with the Jenin camp
like this?

The only answer I can come up with is: in Jenin the Palestinians decided to
stand up and fight. The rape of Jenin was intended to send a message to the
Palestinians: This will be the lot of everyone who resists the IDF. Also, it
could cause a Deir Yassin-style mass flight.
 
Only a fool would believe that this will end the resistance to the
occupation.

   
If you got this forwarded, and would like to receive our emails directly you
can subscribe by sending a blank message (from the address where you want to
receive them) to:

Gush-Shalom-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxx
 
In order to receive Hebrew [not always same as English] mail to:

test_gush-shalom.org-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxx

If you want to support Gush Shalom's activities you can send a cheque or
cash, wrapped well in an extra piece of paper, to:

Gush Shalom pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033, ISRAEL

(Please, add your email address where to send our confirmation of receipt.
More official receipts at request only.)


For more about Gush Shalom  you are invited to visit our renewed website:

http://www.gush-shalom.org


**********

http://www.counterpunch.org/kelly0420.html

CounterPunch online, April 20, 2002

Gimme Some Truth Now

A Walk Through Jenin

By Kathy Kelly

On April 17, we entered the Jenin camp for a third time, accompanied by
Thawra.

We had met Thawra the night we first entered Jenin. She came into the
crowded, makeshift clinic organized by Palestinian Medical Relief Committee
workers, cradling Ziad, an 18 day old infant born on the first night of the
attack against Jenin. Like most of the young Palestinian workers
volunteering with the Medical Relief Committee, she wore ahijab and blue
jeans. She had slept very little in the past ten days, working constantly to
assist refugees from the camp. Her fiancee, Mustafa, was missing. Many
people whispered to us that they were sure he was killed inside the Jenin
camp, but that Thawra still hoped he was alive.

Today was Thawra's first chance to find out what had happened to her home.
She and her family lived on the first floor of a three story building.
Mustafa lived on the third floor.

Entering the camp, we noticed spray painted images that Israeli soldiers
must have made the night before. On the entrance gate to one building, in
blue paint, was a stick figure image of a little girl holding the Israeli
flag... Next to it was a star of David with an exclamation point inside the
star.

We passed Israeli soldiers preparing to leave the house they had occupied.
Five soldiers and an Armoured Personnel Carrier positioned themselves to
protect a soldier as he walked out of the house carrying the garbage. "Five
soldiers and an APC to take out the trash," said Jeff. "That's a sure sign
that something is radically wrong."

Most of the homes at the edge of the camp are somewhat intact, although
doors, windows and walls are badly damaged by tank shells and Apache
bullets. Each home that we entered was ransacked. Drawers, desks and closets
were emptied. Refrigerators were turned over, light fixtures pulled out of
the walls, clothing torn.

I thought of the stories women told me, earlier that morning, about Israeli
soldiers entering their homes with large dogs that sniffed at the children
as neighbors fled from explosions, snipers, fires and the nightmare chases
of bulldozers.

Recovery will take a very long time.

As we climbed higher, entering the demolished center of the camp where close
to 100 housing units have been flattened by Israeli Defense Forces, we heard
snipers shooting at a small group of men who had come to pull bodies from
the rubble. Covered with dust and sweat, and seemingly oblivious to the
gunshots, the men, all residents from the camp, pursued the grim task. With
pickaxes and shovels, they dug a mass grave. They pulled four bodies out of
the rubble, including that of a small child. Little boys stood still,
silently watching. One of the many soldiers who stopped us as we walked into
Jenin City, several days earlier, told us there were no children in the camp
during the attack. That was a lie. But now I wonder if it may have become a
strange truth. The concerned frowns on the little boy's faces belonged to
hardened men.

An older boy, perhaps 10 or 11 years old, helped carry his father's corpse
to the mass grave.

Jeff sat down on a rock and shook his head. "After September 11, I drove
toward New York City, and all along the highway carloads of volunteer
firemen sped past me, coming from all over the country, to help at Ground
Zero. Here, bullets paid for by US taxpayers are being fired on people
simply trying to bury their dead."

