World finally gets glimpse of refugee camp devastation
Jim Morris
World finally gets glimpse of refugee camp devastation
By Justin Huggler outside Jenin
12 April 2002
Middle East
The world finally got to see what Israel has done in the Jenin refugee camp
yesterday. Piles of rubble where homes once stood. Gaping holes rent in the
sides of buildings. Electricity wires torn down and strewn amid the
wreckage. Water flooding out of broken mains and running down the broken
streets.
This was our first glimpse of what is left of the packed warren of narrow
lanes that became the scene of the worst fighting of Israel's onslaught in
the West Bank. These are scenes of devastation that will haunt the mission
of Colin Powell, who flew in yesterday.
This is the wreckage where hundreds of terrified civilians were trapped
inside their homes as Israeli helicopters poured rockets all around them,
ambulances not allowed to treat the wounded as they bled, where Palestinians
captured by the Israelis say they were forces to strip in front of their
families, where Palestinian fighters armed only with rifles resisted the
Israeli attack for nine days. This is where the Israeli army admits it
killed 100 Palestinians.
For out of the misery, humiliation and death of Jenin camp, the Palestinians
are already fashioning a legend. Out of the rubble staggered a 13-year-old
boy yesterday.
Amazingly, he was one of the last group of fighters who held out against the
helicopters and the tanks. And already the stories are being passed from
Palestinian to Palestinian: how the 13-year-old fought because his father
was killed fighting the last time Israeli forces moved into the camp in
March; how, when they ran out of ammunition, the fighters started throwing
stones at the Israeli soldiers.
"I feel very proud of what the fighters did in Jenin," Deya al-Ahmad, a
Palestinian in a neighbouring village, said yesterday. "I will tell my
children this story, and I hope they will tell it to their grandchildren."
The Palestinians wrested this from a battle in which those detained tell
horrific tales of their treatment by the Israelis. One told us he was forced
to strip naked and act as a human shield, standing with an Israeli soldier
behind him resting his gun on his shoulder. Another told us when he asked
for a drink the soldiers forced a stick into his mouth. Then, he said, they
brought him water that tasted of urine.
The shots were still echoing over the camp yesterday, even as Israeli forces
claimed the battle was all but over. A few pockets of Palestinian fighters
were holding out, though they had no chance of winning.
Rashid Hassan said: "I don't believe this is a victory for Israel, because a
victory would mean they had achieved their goals and solved their problem
once and for all. But I think the problem is going to start again for
Israel. If they killed so many people, the next generation will fight even
harder."
The Israeli authorities insist their onslaught on the West Bank is the only
way to stop suicide bombings.
Among the refugees who fled Jenin camp, we found a teenager who would not
give his name. He had been separated from his family and could not find
them. He told us he was going to be a suicide bomber.
The Palestinians are claiming that far more than 100 of their number were
killed in Jenin. Many of those who fled say they saw civilians, including
women, carelessly cut down. The last thing Israel wants the world to see are
the bodies of women in the streets. Rumours abound that the bodies are being
hidden, taken away in trucks and buried by Israeli soldiers.
But local Palestinians say they are not going to allow the Israelis to hide
the evidence. They have painstakingly documented the stories of those who
have fled the camp. They claim their notes account for about 200 dead. The
Independent has seen the detailed handwritten notes.
That means that it should be possible to find the bodies at specific
addresses. Bodies such as that of Mufid Ahmad's mentally disabled aunt
Yusra. He says he saw her die when a helicopter round came through the wall
of their house. When police captured him and took him away he says Yusra's
body was still in their second-floor flat. He told us the address. It should
be possible to find the block of flats if it is still standing, but many
have been bulldozed by the army to make a route for tanks.
But the figure of 100 dead, from military sources, means at least 100 bodies
were lying among the ruins of Jenin. Even if someone has hidden them, 100
bodies are not going to do Israel's image any good at all.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=284105
Ramallah Diary: No words are said, just smiles because we are alive
By Hakam Kanafari
12 April 2002
Middle East
I WENT out of my house today, for the first time in four days. The Israelis
allowed us to buy food but we can only be on the streets for two hours. The
city is destroyed. Cars on the side of the road crushed flat like pizza.
Tanks rolled over them. Trees lay broken and dead, shops destroyed, streets
dug out, buildings burning and yet the snipers are still on the rooftops
looking for prey. I wave a victory sign to all Palestinians walking down the
streets of Ramallah. They smile back with a victory sign. Somebody asks me
to honk my horn to prove we are alive. Beeb Beeb Beeb. All the car drivers
are now honking the horns. The Israeli soldiers are watching and wondering
what is going on here? They thought they killed us all, but we're still
alive. Two doctors are walking, dressed for an operation. I offer a lift,
and they step in my car. They both smile. No words are said, just an
exchange of smiles. We're alive.
4 APRIL
Still under siege. We remain in high spirits. We were not allowed out of the
houses again today. The Israeli army declared Ramallah a war zone. Funny, I
thought this was a vacation of some sort. I am glad the Israelis clarified
the situation. All these dead bodies, all this destruction needed an
explanation. Limited water supply. No bread, electricity is on and off, and
the Israeli army is moving from one house to the next looking for
terrorists. God, with three million Palestinian-terrorists still alive, the
job is difficult to conclude. Two of my terrorist neighbours (one is three
years old) are gingerly looking outside through their window. The mother
(she is a pregnant terrorist) is asking them to move away from the window.
5 APRIL
We were out today for the second time in nine days. Two hours allowed to get
food, drink and other necessary under siege goods. I drive my car to the
nearest supermarket. Nothing. Only honey and cornflakes (no milk). I drive
to the city centre searching for more food. The glass from the stores and
shops is scattered everywhere. Trees are destroyed (technically killed). The
buildings are black from the smoke, all burnt from the fire. The walls are
more holes than walls. The Israeli army is on every street corner, next to
their tanks and armoured vehicles. They seem surprised. You see, people are
not crying and pleading. Palestinians are congratulating each other for just
staying alive. Everyone is smiling and everyone is avidly telling their
story to anyone they see on the streets. Ramallah city centre is filled with
people now. "Hamdallah al-Salama, Hakam, park your car and come down for a
drink of arak with me." It's my friend George with a group of men talking
amid the rubble. "Hi George, we're alive," I shout through the passenger
window. I drive for a few metres to the car park. My God, there are at least
30 cars that are as flat as a loaf of Palestinian bread.
Every shop has a crowd of people in front of it seeking food and water. The
rule here is: mothers with babies buy first. That really doesn't help
organise anything, since every Palestinian woman has a few babies.
I need a camera. This is too much. The main square in Ramallah, the Manara
Square, is an army barrack. At least 30 tanks and hundreds of soldiers are
stationed in the square, in my town. My town. I look at my favourite falafel
store on the road parallel to Manara Square. It's completely destroyed. All
traffic signs, lamp-posts, statues, plants, billboards are, like my
favourite falafel store, completely destroyed.
8 APRIL
Hey Sharon, I saw you on TV giving your victory speech in the Knesset. I had
to turn up the volume, the noise coming from your tanks was so loud. As you
continue your Oscar-calibre performance, I can see from my window two tanks
and an armoured personnel carrier bombing a house on a hill. The house is
only half a kilometre away from my window. This is Betounia, Sharon. A town
destroyed by your peace efforts. As I listen to you describing how you will
un-occupy Palestine, your tanks conclude their shelling of the house. Eight
soldiers run out of the armoured vehicle towards the house. They start to
fire their machine guns. No fire is returned from the house. It takes them
about 15 minutes to wrap up their firing frenzy. The soldiers wave to the
armoured vehicle. Three new soldiers are convinced the job remains
incomplete. So, they start firing. Again. Now, all the soldiers are in a
competition.
Finally, it's quiet again. But, your soldiers are still implementing your
peace plan. They storm the house. They are inside now. I hear the familiar
squeak of an ambulance. It cruises down the hill on the road leading to the
house. An Israeli Jeep blocks the ambulance's path. As I look again, I see
the soldiers have raised an Israeli flag on the house. I am dazed at the
sight of the Israeli flag in my back yard.
The writer is general manager of the Palestinian mobile phone telephone
network Jawwal.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1911000/1911181.st
m
Fears grow of humanitarian crisis
A woman gestures that she is unable to buy bread
By Kathryn Westcott
BBC News Online
International aid agencies have expressed concern at what they describe as
the unfolding humanitarian crisis as a result of Israel's military
operations in the West Bank.
They say tens of thousands of Palestinians have been confined to their homes
for days and food and other vital supplies are quickly running out.
The Israeli Defence Forces are not allowing any humanitarian agencies to
operate in areas under their control
Marie-Louise Weighill, Save the Children
Aid workers report that many homes are now without water and electricity
because pylons and water pipes have been destroyed by Israeli tanks and what
little food people have left is rotting.
Aid agencies say they are unable to deliver vital humanitarian assistance.
And some aid workers have complained about being increasingly compelled to
work under fire and at great risk to their security.
The United Nations children's agency Unicef says it has been unable to
deliver crucial aid to the Palestinian communities in the West Bank over the
past five days.
'Terrifying'
A representative of Save the Children in the West Bank says one of the major
problems is that the humanitarian efforts are hampered by Israeli soldiers.
Many shops and buildings have been destroyed
"The Israeli chain of command on the streets is breaking down and there is
no respect for the humanitarian missions," Marie-Louise Weighill told BBC
News Online from the West Bank.
"The Israeli Defence Forces are not allowing any humanitarian agencies to
operate in areas under their control."
Medical personnel have been prevented from their life saving duties
International Red Cross
She said people were "living under an extremely terrifying curfew".
"Our main concern is for people who are most at risk In Nablus, for example,
the very poor have been unable to stockpile food because they simply don't
have the money," she said.