A family trudged single file, silently, uphill through the debris, carrying
their belongings on their heads. Their faces were wracked with grief. One
woman carried an infant in her arms. No one spoke as they approached the
hilltop. At the top of the hill, in front of a house that was still somewhat
intact, a large family was seated as though posed for a family photograph,
surrounded by devastation.

Thawra led us to what was once her home. The house is still standing, but
every other house in the area is completely demolished. She quickly
collected some clothes, then went to the third floor and returned holding
Mustafa's blue jeans in her arms. Her eyes welled with tears. We began to
wonder if she had lost all hope of finding Mustafa.

Outside her home, we met 8 year old Ahmad. He had found six shiny, small
bullets which he showed to his neighbor, Mohammed Abdul Khalil. Mohammed is
a 42 year old mason, also trained as an accountant. Having worked in Brazil
and Jordan, he now speaks four languages. In Spanish, he told me that he
built many kitchens in this area. Mohammed nodded kindly at Ahmad.

A few feet away, Hitan, age 20, and Noor, age 16, dug through the debris
with their bare hands to retrieve some few belongings. Hitan found a
favorite jacket, torn and covered with dust. She fingered the pockets, then
set it aside. Noor laughed as she unearthed a matching pair of shoes. Then
Hitan saw the edge of a textbook and the sisters began vigorously digging
and tugging until they pulled out five battered and unusable books. Noor
held up her public health textbook. Hitan clutched The History of Islamic
Civilization.

"You see these girls, they are laughing and seem playful," said, Mohammed,
again speaking in Spanish. "It is, you know, a coping mechanism. How else
can they manage what they feel?" Hitan stood and pointed emphatically at the
small hole she and Noor had dug. "You know," she exclaims, "underneath here,
there are four televisions and two computers! All gone. Finished."

Thawra stared sadly, then persisted with her search for information about
Mustafa.

I asked Mohammed if he knew a man sorting through a huge mound of rubble
next to where we stood. 'He is my cousin. That was our home. He wants to
find his passport or his children's documents." Mohammed's cousin then sat
down on top of the heap that was once his home, holding his head in his
hands.

An army surveillance plane flew overhead.

"We are clear," said Mohammed. "We are not animals. We are people with
hearts and blood, just like you. I love my son. I want the life for my
family. What force do we have here? Is this a force?" He pointed to the
wreckage all around us. "Do we have the atomic bomb?" "Do we have anthrax?"

As we walked away, Jeff pointed at another bone sticking out of the debris.
We stepped gingerly around it. Thawra dipped down to pick up a veil lying on
the ground, then paused a moment and placed it over the bone.


Kathy Kelly and Jeff Guntzel help coordinate Voices in the Wilderness, a
campaign to end the economic sanctions against Iraq. They traveled to Israel
/Palestine in response to calls from the International Solidarity Movement
and other organizations working to reduce violence in the region and
nonviolently resist Israeli Occupation of Palestine. They can be reached at:
info@xxxxxxxx


**********
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,687959,00.html

The Guardian/Observer (London), 21 April 2002

Brutal, yes. Massacre, no

Jenin will not give up its mysteries until more of the bodies have been
found. But Israel will struggle to defend itself against the mounting
evidence of the suffering its soldiers inflicted on the camp's civilian
population

by Peter Beaumont

It is easy to be distracted by the presence of the bodies. On Friday, in
their white plastic shrouds, they were stacked like stinking chords of wood
outside the main hospital in the northern West Bank city of Jenin.

Some had been collected from where they had been hastily buried in the back
gardens of the refugee camp's least damaged sections, then sprayed with
perfume to make the job less awful for those who had to handle them. Others
had been collected from their temporary mass grave made by the doctors in a
yard outside the hospital.

They were all waiting for reburial in a common grave. By their very weight
of numbers laid out on the ground - almost 30 on this afternoon - they
suggested themselves as victims of a massacre.

But a massacre - in the sense it is usually understood - did not take place
in Jenin's refugee camp.

Whatever crimes were committed here - and it appears there were many - a
deliberate and calculated massacre of civilians by the Israeli army was not
among them. 

And if a massacre did not take place, what did happen in Jenin?