She said that in Jericho, which has been unaffected by the military
operation, there is plenty of food and fresh vegetables, but no way of
getting it to the people who really need it.
Medical help
The Palestinian Counselling Centre in Jerusalem says it has had been
inundated by calls from people asking for help in getting bread and milk for
their babies an vital medicine such as insulin.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Palestinian Red
Crescent Societies has complained that over the past few days its medical
personnel have been "prevented from performing their life saving duties".
Israeli forces have taken over nearly all the Palestinian towns in the West
The ICRC said in a statement that it had been prevented from working
"because of a sudden degradation of the usual lines of communication"
between themselves and the Israelis.
Workers and ambulances had been stopped by Israeli soldiers on a number of
occasions while their vehicles were checked, delaying urgent assistance the
organisation said.
"The ICRC and the International Federation expect to see a rapid improvement
in communications, and a subsequent improvement in working relationships so
that vital humanitarian assistance can reach the Palestinian population,"
the statement said.
But the organisation did say it had been able to transport a few urgent
supplies to Nablus, Hebron and Jerusalem.
In Nablus, Dr Hussam Jawhari, director of the Rafidia Hospital, says that
medical personnel are being prevented from doing their work.
"Nobody is able to come here. Nobody can move from one place to another," he
told the BBC.
"The ambulances are not allowed to move either. We have a full team here,
but we are not able to get to anyone who needs treatment or help." 1QA\
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1924000/1924933.st
m
Jenin in ruins
Few people venture out of their homes
By James Reynolds
BBC Jerusalem correspondent, in Jenin
Israel has declared the West Bank town of Jenin a closed military zone - in
other words, people are not allowed in or out.
We headed into Jenin through fields and backloads, we avoided the main
checkpoints, and we drove quickly past a series of Israeli armoured
personnel carriers positioned by the side of the road.
We reached the outskirts of the town's refugee camp: there was rubble on the
road, pylons were twisted, and there were holes in buildings.
I saw only one Palestinian on the street - an elderly woman in a wheelchair,
who had been left in the middle of the road.
Israel in control
The whole area appears to be under complete Israeli control.
Israel has declared Jenin a closed military zone
Soldiers stopped us from going into the camp.
They ordered us to stop recording, and forced us to leave.
So, we headed into Jenin itself, next to the refugee camp.
We spoke to people who had had to leave their homes in the camp and are now
sheltering with people in the town.
We went to one house and saw an elderly man lying on the floor.
He had what appeared to be a bullet wound in his side.
He was unable to get to hospital - ambulances are still not allowed on to
the streets.
Human cost
We saw one family outside a small cemetery, screaming and crying.
More than 100 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers died in the fighting
They had just buried their relative, a farmer.
They told us he had been shot dead in the morning by Israeli soldiers.
For now, most people in Jenin are staying indoors - the safest place to be
at the moment.
Israeli bulldozers and tanks are on the roads.
But as we left, I saw a column of eight armoured personnel carriers enter
Jenin.
One was draped with an Israeli flag.
From what I could see on the ground, the Israeli offensive in Jenin shows
little sign of ending soon.
Jenin's trapped people
Refugees are leaving the camp with few supplies
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1922000/1922902.st
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By the BBC's Alan Johnston
In Salam, near Jenin
As tanks manoeuvre at an Israeli checkpoint on the main road into Jenin,
soldiers are stopping journalists going any further.
Many were forced to seek refuge in mosques
While Israeli armour pushes down the road to reinforce the army's grip on
Jenin, just up the hill here in the Arab Israeli village of Salam a quite
different operation is under way.
Relief supplies are being unloaded for refugees from Jenin who have taken
shelter in a village beyond the next hill, just inside the West Bank.
A man called Saeb Younis told me what was going on.
'Many hundreds'
"A lot of refugees are leaving Jenin and the Jenin camp with no basic things
like bread, water...they are totally homeless," he said.
"So we came from our town. We collected from everybody's house whatever they
had - mattresses, blankets, food, medicine - hopefully to give that over to
the West Bank, to the area of Jenin."
I asked him if he had managed to discover from these refugees how desperate
the situation is.
"I just spoke with a relative of mine, a cousin of mine, and he told me
that...in the town of Zbouba, they don't have anything, literally anything,
and they are receiving refugees," he said.
"So they have to share whatever they have, whatever the leftovers that they
still have, with these many hundreds of refugees."
'Torture'
Later a man called Mouad told me that other Palestinians from surrounding
villages here on the Israeli side of the line have brought all kinds of
relief here: wheat, oil, bedding and clothing.
The Israeli army has been conducting security sweeps of Jenin
He tells me that he saw people who had been tortured.
Some had cigarette burns, others had been forced to come virtually naked,
wearing nothing other than their underwear, to the mosque where they are
staying, he said.
I asked him if this made him worried about Israeli soldiers, and he said of
course.
However he said he feels that he has to make the journey - they have got
nothing and he can take them what they need, he said.
Just down the hillside from the Salam village, we watched journalists en
route to the refugee village being detained in the olive groves by Israeli
soldiers.
'Human shields'
But one journalist who did manage to evade the patrols was Alan Philps of
the British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph.
Some of them say they had to act as human shields in front of the armoured
vehicles, walking in front of the tanks...or indeed walking in front of
Israeli soldiers till they got to a safer place
Journalist Alan Philps
"There are about 600 young men who have been detained by the Israeli army
and then put through the filtration process and then released at the
checkpoint," he told me.
"They were all told that if they went to the village called Romani they
would get food and shelter. And that's true, they are providing three meals
a day and they seem to be sleeping mainly in the mosque."
However Mr Philps corroborated much of what Mouad had told me.
"The most significant thing is that all the men were made to undress to
their underclothes," he said.
"Some of them say they had to act as human shields in front of the armoured
vehicles, walking in front of the tanks...or indeed walking in front of
Israeli soldiers till they got to a safer place."
Mr Philps said the men were held for between one and three days, with much
of that time spent sitting on the ground blindfolded, mostly with their
faces between their knees, not being allowed to move and not given anything
to eat.
As the sun sets on another tense day in the West Bank, the men of Salam
village gathered to watch the Israeli helicopter gunships circle over Jenin
in the distance.
And tomorrow, they will make yet more attempts to run supplies through to
refugees from the beleaguered city.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1913000/1913156.st
m
Friday, 5 April, 2002, 14:26 GMT 15:26 UK
Israeli operations bring 'wanton destruction'
Mother and daughter venture out for bread
By Tarik Kafala
BBC News Online
Ariel Sharon's stated objective for Israel's current operations in the West
Bank is to "destroy the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure".
But reports from inside the Israeli-occupied towns suggest that the civilian
infrastructure - roads, water pipes and the electricity supply - is also
being badly damaged, or destroyed, by the actions of the Israeli Defence
Force.
There is no deliberate campaign to uproot civilian infrastructure
Israeli Government spokesman
Officials from the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees have told
the BBC that the agency's staff are reporting "wanton destruction" of
Palestinian infrastructure across the West Bank.
There have also been reports of looting of food and personal items by
Israeli soldiers carrying out house to house searches.
Bethlehem experience
Elaine Zubi has lived in Bethlehem for 12 years. She is an American married
to a Palestinian, and mother of four.
If this goes on for a week we will get desperate
Elaine Zubi, Bethlehem resident
Her home is just south from the Church of the Nativity - she can see the
church's steeple from her front window.
"The tanks came up our street on Tuesday. Right away, they ruined the water
pipes at the top of the street and water has been running down ever since,"
she told BBC News Online.
"Another knocked down the electricity wires. We have no power. We still have
water, but are using as little as possible because the water tank on the
roof will run out. If this goes on for a week we will get desperate."
Elaine and her family are combining their food and water supplies with those
of two other families who share the building.
"Yesterday, when the tanks moved off, my husband went across the road to
give some groceries to some people who had run out. The tanks came back, and
I thought he'd be sleeping over there, but he got back after dark."
I've seen tanks roll straight over cars and destroy walls for no apparent
reason. Many homes and buildings are shot through with bullet and shell
holes
Adam Shapiro, US citizen in Ramallah
News that the curfew is being temporarily lifted keeps filtering through,
Elaine says. The US consul had called various US nationals in the city to
tell them that the curfew was being lifted on Friday morning, but when they
ventured onto their balconies they were ordered indoors by Israeli soldiers.
"We have a ton of tanks and armoured personnel carriers right outside out
house now. I don't know how safe it will be to go out even if a break in the
curfew comes through," she said.
Adam Shapiro, a US national and a worker with the International Solidarity
Movement, spoke to the BBC from Ramallah:
"I've seen tanks roll straight over cars and destroy walls for no apparent
reason. Many homes and building are shot through with bullet and shell
holes," he said.
Difficulty of verification
The Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, says there are widespread reports
of this sort of damage, but that the organisation cannot formally verify
them because their field workers are not being allowed into the occupied
areas.
The Israeli army is the most moral army in the world, we never harm unarmed
people unless accidentally
Itsik Avichatsira, former IDF Sergeant in the Golani Brigade
"We do have confirmed reports of Red Crescent ambulances not being allowed
to pick up the wounded from the streets and of a private hospital being
shelled," B'Tselem spokesman Leore Yavne said.
BBC News Online was contacted by Itsik Avichatsira - a former IDF sergeant
in the Golani Brigade who served in Hebron and Lebanon.
"The Israeli army is the most moral army in the world, we never harm unarmed
people unless accidentally, and immediately the army publicise an apology,"
he said.
Asked about reports of soldiers causing damage not related to the stated
military objectives of "destroying the terrorist infrastructure", he said
soldiers never do anything they are not ordered to do.
"They may have cut the electricity in order to carry out operations in the
dark. If there are reports of water pipes and tanks being destroyed, I can
only believe this was done by accident," Itsik said.
The director of the Israeli Government press office, Danny Seaman, told BBC
News Online that if any damage was being done to Palestinian civilian
infrastructure, it was not deliberate.
"There is no deliberate campaign to uproot civilian infrastructure. Such
reports are part of Palestinian disinformation and propaganda and the
international observers and journalists who are reporting this lack
experience. Combat is not an easy thing," Mr Seaman said.
WATCH/LISTEN
ON THIS STORY
The BBC's James Reynolds in Bethlehem
"The curfew was lifted temporarily"
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=284110
Israel arrests thousands as Powell flies in
By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem
12 April 2002
Middle East
Blindfolded and handcuffed, hundreds of Palestinian men were detained for
interrogation by Israeli agents yesterday as Ariel Sharon stepped up his
ruthless military offensive in the West Bank. The acceleration came just
hours before the arrival in Israel last night of the US Secretary of State,
Colin Powell, on a ceasefire mission that seems doomed to be devoured by the
flames of war.
Israeli officials said yesterday that about 4,000 Palestinians had been
arrested during the fortnight-long invasion of Palestinian-run areas of the
West Bank. Of these, 120 were on Israel's list of wanted "terrorists",
officials said.
The Israeli Prime Minister and his generals showed no sign of bending to a
chorus of demands from the White House, Britain, the EU and others in the
international community to end the assault, which grew louder still
yesterday as the world got its first glimpse of its worst battlefield,
Jenin.
Foreign journalists and aid workers who got into the town of 180,000 found
some homes reduced to rubble. Others had bites taken from their walls by
passing tanks or were punctured by charred holes left by helicopter
missiles. Water pipes and electricity poles were badly damaged.
Residents insisted that the Palestinian death toll - at least 120 but it may
prove considerably higher - includes civilians, some of whom were shot for
breaking an army curfew.
Last night, Israeli military bulldozers were destroying more of the Jenin
refugee camp, which has been cut off from medical care, food supplies and
electricity as Palestinian gunmen mounted their week-long resistance,
killing 23 Israeli soldiers. Yesterday morning three dozen fighters -
including a wounded 13-year-old boy - surrendered to the Israeli army in the
camp, after running out of bullets. But sporadic shooting continued last
night.
"They have really bashed the place up," said one UN official, who yesterday
drove through the town, which has been closed to outsiders for a week.
As Mr Sharon pressed on with what he depicts as an anti-terrorist operation
aimed at stopping attacks on Israel, General Powell has made it explicit
that the US views Israel's strategy as misguided. He has sent increasingly
understanding messages to the Palestinians in the past few days.
His relatively tough words were moderated slightly by the White House, whose
spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said that the US believed Mr Sharon was committed
to peace - a view not shared by any Palestinians and questioned by a number
of foreign diplomats.
"However long the Israeli incursion continues, the problems will still be
there," said General Powell yesterday, during a visit to Jordan, the latest
stop in a regional tour in which he has been criticised for failing to go
straight to Israel. "The violence and anger and frustration which feeds that
will still be there unless we find a negotiating process that leads to a
Palestinian state."
Asked whether he was on an impossible mission the general snapped: "I don't
like wallowing with pessimists. It is necessary for me to go."
That much was clear from the scenes in Jenin yesterday, let alone other
parts of the West Bank. According to Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian
refugees, 3,000 people have been made homeless from the Jenin refugee camp.
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, yesterday added his voice to the many
expressing alarm over human rights abuses in the West Bank.
A large number of the arrested Palestinians are being held under military
law in heavily guarded Israeli detention centres without being charged or
allowed access to lawyers.
The Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, says it has evidence of torture.
Earlier this week the Israeli High Court of Justice rejected a petition from
human rights organisations, including B'Tselem, demanding that detainees
have access to lawyers.
Jim Morris
m
The Israeli army has said it believes hundreds of Palestinians died in
fighting in the West Bank town of Jenin, as US Secretary of State Colin
Powell prepares for crucial talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The Israeli army will not withdraw from Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus and
Ramallah until all the terrorists there have surrendered
"There were apparently hundreds of dead," the army's chief spokesman,
Brigadier-General Ron Kitrey, told Israeli Army Radio, referring to the
fighting in Jenin. But he denied Palestinian claims of a massacre.
Previously the Israeli military had said 100 Palestinian fighters had died
in the town.
Mr Powell will meet Israeli officials before travelling to the besieged West
Bank city of Ramallah for talks with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on
Saturday.
Israeli forces were maintaining their grip on several major Palestinian
population centres, hours after the secretary of state arrived in Israel on
Thursday night.
The BBC's State Department correspondent, Jon Leyne, who is accompanying Mr
Powell on his trip, says the secretary of state will convey to Mr Sharon
President Bush's demand for an immediate Israeli withdrawal.
Jenin 'massacre'
The Palestinians have called on the United Nations to investigate what they
said was an Israeli massacre of Palestinians in a refugee camp in Jenin,
captured by Israel on Wednesday.
Jenin fell to Israeli troops after an eight-day battle
They said there were extra-judicial executions in the camp, although there
is no independent verification of that.
The BBC's Jonny Dymond in Jerusalem says the Israeli admission on Jenin is
terrible news for the Israeli Government.
Journalists entered Jenin on Thursday for the first time since Israel took
control of the town.
There were widespread reports of badly damaged buildings but no sign of
bodies.
Sharon firm
Israel launched a massive assault on the West Bank two weeks ago following a
spate of deadly Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel.
The US is reportedly prepared to sever ties with Arafat
On Thursday, Mr Sharon said he had "warned the Americans that the Israeli
army would not withdraw from Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah until all
the [Palestinian] terrorists there have surrendered".
A senior US official told the Associated Press news agency Mr Powell will
warn the Palestinian leader that unless he renounces terrorism the US is
prepared to sever ties with him.
"The message is: 'This is it. Last chance'," the news agency quoted the
unnamed source as saying.
However, Mr Arafat took a hard stance on Thursday night, telling a rally in
Cairo by telephone that Palestinians were prepared to die to defend
Jerusalem.
Mass arrests
Israel says it has detained more than 4,000 Palestinians and seized
thousands of illegal weapons and explosives since it began its offensive in
the West Bank on 29 March.
Israel has detained thousands of suspected militants
Nearly half the number of Palestinians arrested were detained after the
militant strongholds of Jenin and Nablus fell to Israeli troops.
By Friday morning, Israeli troops were still present in the Palestinian
towns and villages of Ramallah, Nablus, Qalqilya, Bethlehem, Jenin, Dura,
Dahariya and Kufar al Abad.
Earlier, troops briefly entered Tulkarm, to seize someone they alleged was a
would-be suicide bomber.
Soldiers also entered Bir Zeit, where they detained hundreds of students at
the university.
In Bethlehem, a stand-off which began on 2 April around the Church of the
Nativity, the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ, continued.
There are still more than 100 armed men inside the church, including 30
militants on Israel's wanted list, the army says.
WATCH/LISTEN
ON THIS STORY
The BBC's Jon Leyne in Jerusalem
"Colin Powell is saying enough is enough"
"Jim Morris" <jdtm...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=284110
warhol
for free
http://www.a2zegypt.com/isr_heaven1.swf #
"Jim Morris" <jdtm...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:4dwt8.2123$3z3.1...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
Jim Morris
today was from the jenin rufugee camp as why was such not mentioned in the
american media... It is absolutely incredible to me how the American media
has apparently only
been focusing on
the relatively small number of Israelis tragically dying (as the result of
retaliatory suicide bombing) after the five
hundred or more Palestinians having been possibly massacred by the Israeli
Army in the Jenin (Palestinian) refugee camp (which the Israeli Army did not
even
allow international journalists into because it
was trying to hide such atrocities from the world). After the apparent
atrocities have been committed like such, the Israelis just deny like they
did after intentionally attacking the USS Liberty (resulting in the
deliberate murder of 34 American sailors with 171 more injured) in order to
"grab" and "occupy" even more land with the Golan Heights in Syria:
http://www.petitiononline.com/liberty/
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=284436
Israel buries the bodies, but cannot hide the evidence
By Justin Huggler in Jenin and Phil Reeves in Jerusalem
13 April 2002
Middle East
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.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-264621,00.html
Israelis shelter bloodiest battlefield from eyes of media and aid groups
Janine di Giovanni in Burqin
THE last group of hardcore Palestinian militants surrendered in Jenin's
refugee camp yesterday, but Israeli troops continued their strenuous efforts
to prevent independent witnesses entering the bloodiest battlefield of their
two-week-old anti-terrorist offensive.
With Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, arriving in Jerusalem last
night the soldiers blocked the United Nations, the Red Cross and the media
from entering the "closed military area" where scores of Palestinians, as
well as 22 Israeli soldiers, have been killed in ferocious close-quarter
fighting.
Some journalists were detained. One had his press card ripped up. Footage
filmed by a television cameraman was confiscated. The few pictures that did
emerge from the camp showed scenes of devastation.
Refugees leaving the northern West Bank city talked of misery, horror and
death inside the camp which formerly housed 13,000 residents. They spoke of
"countless dead bodies" and men being executed at close range.
An Israeli soldier insisted: "It was hard, it was tough, but it was not bad.
If you kill terrorists it's not bad."
The Israeli Army said that about 100 Palestinians had been killed, and army
bulldozers were demolishing wrecked buildings. The dead reportedly included
Sheik Ali Sfuri, who is accused of masterminding a series of terrorist
attacks on Israeli targets. Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian cabinet minister, put
the toll at 500.