It is a question that will weigh heavily on the future of Israeli and
Palestinian relations. Yesterday Israel promised to co-operate with a United
Nations fact-finding mission to Jenin, saying it had nothing to hide. Both
sides have moved quickly to appropriate the story of Jenin as part of their
national narratives of victimhood - the same narratives that have fed the
increasingly bloody conflict.

For Israelis, Jenin camp is the 'Capital of the Suicide Bombers', a place
that has sent almost a quarter of the bombers who have plagued Israel's
towns and cities. It is a place where 13 Israeli soldiers died, in a single
bloody incident: the West Bank's own 'heart of darkness'.

For Palestinians, Jenin refugee camp is the place that fought to the bitter
end, a symbol of resistance, whose civilians were punished with the
destruction of their homes for standing up to, and bruising, Israel's
military might. 

One thing, however, is beyond question: that the soldiers of Israel carried
out an act of ferocious destruction, unparallelled in Israel's short
history, against an area of civilian concentration where Palestinian
fighters were based.

And what will settle whether what happened in Jenin camp was a war crime is
the relationship between those civilians and the Palestinian fighters.

For increasingly at issue is a simple distinction. If the refugee camp at
Jenin was a population centre that simply harboured fighters - that had
fighters in its midst - then, say human rights advocates, Israel had a duty
of care during its attack towards the civilians resident there under
international law. 

But if Jenin camp could be proved to be something else, say lawyers for the
army, the Geneva Convention might not apply.

Already Israel is working hard to define why the destruction in Jenin was
something 'other' - exempt from the Convention.

It is that something 'other' that Israeli legal sources advising the army
are desperately now trying to establish in international opinion. The
refugee camp at Jenin, they say, had become an 'armed camp', booby-trapped
and organised for fighting. It is a place, they argue, where the civilian
population was effectively being held hostage under military orders. In
those circumstances, the Israeli lawyers argue, the laws of war should not,
and must not, apply.

It is an argument that holds little water with those who lost their homes. I
meet Khalil Talib amid the camp's ruins on Friday, digging with a mattock to
retrieve his bedding from the ruins of his house. Talib is 70. His daughters
drag cushions and blankets from the dirt. If Talib is a terrorist, then he
is an old and frail one.

For at heart of the question of whether Jenin was a war crime are not the
bodies stacked at the main hospital. It is what happened to the homes of
those like Talib. 

For even as the hunt for the bodies goes on, it is increasingly clear from
evidence collected by this paper and other journalists, that the majority of
those so far recovered have been Palestinian fighters from Islamic Jihad,
Hamas and the al-Aqsa Brigades.

Certainly, civilians died. But so far they are in the minority of those who
perished. 

At the excavation of the bodies at the hospital for reburial, I meet Yassin
Fayed whose two brothers, Amjad, aged 30, and Muhammad, 21, both fighters
with Hamas, are among the dead. He says they were executed after their
arrest by Israeli soldiers, but this is impossible to check. He makes no
bones that they were fighting before they died. Elsewhere we come across a
bulldozer searching through the rubble for three bodies. The men digging
tell me they are trying to recover bodies of dead fighters.

And the tales of civilian slaughter are simply less credible in their
accounts. Mr G, as he asks me to call him, tells me that a handicapped boy
was 'buried alive by the Israelis'. He translates this in Arabic to the men
surrounding him, and they 'correct' him. He tells me then that, in fact,
five handicapped residents of the camp were buried by Israel's bulldozers.

I hear many accounts like this. Numbers of the missing and the dead that
will not bear scrutiny, horror stories that are impossible to check, and in
some cases, in all likelihood, concocted.

Colleagues tell me too of being told of the death of so-and-so by
neighbours, only to meet him or her alive and well.

All of which brings the focus back to the sheer intensity of the devastation
of the camp. 

You see it the moment you enter what once was the heart of Jenin camp. The
aerial photographs of the demolition of the centre of the camp, produced by
the Israeli army, do not convey the shock of what you see. Filmed from above
- a place the size of several football pitches where over 100 houses once
stood - is rendered a blank and texture-less expanse.