An international group representing the UN, the Red Cross and the Norwegian
Government, who were given assurances by the Israeli Defence Force that they
would be allowed inside the camp, were turned away. Their cars were
illegally searched and their cameras confiscated.
"There are extremely worrying reports, but as there are no witnesses, we
cannot verify them," one member of the group said.
"I asked one commander what exactly it is that they want to hide as I have
never known of UN people not being allowed in before." There are still
several thousand people inside the camp, with no communication with the
outside world.
Latest reports from refugees include stories of executions of civilians and
bulldozers piling dead bodies into a pit. The city is destroyed, damaged
even more than other West Bank cities that have sustained Israeli
incursions, and there is no water inside the camp.
Refugees speak of bodies piled on the road decomposing in the heat, and the
soldiers are allowing very few ambulances into the camp.
"There are worrying reports that there are appalling things happening," one
international worker said. Amal Mahmoud Hamid Ruq, a 22-year-old refugee
from the camp, wept as she told of being forced to leave her home and her
city, and the fear she had that her younger brother, who has disappeared,
has been murdered.
Human rights workers have expressed concern about the separation of
families. In a white villa in Yaomu, a village outside of Jenin, hundreds of
refugees have arrived in the past few days, white-faced, tearful, and
clutching cheap plastic suitcases. Inside are remnants of their pitiful
lives.
Most of the residents of Jenin camp are children and grandchildren of those
Palestinians who lost their properties after the war of independence and as
a result, they know no other way of life than the squalor and poverty of a
refugee camp. Now they are refugees once again, this time from the teeming
camp that they call home.
Beya, a 10-year-old with long plaits, sits with her grandmother, Abla, and
her three other siblings and describes the bulldozers, the helicopters, the
demolished houses.
Her grandmother, who holds a baby with chickenpox in her arms, says that she
has lost her son and his wife and is left with the children. "We got
separated and after days of not having water and running out of bread, I
took the children and left," she said.
Sitting next to her on the floor is Mervet Hamet Mustafa, 22, who has three
children with her, including a baby, who is also suffering from chickenpox.
She stops herself talking several times to put her head in her hands to cry.
"I am so worried about my children," she wails while her friend, Amal
Mahmoud Ruq, leans against a wall and sobs.
"I must find my brother," she says. "I think they have killed him." Her
friends try to comfort her, but it seems pointless. She points to a small
blue suitcase stuffed with a few blouses and a hairbrush she hurriedly
packed when she left. "This is all I have now," she said.
http://argument.independent.co.uk/regular_columnists/fergal_keane/story.jsp?
story=284389
President Bush has reached the limit of his abilities
'The President has no real ideas of his own. Instincts are a poor substitute
for strategic intelligence'
Fergal Keane
13 April 2002
Middle East
Fergal Keane: President Bush has reached the limit of his abilities
It is a glorious spring evening in Washington and the Mall is filled with
joggers and walkers. Many friends consider the capital a sinkhole of
amorality and cynicism. I have always loved the place. The planners,
bureaucrats and politicos have never managed to eclipse the grace of the
city. It is still a southern town - a few hours' drive south and you hit
Richmond, the old Confederate capital - and in summer the suffocating heat
suggests steamier latitudes.
I was 18 years old when I first came here, a boy on a tight budget who
walked and walked in the twilight, from the Hill to the White House and then
out to Woodley Park where people sat on their porches trying to catch a
breeze. That was back in a vastly different America, in the twilight years
of Jimmy Carter's Presidency. What baleful days for America then. Carter
should never have been President but after Nixon (forget about Gerald Ford,
everybody does) the American people wanted clean. They got a fumbler and a
bumbler, a man who was never going to be big enough for the toughest job in
the world. And they were tough times. Yellow ribbons were still tied around
lampposts for the US hostages in Iran.
It was just a few years too after the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese
and America was gripped by self-doubt. There was no wall yet to commemorate
the American dead of that war. The veterans were silent, angry men you saw
on the lawn outside Veterans' Administration offices. I remember the Army
surplus stores packed with fresh combat jackets, shirts and trousers -
useless now that the last troops had climbed aboard the choppers and
abandoned Vietnam. I went bargain hunting amid the detritus of that
catastrophic war.
It is hard to remember the impact of those years on America's vision of
itself. The recent past was simply too recent. The nation had endured its
first military defeat (and that is what Vietnam was, whatever the
revisionists might say) and had seen Richard Nixon announce on television:
"The President is not a crook." The Washington of those years was a Potemkin
village. The fine buildings were still standing but behind it all was a
haunted emptiness. America's self-esteem had been squandered in the rice
paddies of South-east Asia and the corridors of the Watergate building.
More than 20 years later that sad Washington seems like a dream city. The
United States has suffered the greatest terrorist assault in its history,
but you won't find any sign of despair. Even the most die-hard anti-American
would have to admire the zest and pluck here. It exists not in spite of 11
September but because of it. For someone used to the relentless navel-gazing
of British public life the sense of national resolve in America is
energising, if a little difficult to comprehend. How could so many people be
so positive after such trauma?
It has also been very helpful for President George Bush. Yes there have been
domestic problems to deal with (and the Democrats will ensure he has plenty
more after the mid-term elections), but the nation has been united by the
exigencies of fighting the "war on terror". Mr Bush has done a creditably
good job at inspiring a national mood of recovery. After the shakiest of
starts he has said all the right things. Whether one agreed that American
policy in the war on terror would create a terror-free world was one thing;
but there was no denying that Mr Bush was following a coherent line.
That was until the Middle East blew up in his face. Now there is a whiff of
those Carter years once again. George Bush looks like a bumbler. Challenged
with formulating a policy instead of responding to a national mood he has
looked like a chump. Ironically it took a leading light of the bumbling
Carter administration to point out the truth. The White House was hobbled by
"strategic incoherence" said Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the architects of
the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in the late 1970s.
There were signs of Mr Bush's weakness long before the 11 September crisis.
The hesitancy of his initial response when the Chinese seized a US spy plane
in the early months of the administration was an example. That incident was
resolved because the wiser minds in the administration, like Colin Powell,
persuaded Mr Bush to ignore the hard right which seeks to turn every
encounter with the Chinese into the opening battle of a new Cold War. But
the bogeymen of the right were not defeated. The likes of Richard Perle and
Paul Wolfowitz bided their time. In the wake of 11 September they have
become an increasingly powerful force in the White House. The sorry fact is
that most of this bunch haven't had an original political idea since Nixon
sat in the White House.
And they are dealing with a President who has no real ideas of his own.
Certainly he has instincts but they are a poor substitute for strategic
intelligence. The President's politics are so fundamentally immature that
when confronted with a real world of hard choices he is floundering. So
George Bush ends up caught in the crossfire between the wise - Colin Powell
and Condoleeza Rice - and the dangerous - Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz
and Richard Perle.
The latter are an arrogant, angry crew and God help us all if they triumph.
It was their influence, and the siren voices of right-wing columnists and
talk show hosts, which kept Mr Bush from intervening in the Middle East,
repeating the mantra that Arafat was a terrorist just like bin Laden. They
peddle the illusion that to secure America's destiny you simply need to
shoot faster than the other guy. They resemble nothing so much as a lynch
posse from the Old West who see their quarry on the horizon but fail to
notice the miles of burning desert in between. Bush is the Walter Burns
figure, the hesitant sheriff who says: "Gee boys I'm not so sure." But he
follows them into the wilderness anyway.
For the moment Colin Powell has the President's ear but it would be foolish
to imagine this will last. He has persuaded Mr Bush that America needs to
intervene in the Middle East. But if he goes a step further and suggests
putting massive American pressure on the Israelis (along with similar
arm-twisting of Arafat) to sit down at peace talks, the right-wingers will
raise hell. They are already doing that, aided by the pro-Israeli lobby and
by large numbers of Congressmen from both parties.
They correctly sense that George Bush is weak. Lets not forget he was
elected without a true popular mandate so that even if he were a strong
strategist, he would be operating from a position of weakness. So he has
swung from being tough on Sharon to watering down the administration's
demand for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. Operating against this
background General Powell's mission seems doomed to fail and when it does
the belligerent posse in Washington will be in the ascendant. They will urge
Mr Bush into war in Iraq with no concern for its wider implications. The war
on terror will be defined entirely in terms of narrow self- interest with
the world obliged to go to hell. The tragedy is that the wrong man is
sitting in the White House. It shouldn't be George Bush or Al Gore either.
Step forward, if only, President Colin Powell.
The writer is a BBC special correspondent.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=284434
International force must be deployed, says Annan
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
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
Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, urged yesterday that an
international force be sent to curb the violence in the Middle East, as the
only way of preparing for negotiations.
Some form of outside peacekeeping force is known to be one idea under
discussion by Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, during his talks with
Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat this weekend. Yesterday's suicide bombing in
Jerusalem gave the proposal added urgency. The attack increased the
frustration of President Bush and underlined again the inability of the US
to impose its will on events.
The White House said that despite the attack, General Powell would meet Mr
Arafat in Ramallah today as planned, but would deliver an even tougher
message following what Mr Bush's spokesman described as a "homicide"
bombing. "These aren't suicide bombings, they're murder," Ari Fleischer
said.
The US now faces a huge dilemma. It can either - as seemed more likely
yesterday - keep General Powell in the region, and risk seeing further
embarrassment if mediation efforts come to nothing. Or it can bring him
home, tacitly acknowledge America's powerlessness and further jeopardise
relations with moderate Arab states.
Mr Annan, speaking in Geneva, warned that "the situation is so dangerous and
the humanitarian and human rights situation so appalling, the proposition
that a force should be sent in ... can no longer be deferred."
The killings on both sides were "an affront to the conscience of mankind".