On the ground, however, it is the detail of ordinary life destroyed that
catches the eye. Tangled mounds of concrete and reinforcing rods climb up a
gentle slope. The eye alights on a shoe here, the leg of a doll, bedding,
pages from the Koran, pictures and shards of broken mirror.

It is, somehow, most shocking at the very the edges of the devastation where
the destruction is partial. Here whole walls of buildings have been peeled
off to reveal the still occupied homes inside - pictures, beds and bathrooms
- daily life stripped bare.

The true crime of Jenin camp is this act of physical erasure. It is covered
by Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention in its prohibition on 'the
extensive destruction or unlawful appropri ation of property, not justified
by military necessity committed either unlawfully or wantonly.'

Article 147 mentions other crimes that may be applicable to Jenin: the
alleged taking of hostages for human shields by the Israelis; the same
army's refusal of access for humanitarian and emergency medical assistance
and the deliberate targeting of civilians, particularly by Israeli snipers.
But it is the sheer scale of the destruction that Israel will most likely
have to answer for.

I am reminded of this prohibition on 'wanton destruction' of civilian homes
by Miranda Sissons, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, whom I meet
walking through the rubble and who has the Fourth Geneva Convention on her
Palm Pilot. She is with Manaf Abbas, a human rights worker with the
Palestinian human rights group al-Haq.

'Whether or not there appears to have been any mass killing here,' says
Sissons, who appears inclined to be cautious of this claim until better
evidence is provided, 'there have been very serious violations of the rules
of war that need to be investigated.

'Those key issues are the disproportionate use of force; the excessive use
of force and the extensive destruction of property. There has been a total
lack of respect for the rights of civilians. And those breaches are still
continuing. Israel is still blocking the facilitation of humanitarian access
and continuing to shoot on civilians here.'

Abbas is also cautious about using the word 'massacre'. 'We need to find out
if those reported missing have been arrested, fled, are living with
relatives - or are buried under the rubble.'

An hour later I run into into Eyad and Jawad Kassim, two brothers who lived
with their family in four houses at the edge of the destruction. Eyad's
house and his mother's have been reduced to rubble. Jawad's still stands but
one outside wall has been demolished and two missiles hit the building.

Eyad and Jawad deny that they are fighters. 'We had four homes,' says Eyad.
'Now they're destroyed.' He admits there were fighters and heavy fighting in
the camp, but believes his house and those of others were destroyed as
punishment for the deaths of 23 Israeli soldiers.

'They are lying when they say there were gunmen in all of the buildings they
destroyed.' He seems a gentle man. After a while he lights a cigarette,
excuses himself and walks off to cry.

'Liar' is the word you hear most about what happened in the refugee camp. I
hear it used in almost every conversation. On Thursday on a ridge
overlooking the city, Colonel Miri Esin, a senior intelligence analyst with
the Israeli army, uses it with the same bitterness as Eyad Kassim.

She says the 'Palestinians are liars' in their descriptions of what
happened. She tells us the Israeli version 12 hours before the army
withdraws from the camp to the city limits. The point of Esin's
presentation, I later realise, is to make the same case as the lawyers
advising the army: that the destruction of the homes of men like Eyad and
Fawad was not a war crime but an act 'justified by military necessity' - an
act, in other words, exempt from the Geneva Convention.

She tells us the army is 'not proud of the destruction', that the 100 out of
1,100 homes destroyed is not 'a lovely figure'. But Esin insists that for
all the Israeli regrets the destruction was justified by the 'harsh
fighting', the levels of resistance and infiltration by the Palestinian
fighters of the camp.

But other Israeli soldiers, speaking anonymously, have a different view.
Their version of events is this: the commanders of the operation were
complacent. An arrest raid against the camp a month before had gone without
a hitch so they assumedJenin would be relatively easy. Instead it turned
into vicious fighting on both sides.

After the 13 Israeli soldiers were killed in a booby-trapped bomb and
crossfire ambush, say these reservists, the soldiers simply lost control. It
is a version, curiously, given credit by the Palestinian residents of the
camp. For their accounts, taken together, describe a breakdown of command at
the height of the fighting.

Some describe one group of soldiers calling to them to evacuate their homes
before destruction then being threatened with being shot by other soldiers
who insisted that a curfew was still in force. What they describe is a panic
that seems to have taken hold of the Israeli army in Jenin camp, and in its
panic it laid the camp to waste.

But panic is not an excuse for gross violations of human rights. And as
international pressure mounts for a full investigation of what happened in
Jenin camp, many insist it must go beyond President George Bush's calls for
an inquiry 'to find the facts'.

Two British lawyers in Jerusalem - Patrick O'Connor QC and Olivia Holdsworth
- are investigating violations of human rights in the present campaign.
O'Connor is tough in his assessment. 'The duty to investigate state
responsibility for events such as the Jenin incursion is triggered by
credible allegations of violations of fundamental human rights. That
investigation must be prompt and effective. It must be capable of leading to
the prosecution and punishment of those responsible.'


**********

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=287344

The Independent (London), 21 April 2002

Barring aid to Jenin is 'a war crime'

By Justin Huggler in Jenin refugee camp and Phil Reeves in Jerusalem

Horrific stories continued to emerge from Jenin yesterday as journalists,
aid workers and human rights officials dodged Israeli troops still ringing
the West Bank site to learn what happened in the military assault earlier
this month. 

Fathi Shalabi yesterday explained how he survived when the two men beside
him, one of them his son Wadh, were shot dead by Israeli soldiers. Mr
Shalabi, 63, lay on the ground in his son's blood, feigning death, for more
than an hour. 

Israel has promised to co-operate with a United Nations fact-finding team to
be dispatched to Jenin. The US envoy to the Middle East, William Burns,
visited the camp yesterday and said it was "obvious that what happened here
has caused enormous suffering for thousands of Palestinian civilians". As he
walked he paused to watch Palestinians shifting rubble with their bare hands
in search of bodies and belongings. He said aid agencies should be given
"full and complete access" to the entire area.

The Israeli army refused to allow the Red Cross and others into the camp for
six days, well after most of the fighting had ended. Israel, which has
launched a massive publicity drive to counter international anger over the
Jenin atrocities, has seized on Arab claims that its army committed a
massacre, which have not been proven.

But the aid agencies and UN officials here will press the case that even if
there is ultimately no evidence of a massacre, severe atrocities certainly
occurred. "The bottom line is that they kept out humanitarian aid for days
and that in itself is a war crime," said a senior UN official. "There is no
other way to look at it than as an attempt to hide another war crime. People
died after lying day after day in the rubble because we were not allowed
in." 

So far 43 corpses have been retrieved, including six women, children and
elderly men. Israel's armed forces say they did everything possible to
protect civilians, although that claim has been met with scepticism
internationally because of their repeated abuses, and killing, of
Palestinian civilians during the 18-month conflict.

* Israeli tanks today began pulling out of the largest West Bank city,
Nablus. Israeli forces remain in Bethlehem and around Yasser Arafat's
battered headquarters in Ramallah. The army said its forces remain in
several villages near Jenin.


**********

The Independent (London), 21 April 2002

'The soldier shouted, kill them, kill them'

Inside Jenin: As a UN fact-finding mission sets out, a Palestinian tells how
he played dead to survive, lying by the body of his son

By Justin Huggler in Jenin refugee camp and Phil Reeves in Jerusalem

Fathi Shalabi watched his son die. The two men were standing side by side
with their hands up when Israeli soldiers opened fire on them. Mr Shalabi's
son, Wadh, and another man who was with them died instantly, but the
63-year-old Mr Shalabi survived. He lay on the ground pretending to be dead
for more than an hour while his son's blood gathered around him.

Wadh Shalabi was one of the corpses of Jenin refugee camp whose stories are
still slowly uncoiling from the evil-smelling ruins, as Palestinians rummage
through them for bodies. Yesterday his father described how Israeli soldiers
searching the camp had ordered the men to come to them and raise their
shirts to prove they were not wearing suicide bomb belts and how suddenly
the officer in charge shouted "Kill them, kill them!" and the soldiers had
opened fire on them from three yards.

The old man led us to the spot where it happened, and before we could stop
him he lay down in the mud and filth to show us where he played dead. The
Palestinians now returning to Jenin refugee camp have begun to document the
dead. They distinguish between those killed who were militants, but they say
Wadh Shalabi and the man who died beside him, Abdel Karim Al-Sadi, were
civilians. 