He said the force should be dispatched as soon as possible, but did not
specify whether that should happen before a truce. Other UN officials said a
deployment would depend on a ceasefire, an Israeli pullout and a series of
confidence-building measures.
Mr Annan voiced concern at reports from UN agencies of "grave violations" by
Israeli forces during the two-week offensive, and again urged Mr Sharon to
withdraw. The violence has left diplomats scrambling for a formula to bring
peace, and dramatic initiatives cannot be ruled out. A peacekeeping force is
high on the list of options.
Another possibility is a joint initiative by the US, the UN, Europe and
Russia, the four parties who appealed in vain in mid-week for an end to the
offensive and a halt to the bombings. "There is maximum flexibility," Mr
Fleischer said of the Powell mission.
However, major problems surround any peacekeeping force: its size and
composition, and the minimum requirements for it to go in. Palestinians have
always supported the idea, believing it would internationalise the crisis
and help correct the imbalance of force. For exactly that reason, Israeli
governments have always opposed it.
The Jewish state insists it has the right to self-defence. It also believes
any genuinely multinational force would be sympathetic to the Palestinians.
An all-US force would arouse misgivings in Washington, which has not
forgotten how a similar exercise in Lebanon led to the death of 240 US
servicemen in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing.
http://argument.independent.co.uk/regular_columnists/fergal_keane/story.jsp?
story=282047
Sharon's military tactics should not surprise anyone
'Bush could have consulted a few of the American diplomats who have known
Sharon over the years'
Fergal Keane
06 April 2002
So George Bush has shown that his patience with Ariel Sharon is not endless.
The headlines have described him as getting tough with the Israeli leader.
Tough? What has been administered is a slightly more rigorous tap on the
wrist than is usual. The eternal "sources close to the White House" suggest
that Bush feels Sharon is going too far. I really do find it hard to credit
that an American president could be so naive. All Bush needed to do was
speak to anybody who worked in the Middle East for Ronald Reagan back in the
80s and he would have found out very quickly how Mr Sharon works.
He might have called up former US ambassador Morris Draper who believed he
had an agreement that Sharon wouldn't send the Israeli army into Muslim West
Beirut but woke up one morning to find out they'd gone ahead anyway. This
was the first occupation of an Arab capital by the Israeli army.
It was the Reagan administration that personally guaranteed the security of
the civilians of West Beirut and that watched in impotent horror as images
of murdered Palestinian civilians were beamed back to Washington in
September 1982. That was after Sharon had ordered Christian militiamen into
the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila to "root out terrorists". Sharon was
censured by an Israeli commission of inquiry but there were to be no war
crimes charges against him. He went on to fight another day.
If he had been a little more eager to learn, Bush could have consulted a few
of the American diplomats and political figures who've known Sharon over the
years. He might have learned that Sharon has never really trusted America
and has long believed Israel should not be dependent on US support. But Bush
was apparently very taken with Sharon when he visited Israel before running
for the presidency. He had a personal helicopter tour of the country with
Sharon as his guide. Afterwards he said he had a "feel" for the place and
that no other foreign trip had had quite the same impact on him. Heaven
preserve us from men who follow instincts but won't do their homework.
Bush has waffled all week about the necessity for a political solution, and
he has given the impression that one could be close at hand. Is this one of
his famous instincts or does he have some more tangible reason for hope.
There hasn't been any serious politics since the debacle in the last days of
the Clinton administration, yet we are treated to the fiction that if only
both sides would stop killing each other a solution could be agreed. To
appreciate the true difficulty, we should ponder some hard truths.
Most rational commentators and the majority of the international body
politic agree that a solution must be based on the old formula of land for
peace. The Saudi proposal was simply a recognition of this reality gilded
with the offer of a broader regional peace. But this presents Ariel Sharon
with a choice no leader of his background would want to face.
When he was cast into the political wilderness after the Sabra and Chatila
massacres, Sharon rebuilt his base with the help of the settlers. He has
been a driving force behind the colonisation of Palestinian land. Is anybody
asking themselves how a man with this political debt, but also with his own
passionate support for settlements, is going to be party to destroying the
settlers' dream? Even if he were to undergo a miracle conversion to the
idea, many in his political constituency would denounce him as a traitor.
Yet in the absence of such a deal there will be endless war. No colonised
people will sit and watch their land being eaten away.
We are living through the most fateful days since the establishment of the
state of Israel in 1948. Fateful for Israelis and Palestinians but also for
America. Does Bush have any idea how much hatred is boiling in the Arab
world as the images are beamed across the region?
And then look at Sharon's potential partner in negotiations. What kind of
moral abandonment does it take to proclaim your desire for martyrdom when
suicide bombers are on the rampage? And please don't give me any of that
glib rubbish about needing to identify with the oppressed, or worse still
the sickening notion that walking into a café and blowing innocent civilians
to pieces is the "inevitable" consequence of Israeli oppression. A reader
wrote to me a few months ago saying my criticisms of suicide bombings
reflected a failure to understand that other people might seek a different
means of expressing their dissent. No dear reader, suicide bombing isn't war
but brutal execution based on an odious notion of collective guilt.
Yet on a few occasions in the past week sane voices have emerged from the
sludge of sound bites. There were Saeb Erekat and Hanan Ashrawi on the
Palestinian side both sounding weary yet still ready to negotiate a way out
of the madness. And there was Yossi Beilin, the Labour Party member and
former justice minister, criticising Sharon's war. Beilin said what any
rational mind would recognise as fact: a strategy based on war will end in
disaster. Beilin and Erekat and Ashrawi represent hope. Only the vaguest
glimmer but enough to forestall despair about the Middle East. You don't see
much of the other Israel on your television screens.
The image of fear and anger is real enough, but the country of intelligent
debate and serious thinkers hasn't been destroyed. Not everybody rallies
behind the bellicose rhetoric of Sharon's spokesmen or supports the invasion
of the occupied territories. I have heard more passionate debates about
politics in Israel than I ever have in Britain, so I believe peace is not
only possible but that there is a constituency in Israel ready to engage
with like-minded people on the Palestinian side.
I had a call from an Israeli friend this week who has been talking to his
wife about leaving the country. They are sick with worry that their children
will one weekend night be killed by suicide bombers. Yet my friend has
decided to tough it out. He hasn't given up on peace. I think of him and his
family, but also of friends in Ramallah, whenever I hear someone here
talking about the impossibility of peace, and the desirability of letting
both sides fight it out. Easy words. And cheap and reckless words.
We should be glad that President Bush has at last become engaged. It should
have happened a great deal sooner, but it's not too late. When Colin Powell
goes to the region next week he must make it clear that violence can no
longer be an obstacle to embarking on political talks.
It will take great American pressure to bring Sharon to the table and the
Arabs must impose similar pressure on Yasser Arafat to make an unambiguous
condemnation in Arabic of suicide bombing. Arafat must repeat this
condemnation every time there is an attack. He may not be able to control
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whatever his power over his own forces, but he
needs to be seen to make every effort. He has not done that yet.
In such times of madness it is worth shouting the self-evident: in the
absence of politics, violence will always rush in to fill the vacuum. It is
time George Bush used the power at his disposal to make both sides hear each
other and to make space for the saner voices.
The writer is a BBC Special Correspondent
warhol
America on the same basis the Jews claimed land in Palestine. We'd then see
how the Jews would react if there land was stolen, their homes demolished
and new housing built on what was once their land.
If all legal avenues were removed, all UN resolutions blocked, and their
personal weapons seized.... (as the Palestinians have had to endure), would
the now Jewish refugees living in camps in Mexico turn to terrorism?
History has shown they would. The creation of Israel and the Nazi
occupations created scores of "jewish heroes" (read terrorists).... and when
Barak was asked what he would do if he were born a Palestinian, he answered:
"I would be a terrorist".
Enough said.>
Nan Scott
Jenin "refugee camp" is a place filled with soldiers masquerading and
civilians and mixing in with the civilian population, that is used as a
staging ground for both military and terrorist attacks. If these cowardly
vermin decide to hide among their own women and children, they are the ones
that are responsible for killing them. There is no equivalence. After
dancing in the streets on September 11, the "palestinian" arabs deserve the
same fate that any other of the scum involved in terrorism do- they should
be prevented from further polluting the world.news:d2Nt8.3807$L1.3...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
Jim Morris
"warhol" <war...@factory.be> wrote in message
eloquently said...
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=284436
----- Original Message -----
To: jdtm...@earthlink.net
Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2002 8:53 AM
Subject: thanks, Jim!
Dear Jim,
Thanks for the material on the Israeli massacre at Jenin. There is no
question that a major war crime has been committed there, entirely in
keeping with Sharon's bloodstained record. Thank god, the international
media are onto it, and the Israelis won't be able to get away with it. The
best outcome will be international outrage and condemnation and the
imposition of international peacekeepers. It will be interesting to see how
the hopelessly pro-Israeli US deals with this obvious war crime, compared to
which Palestinian suicide bombings are simply the desperate attempts of a
beleagured people to defend themselves against overwhelming odds.
Again, thanks for the material.
Best wishes,
Mark
hi mark,
you are most welcome for the info as i get most of it from the uk
independent newspaper which has excellent coverage on the arab v. israeli
situation... the bbc world news which airs each weeknight has been excellent
as well
it is incredible to me how the american media is still focusing on the
suicide bombings instead of how many more palestinians have been killed like
in the recent jenin massacre. it really shows one just how biased the
american media is in favor of israel despite sharon's brutal war crimes
which are eloquently described via the following article from the ucla daily
bruin newspaper
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/db/articles.asp?ID=17769
have you heard of a writer by the name of robert fisk as he writes articles
for the independent and eloquently describes the brutality of the israelis
against the palestinians...i included his most recent articles below as he
had one about the infamous palestinian massacre of Deir Yassin in 1948 by
the palestinian jews or early israelis... fisk just had an excellent
documentary on the discovery channel which i am trying to get hold of as
well..
Robert Fisk was interviewed in a
segment about the Middle East in the "To the Point" program which aired on
January 25th, 2002.. You can access it and listen to it on your computer via
the archive at www.moretothepoint.com
the following is the direct link for the program
http://www.kcrw.org/cgi-bin/db/kcrw.pl?show_code=tp&air_date=1/25/02&tmplt_t
ype=show
those illegal israeli settlements in the occupied territories are the heart
of the problem as eloquently mentioned in the following article
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=276379
are you teaching political sociology at berkeley this semester...
the following are the latest articles by robert fisk for the uk independent
newspaper
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=282456
'Jews may not want to look at this'
Tuesday is Holocaust Day in Israel: and the anniversary of a 1948 massacre
that triggered the Palestinian refugee crisis at the heart of today's
conflict. Robert Fisk meets an Auschwitz survivor living at the site of the
atrocity
By Robert Fisk
07 April 2002
'Thirty dead' in heavy fighting as Israelis storm refugee camp
"I will show you my museum," Josef Kleinman says, and scampers into a back
room. He returns with a faded old khaki knapsack. "This is the shirt the
Americans gave me after I was freed from Landsberg on 27 April 1945." It is
a crumpled, cheap check shirt whose label is now illegible. Then he takes
out a smock of blue and white stripes and a hat with the same stripes
running front to back. "This is my uniform as a prisoner of Dachau."
Familiar from every newsreel and from Schindler's List and 100 other
Holocaust movies, it is a shock to touch - to hold - this symbol of a
people's destruction. Josef Kleinman watches me as I hold the smock. He
understands the shock. On the front of the smock is the number 114986.
Down in the entrance to his block of flats, there are flyers reminding
tenants of the forthcoming Holocaust Day. Givat Shaul is a friendly, bright
neighbourhood of retired couples, small shops, flats, trees and some elegant
old houses of yellow stone. Some of these are in a state of dilapidation, a
few are homes. But one or two bear the scars of bullets fired long ago, on 9
April 1948, when another people faced their own catastrophe.
For Givat Shaul used to be called Deir Yassin. And here it was, 54 years
ago, that up to 130 Palestinians were massacred by two Jewish militias, the
Irgun and the Stern Gang, as the Jews of Palestine fought for the
independence of a state called Israel. The slaughter so terrified tens of
thousands of Palestinian Arabs that they fled their homes en masse - 750,000
in all - to create the refugee population whose tragedy lies at the heart of
the Middle East conflict today.
Back in 1948, Palestinian women were torn to pieces by grenades around the
old houses that still exist in Givat Shaul. Two truckloads of Arab prisoners
were taken from the village and paraded through the streets of Jerusalem.
Later, many of them would be executed in Deir Yassin. Their mass grave is
believed to lie beneath a fuel storage depot that now stands at one end of
the Jerusalem suburb.
So a visit to Mr Kleinman's home raises a serious moral question. Can one
listen to his personal testimony of the greatest crime in modern history and
then ask about the tragedy which overwhelmed the Palestinians at this very
spot - when the eviction of the Arabs of Palestine, terrible though it was,
an act of ethnic cleansing in our terms, comes no- where near, statistically
or morally, the murder of six million Jews? Does he even know that this
year, by an awful irony of history, Holocaust Day and Deir Yassin Day fall
on the same date?
Mr Kleinman is no ordinary Holocaust survivor. He was the youngest survivor
of Auschwitz and he testified at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the head of
Hitler's programme to murder the Jews of Europe. Indeed, Mr Kleinman saw Dr
Mengele, the "Angel of Death", who chose children, women, the old and the
sick for the gas chambers. At the age of just 14, he watched one day as
Mengele arrived on a bicycle and ordered a boy to hammer a plank of wood to
a post. Here, for the record, is part of Kleinman's testimony at the
Eichmann trial:
"We weren't told what was to happen. We knew. The boys who couldn't pass
under the plank would be spared. Those boys whose heads did not reach the
plank would be sent to the gas chambers. We all tried to stretch ourselves
upwards, to make ourselves taller. But I gave up. I saw that taller boys
than me failed to touch the plank with their heads. My brother told me, 'Do
you want to live? Yes? Then do something.' My head began to work. I saw some
stones. I put them in my shoes, and this made me taller. But I couldn't
stand at attention on the stones, they were killing me."
Mr Kleinman's brother, Shlomo, tore his hat in half and Josef stuffed part
of it into his shoes. He was still too short. But he managed to "infiltrate"
into the group who had passed the test. The remainder of the boys - a
thousand in all - were gassed. Mengele, Josef Kleinman remembers, chose
Jewish holidays for the mass killing of Jewish children. Mr Kleinman's
parents, Meir and Rachel, and his sister had been sent directly to the gas
chambers when the family arrived at Auschwitz from the Carpathian mountains,
in what is now Ukraine. He survived, along with his brother - who today, a
carpenter like Josef, lives a few hundred yards away in the same suburb of
Givat Shaul/Deir Yassin. Josef survived Dachau and the gruelling labour of
building a massive bunker for Hitler's secret factory, constructed for the
production of Germany's new Messerschmitt ME262 jet fighter aircraft.
After his liberation by the Americans, Josef Kleinman made his way to Italy
and then to a small boat which put him aboard a ship for Palestine, carrying
illegal Jewish immigrants who were to try to enter the territory of the
dying British mandate. He could carry only a few possessions. He chose to
put his Dachau uniform in his bag - he would not forget what happened to
him.
Turned back by the British, he spent six months in the Famagusta camp on
Cyprus, eventually ending up in the immigrants' camp at Atlit in Palestine.
He arrived in Jerusalem on 15 March 1947, and was there when Israel's war of
independence broke out. He fought in that war - but not at Deir Yassin. I
gently mention the name. Both Josef Kleinman and his wife Haya nod at once.
"There are things which have been written that were wrong about Deir
Yassin," he said. "I was in Jerusalem and I saw the two truckloads of
prisoners that came from here. Some reports say Arabs were killed, others
that they were not. Not all the people were killed. There is much
propaganda. I do not know. The Arabs killed their Jewish prisoners. There
didn't have to be much fighting for the Arabs to leave."
But when he saw those Arabs leaving, did they not, for Mr Kleinman, provide
any kind of parallel - however faint, given the numerically far greater and
infinitely bloodier disaster that overtook the Jews - of his own life? He
thinks about this for a while. He did not see many Arab refugees, he said.
It was his wife Haya who replied. "I think that after what happened to him -
which was so dreadful - that everything else in the world seemed less
important. You have to understand that Josef lives in that time, in the time
of the Shoah (Holocaust). Of the 29,000 Jews brought to Dachau from other
camps, most of them from Auschwitz, 15,000 died."
But is it just about the enormity of one crime and its statistical
comparison to the exodus of Palestinians in 1948? A group of Jews, Muslims
and Christians are campaigning for Deir Yassin to be remembered - even now,
at the height of the latest war in what was Palestine. In London today, the
killings at Deir Yassin will be remembered at St John's Wood Church at 6pm.
They will be commemorated, too, in Washington and Melbourne and in
Jerusalem. As the organisers say, "many Jews may not want to look at this,
fearing that the magnitude of their tragedy may be diminished. For
Palestinians there is always the fear that, as often before, the Holocaust
may be used to justify their own suffering".
The Kleinmans do not know of this commemoration - nor of the organisation's
plans for a memorial to the Palestinian dead in their little suburb of Givat
Shaul. Josef Kleinman won't talk about the bloodbath in Israel/Palestine
today. But he admits he's "on the right" and voted for Ariel Sharon. "Is
there any other man?" he asks.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=282341
British woman tells of Bethlehem shootings
By Robert Mendick
07 April 2002
A Jewish woman from Manchester spoke last night of her terror after fleeing
Israeli soldiers firing live ammunition into a crowd of peace protesters.
Jo Bird, 31, a manager with the Co-operative Bank, watched as three of her
friends were shot during the peace demonstration in Bethlehem on Easter
Monday.
Her friend Kate Edwards, an Australian living in Manchester, is still in
hospital in the West Bank after being hit in the stomach. She underwent
surgery to remove four bullet fragments, which ruptured her stomach and
caused severe internal injuries. Ms Bird was holed up in a hotel in
Bethlehem for three days until the British consulate stepped in to evacuate
her and six fellow peace activists, including the comedian Jeremy Hardy. She
finally flew home on Thursday evening.
Ms Bird, whose Jewish parents support her activities, told The Independent
on Sunday: "We were peacefully marching in Bethlehem and then, without
warning, two Israeli soldiers began firing live ammunition out of an
armoured personnel carrier.
"Some of the shots were aimed at the floor, some at the walls but others
were aimed at people. I was about five metres from the soldiers when they
started firing at us.
"I was terrified. It was completely outrageous. My main concern was for my
friends who were injured. I was close by when they were hit.
"I feared for my life, for sure. The soldiers carried on firing at us for 10
minutes."
The demonstrators, under the umbrella of the International Solidarity
Movement, then began, Ms Bird said, an orderly retreat.
She added."I am angry that our lives and our human rights were treated with
such disrespect by the Israeli Defence Force. It opened my eyes to the
brutality of the Israeli occupation
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=282458
Unholy War: The Bethlehem bellringer, the doctor, the mother. The innocent
keep on dying
At the end of a week when violence in the Middle East conflict has reached
new, horrific heights, President Bush has asked Israel to hold its fire.