The younger Mr Shalabi was studying at university and working as an office
boy in a school to pay his way.

"This is a clear case where civilians were killed by the Israeli soldiers,"
said Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch. "We're coming across more and
more such cases in Jenin. This is why there is a need for an impartial
investigation into the events in Jenin. It shows that civilians were some of
the main victims." 

Mr Shalabi believes his son and Mr Al-Sadi were killed because nervous,
trigger-happy Israeli soldiers mistook some sticking plaster on Mr Al-Sadi's
back for a suicide bomber's belt and panicked. His version of events is
largely corroborated by Mr Al-Sadi's sister, who witnessed much of what
happened. 

Mr Shalabi described what took place. Soldiers ordered his family and Mr
Al-Sadi down a narrow alley. "In cover behind the corner were four soldiers.
The two young men with me were carrying baby children, and the soldiers did
not shoot at them."

Wadh Shalabi was carrying his four-month-old son, Mahmoud. The soldiers
ordered the men to hand the children over to their mothers and told the
women and children to go into the next-door house. Then they ordered the men
to raise their shirts and show they were not wearing suicide belts.

"The soldiers were about three metres away. I heard the names of two of
them; they were Gaby and David." He said that the soldier called Gaby
appeared to be in command. "They saw Abdul Karim had a plaster on his back.
Suddenly Gaby shouted 'Kill them, kill them!'."

He is hard of hearing but says those inside the neighbour's house told him
they also heard someone shout "kill them". "Two of the soldiers started
shooting and we fell to the ground." Somehow Mr Shalabi was not hit. "The
ground slopes slightly. The blood of the other guy ran between my legs. The
other two were higher up so the blood soaked into my clothes and the
soldiers thought I was dead too. They stayed with us for more than an hour.
One of them walked over my back. They shone a torch in my eyes to see if I
was dead but I didn't open my eyes until they had gone."

Eventually the soldiers left and Mr Shalabi decided it was safe to move. "I
checked my son's pulse and then I knew he was dead." He went back to his own
house and took off his clothes which were soaking with blood. Eventually at
around 4am Mr Al-Sadi's father came to the house. "He told me 'they have
killed my son and yours'. I said 'I know. I was with them when they were
killed'." At 6am the men covered the bodies with blankets. They left them in
the street for eight days until the soldiers ordered all the camp residents
to leave and the men were taken into custody while their identity was
checked. 

Mr Al-Sadi said Wadh's sister Fathia, who was in the Al-Sadi house
throughout, confirmed much of Mr Shalabi's story while her brother's
15-year-old widow sat beside her. She confirmed that the soldiers told the
others to come round from Mr Shalabi's house and ordered the women and
children inside. She said those inside heard shooting. When the families got
back to the refugee camp this week the bodies had been buried. On Friday the
families dug them up and gave them a proper funeral.

It is accounts such as these that international human rights and
humanitarian groups - not to mention the Palestinians - hope will be heard
by a group of UN fact-finders. On Friday the UN Security Council voted 15-0
to send the fact-finders to Jenin, backing a US-drafted resolution after
Washington threatened to veto a measure put forward by Arab states that had
called for a formal UN "investigation" of "massacres" in the camp. Israel
has said that it will co-operate. Its Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, has
stated that Israel has nothing to hide, and that the fact-finders will not
be prevented from visiting Jenin.

The Israeli army's refusal to allow the Red Cross and others into the camp
for six days will be central to the investigations. The aid agencies and UN
will be pressing the case that, even there is ultimately no evidence of a
massacre, severe atrocities undoubtedly occurred. 


------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Buy Stock for $4
and no minimums.
FREE Money 2002.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/orkH0C/n97DAA/ySSFAA/B140lB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

"[C]apital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and 
dirt."
--Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Chapter 31

Community email addresses:
  Post message: marxist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  Subscribe:    marxist-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  Unsubscribe:  marxist-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  List owner:   jplst15+@xxxxxxxx

Shortcut URL to this page:
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marxist

Also take our one-question survey at
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marxist/polls 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/