Here, Robert Fisk explains why the call could in fact increase Israeli
resolve to crush the Palestinians, and on the following pages we investigate
the conflict's history
By Robert Fisk
07 April 2002
'Thirty dead' in heavy fighting as Israelis storm refugee camp
I had just crossed the northern bridge from Israel over the Jordan river for
a brief visit to Amman when my driver swerved to the right next to a group
of soldiers and headed down a track beside a canal. "We have to avoid the
first village," he said without comment. A few minutes later, I could see
why.
Black smoke rose from burning tyres on the main road and crowds of young
Jordanian men were stopping cars on the highway. "They are throwing stones
at foreigners and looking for Israelis," said the driver. You bet they were.
And, two hours later, I saw black smoke cowling into the air over Amman as
more demonstrators screamed their hatred of America and Israel.
And this, remember, is friendly, pro-Western Jordan, whose young king moves
members of the British Parliament to tears, whose peace treaty with Israel
was hailed - preposterously, of course - as the start of an economic boom, a
new freedom and security for a nation of whom more than half the population
are Palestinian.
All across the Arab world, local dictators are suppressing their people's
anger. In Jordan, you can even find people who ask not only why the late
King Hussein signed a peace treaty with Israel. Some of them are asking
another question: what is the point of his son, King Abdullah? No wonder
that the Arab leaders told US Vice-President Dick Cheney last month that he
should forget America's forthcoming screen epic in Iraq and deal with the
Palestinian-Israeli war. Valuable days were lost while Mr Cheney toured the
region in a desperate search for an Arab who would support an Iraqi blitz.
And as happens so often nowadays - incredible though it seems - the Arabs
got it right while the Americans fantasised about the "axis of evil".
Perhaps the only man who now has time to work out the logic of this
appalling conflict is the Palestinian leader sitting in his ill-lit broken
office in Ramallah. The one characteristic Yasser Arafat shares with the
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - apart from old age and decrepitude -
is his refusal ever to plan ahead. What he says, what he does, what he
proposes, is decided only at the moment he is forced to act. This is partly
his old guerrilla training. If you don't know what you are going to do
tomorrow, you can be sure that your enemies don't know either. By contrast,
the Israeli army obligingly boasts of its attacks long in advance, allowing
Palestinians - and, of course, journalists - to be ready for them.
What the world has so far witnessed - and the Palestinians spotted this from
the start - is that the Israelis are meeting resistance they never expected.
The "few days" they needed to "root out the network of terror" will now have
to extend, according to Israeli officers, to a month. President George Bush
gave Mr Sharon just days to end his campaign against the Palestinians - the
delay before the Secretary of State leaves for his "urgent" Middle East
mission - and everyone now knows that the Americans will expect Israel to
wrap up its assault by the time Mr Powell arrives later this week.
So the military logic is simple. This weekend, the Israeli army has got to
batter the Palestinians into submission. And somehow, the Palestinian forces
have got to hang on and keep fighting. If they succeed, and the Israelis
withdraw their tanks without subduing them, Mr Sharon is forced into a
bitter humiliation. If the Israelis do not withdraw at Mr Powell's demand,
then the first serious crack appears in the Sharon-Bush alliance. In which
case, Mr Arafat will win yet again.
The Israeli army, meanwhile, is proving once more - as it did in Lebanon -
that it is not the "elite" force it's cracked up to be. It is impossible to
dismiss the widespread reports of looting from homes in Ramallah (not least
because that is exactly what Israeli soldiers used to do in southern Lebanon
in 1983); and that brave Israeli academic, Avi Shlaim, has himself charged
Israel with extra-judicial killings in Ramallah.
Watching the Israelis in Ramallah and Bethlehem last week was a disturbing
experience. They were undisciplined, firing like militiamen - the degree of
fire control (or rather the lack of it) exercised by the average Israeli
soldier and Palestinian gunman is almost exactly the same. Three times I
watched Israeli tanks jam themselves into narrow streets so hopelessly that
their crews had to emerge under fire from their hatches, jump on to the
roadside and hand-signal the tank drivers to reverse their vehicle.
And of course, the innocent go on dying. The Bethlehem bell-ringer, the
woman doctor in Jenin, the 14-year-old girl killed by Israeli tank fire in
Tubas, the mother and son shot dead by Israeli bullets and left to rot on
the floor of their home in Bethlehem beside their still-living relatives for
30 hours. Journalists and unarmed Western "peace" protesters who get in the
Israeli army's way are gunned down or battoned or blasted with stun
grenades. So much for those gentle souls who say that Gandhi-like peaceful
protest is the way to end the Israeli occupation.
And what does the Israeli government do when the guns and grenades don't
shut journalists up? Why, last week it threatened legal action against CNN
and the American NBC television chain for not leaving "closed military
areas" of the West Bank. No matter that Israeli law possesses no legitimacy
in the Palestinian areas it occupies - the world still accepts the Oslo
agreements even if Mr Sharon is destroying them - CNN and NBC meekly refused
to make any comment. What happened, one wonders, to that great American
journalist's principle of refusing to tolerate censorship?
But there is another question which has been quietly forgotten by the world
ever since the Israeli assault. If Israel fails militarily - as it will -
then how are the vicious Palestinian suicide bombers to be stopped? True,
there has been a lull after the massacres of Israelis last month. But even
if the suiciders have been temporarily unbalanced by the Israeli offensive,
Israel has created many more potential "martyrs" for the Palestinians in the
bloodbath of the past week.
The Israelis still refuse to contemplate the arrival of a foreign protection
force - the dream of every Palestinian - but the time may come when a
Nato-American force will have to be contemplated, to protect Israelis as
well as Palestinians. It would not be called a foreign protectorate, but
that is what Israel/Palestine would become, an updated version of the old,
hopeless British mandate.
In the meantime, be sure the Americans will go on over-arming the Israelis.
Just under two weeks ago, for example, the Americans rolled out their first
S-70A-55 troop-carrying Black Hawk helicopter to be sold to the Israelis.
Israel has purchased 24 of the new machines costing $211m (£150m) - most of
which, of course, will be paid for by the United States. The logbook of the
first of the new Black Hawks was handed over to the Israeli defence ministry
by none other than the former secretary of state, Alexander Haig - the man
who gave Israel's then prime minister, Menachem Begin, the green light to
invade Lebanon in 1982.
So, coming soon to the Middle East, a new breed of Black Hawk in the skies
over your local West Bank town. Funny, though, that we haven't heard a thing
about all this.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/feb2002/sab-f22.shtml
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=134520
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=272388
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=271647
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=271705
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=271739
Jim Morris
> "warhol" <war...@factory.be> wrote in message
"Jim Morris" <jdtm...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=284436
>
> ----- Original Message -----
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=284823
The camp that became a slaughterhouse
By Justin Huggler
14 April 2002
The bloody evidence of he tragedy that is Jenin
Franciscans refuse to quit besieged birthplace of Christ
Israel's bloody intransigence silences Bush
The soldier and the bomber: the tale of two grieving families
A woman with her leg all but ripped off by a helicopter rocket, the mangled
remains hanging on by a thread of skin as she slowly bleeds to death. A
10-year-old boy lying dead in the street, his arm blown off and a great hole
in his side. A mother shot dead when she ran into the street to scream for
help for her dying son. The wounded left to die slowly, in horrible agony,
because the ambulances were not allowed in to treat them.
A terrible crime has been committed by Israel in Jenin refugee camp, and the
world is turning a blind eye. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State,
visited the scene of a suicide bombing that murdered six Israelis in
Jerusalem, but he did not visit Jenin, where the Israelis admit they killed
at least 100 Palestinians. The Israel army claims all of the dead were armed
men, that it took special care to avoid civilian casualties. But we saw the
helicopter rockets rain down on desperately crowded areas: civilian
casualties could not have been prevented.
The Israeli army sealed off the entire area around Jenin yesterday,
arresting journalists who ventured into it. That is because they have
something to hide in Jenin: the bodies.
The Israeli army has told the Israeli courts that it will not start burying
the bodies until Sunday. But there are abundant eyewitnesses who say they
have already seen the soldiers piling the bodies in mass graves. Hiding the
bodies is what Slobodan Milosevic did in Kosovo.
Either way, the Palestinians are not allowed to bury their own dead, because
Israel does not want the world to see what happened inside Jenin refugee
camp. The grieving have no way of knowing where to find the bodies of those
they have lost.
For nine days, Jenin camp became a slaughterhouse. Fifteen thousand
Palestinians lived in a square kilometre in the camp, a packed warren of
narrow lanes. Thousands of terrified civilians, women and children, cowered
inside their homes while the Israeli helicopters rained down rockets on them
and tanks fired shells into the camp.
The wounded were left to die. The Israeli army refused to allow ambulances
in to treat them, which is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. The Red
Cross has publicly said people have died because Israel blocked the
ambulances. Slobodan Milosevic is on trial in the Hague for breaking the
Geneva Conventions, while Ariel Sharon shakes Colin Powell's hand for the
television cameras. The Geneva Conventions are in tatters in Israel.
The Israeli authorities may be able to hide the evidence, but they cannot
silence the stories that have been pouring out of those who managed to
escape the carnage in the camp. These stories cannot be verified yet, but
there are scores of them, and many agree in details. Fikri abu al-Heija was
one of those who came out of the carnage in the camp.
"At the beginning the soldiers came and surrounded the camp with tanks," he
says. "There were two Apache helicopters. A rocket hit our house - they were
concentrating the rockets on the houses. All the windows were broken by the
explosions. All you could hear was explosions. When the rocket hit the
house, everybody gathered together on the lower floors. A woman was with us
from the second floor who had had her leg almost cut off by the rocket. It
was just hanging on by a little piece of skin. We saw the ambulance coming
for her but the soldiers stopped it."
Six days after the attack, Mr abu al-Heija was captured by the soldiers.
"They made us take off our clothes and tied us in groups of five with metal
wire. As we were walking through the camp we saw demolished houses, burning
houses, bodies in the street. Every 10 or 20 metres there was a body. I
recognised some. One was a cousin of mine. His name was Ashraf abu
al-Heija."
The Palestinians have been writing all the accounts like Mr abu al-Heija's
down: they are not going to allow what happened at Jenin to be covered up.
The Independent on Sunday has seen these meticulous handwritten notes, of
which several copies have been made. There are records of everybody who used
to live in the camp, and it will be possible to match the missing with the
accounts of the dead. The Palestinians say there are 200 missing.
The names are coming out now: Mohammed Hamad, Nidal Nubam, Mustafa Shnewa. A
man who asked to remain anonymous says he saw their bodies being put in a
mass grave in the Haret al-Hawashin neighbourhood.
Yusra Ahmad, a mentally disabled woman, was killed by a helicopter rocket in
her home. Her nephew Mufid Ahmad says he saw it happen.
Munir Washashi bled to death over several hours after a helicopter round
came through the wall of his home. When an ambulance came for him, Israeli
soldiers shot at it.
Munir's mother, Maryam, ran into the street screaming for help for her son
and was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers. Abdullah, her other son, told
The Independent on Sunday he saw it all happen.
The events of the last two weeks in Jenin will not go away, however hard
Israel tries to keep the refugee camp away from the eyes of the world. For
the Palestinians, this is the place where they finally stood and fought, and
where Palestinian fighters armed only with rifles managed to hold off the
Israeli tanks and helicopters for nine days. It is also the place where at
least 100 Palestinians were slaughtered by the Israeli army.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=284810
The bloody evidence of the tragedy that is Jenin
By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem and Raymond Whitaker and Colin Brown in London
14 April 2002
The first evidence emerged yesterday of the scale of the carnage in Jenin
refugee camp an atrocity which could derail Colin Powell's Middle East
peace mission.
Palestinians escaping from the West Bank camp, which has been sealed off by
the Israeli army for the past 11 days, have spoken of hundreds of deaths,
including many who slowly bled to death because ambulances were prevented
from entering. But no photographic evidence of the ferocity of Israel's
attack had emerged until yesterday, when a Reuters photographer managed to
enter the camp briefly before being chased out again by an Israeli armoured
vehicle.
His two snatched photographs show a house in Jenin which is littered with
three-day-old corpses. Most are covered by blankets, and it is impossible to
tell whether they are Palestinian fighters or civilians. But when the US
Secretary of State meets Yasser Arafat today, the Palestinian leader is sure
to tell Mr Powell that Israel is preventing access to Jenin to cover up
evidence of a massacre.
Yesterday Mr Powell secured a statement crucially in Arabic from Mr
Arafat, condemning Friday's suicide bombing in Jerusalem, in which a woman
from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades blew herself up at a bus stop, killing six
Israelis. The attack caused the Americans to call off a meeting with Mr
Arafat planned for yesterday. But after his announcement of "strong
condemnation", read on Palestinian TV, the US State Department said the
meeting would go ahead today in Mr Arafat's devastated compound in Ramallah.
It was always clear that Mr Powell would have to meet the Palestinian leader
if his attempts to enforce a ceasefire are to stand the slightest chance of
success. The odds, however, remain strongly against success Britain's
Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, admitted to the Independent on Sunday
yesterday that the mission was "hanging by a thread".
Israeli tanks and troops thundered into three more Palestinian towns
yesterday, underscoring the decision of the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, to
ignore pleas from the United States, his closest ally, to halt his invasions
of the West Bank.
Dealing a further snub to Mr Powell, the Israeli armed forces moved into
Arabe, Hashmiyah and al-Yamoun as their government forged ahead with what it
insists is destroying "terrorist" structures and not as many in the
international community believe fanning the flames of violence.
Mr Arafat's statement condemning terrorism was coupled with an accusation
that Israeli forces had committed "massacres and slaughters" against the
Palestinians during their 15-day offensive in the West Bank, in which
hundreds have died. Israel has made clear that it regards Mr Arafat as an
enemy, and has described Mr Powell's plans to meet him as a "tragic
mistake". Public opinion in Israel has hardened with repeated suicide
attacks.
Attitudes on the Palestinian side have become increasingly more hardline and
anti-American, and were hardened further on Friday by the sight on TV of the
Secretary of State sharing a joke with Mr Sharon about Israel's claim to all
Jerusalem including the eastern half which it illegally occupies and by
Mr Powell's apparent inability to stop the Israeli offensive.
But it is the suspicions about what happened in Jenin that have overshadowed
Mr Powell's mission. Israeli forces went in on 3 April as part of Operation
Defensive Shield, carried out in the name of winkling out "terrorists".
Twenty-three Israeli soldiers were killed in the bloodiest engagement by far
with Palestinian fighters, but how many died on the Palestinian side remains
a mystery. It is one which Israel is in no hurry to solve.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=284812
Israel's war of words gets dirty
By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem
14 April 2002
Joel is a reserve captain in the Israeli army. He has a warm handshake and a
line in rapid-fire patter that betrays his New York upbringing.
He introduces himself as a "military source", but it swiftly emerges that he
is a headline machine, churning out slurs.
Joel is in the front line of a multi-million dollar propaganda drive by the
Israeli government to try to prevent an international backlash over its
military invasion into Palestinian-run parts of the occupied West Bank.
They face their toughest challenge yet: limiting the damage to Israel over
the atrocities committed in the Jenin refugee camp, where its army has
killed and injured hundreds of Palestinians.
In a newly opened Israeli government media centre in Jerusalem, Joel was
looking for journalists to make his pitch.
We cut straight to the question of Jenin. "Believe me, we would love to let
you guys into Jenin, but unlike the Palestinian terrorists, we respect the
dignity of the dead," he said. "They want to gather up the bodies and show
them off to the international media as evidence of a massacre that is
typical of the sort of PR tricks they play."
The press was also not being allowed into Jenin because of the "abundance of
terrorists" looking for "Western targets". The Israeli army has frequently
shot at journalists, injuring more than 40 and killing one. Suddenly, it was
concerned for our safety.
A journalist himself, Joel seems to know all about "PR tricks". Asked why
the Israeli army is refusing to allow ambulances from the International
Committee of the Red Cross to enter the camp and evacuate the wounded, he
urged The Independent on Sunday to investigate. "You are on to a good story
there. Go to the Red Cross and find out if they are using drivers from
Sweden, or Palestinians."
The propaganda war between the Israelis and Palestinians has always been a
dirty business, but now it has sunk to new depths. Israel's media centre
issued a statement boasting of "countless examples" of humanitarian aid to
the Palestinians. This will be staggering news to the Red Cross and Red
Crescent, who have been barred from entry, shot at and repeatedly
humiliated, all in violation of the Geneva Convention.
As ever, Israel has more money, resources and skills to apply to its spin
than the Palestinians. It has recruited the ex-prime minister Benjamin
Netanyahu to appear on foreign television to explain why Israel believes
blasting Palestinian towns is an effective tool against terrorism.
The Palestinians are outclassed. They tend to rant and exaggerate, and lack
the fluency in English and the polished appearance of Israel's team of
spokesmen. Mr Arafat is no exception. The world is still waiting for him to
supply convincing proof of his claim that Israeli is using depleted uranium
against his people.
Palestinians seem to have given up worrying about what the outside world
thinks. What matters now is the war. Just as the world's media focused on
the Jenin atrocities, a suicide bomber wiped the story off the airwaves on
Friday by murdering six Israelis in Jerusalem. Israel's propagandists hardly
seemed necessary. The Palestinians were doing the job for them.
Also from the Middle East section.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=284816
Water runs out as Franciscans refuse to quit besieged birthplace of Christ
By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem
14 April 2002
Weak, hungry and at growing risk, a group of Franciscan friars and nuns
gathered in the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem yesterday for a ceremony in
which they agreed to continue to remain inside the besieged basilica,
despite a lack of food and water.
A spokesman for the order, Father David Jaeger, said that the several dozen
clerics agreed at a "solemn ceremony" to stay in the church, where more than
200 Palestinians are holed up, surrounded by Israeli troops.
He said the position was becoming "extremely dangerous" and urged both sides
in the stand-off to accept a solution before it is too late, underscoring
the risk that one of the world's most famous Christian sites could soon
become the scene of a historic disaster.
The church, which contains an underground grotto marking the birthplace of
Christ, has been ringed by Israeli troops, tanks and snipers for a fortnight
Father Jaeger accused Israel of refusing to allow deliveries of food and
water, and said the last supplies of bottled water inside the church appear
to have been exhausted.
The Israelis have said that the clerics are free to leave, but the
Franciscans - traditional custodians of Christian sites in the Holy Land -
insist that they must stay to protect the sanctity of one of their faith's
most sacred shrines.
"The Israelis simply cannot understand that the Franciscans can't leave,"
said Canon Andrew White, the envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, "They
are not staying because they want to be martyrs. They are staying to protect
a holy site and there is absolutely no doubt that they will stay to the
end."
The International Committee of the Red Cross has been unable to get security
guarantees from either side to deliver supplies. The church is in a no-go
area, which has been under permanent curfew by the Israeli troops, who have
confined thousands of residents of Bethlehem - a Palestinian town in the
occupied West Bank - to their homes for days.
Israel's army appears intent on trying to force a group of wanted men inside
the church into a surrender, saying that 10 of the men from Fatah and Hamas
are important "terrorists". It maintained the siege yesterday, dealing
another humiliating blow to the visiting US Secretary of State, Colin
Powell, who is pressing for a solution, mindful that the issue has caused
alarm and anger across the Christian world. Eleven church leaders met with
Mr Powell yesterday and drew up a seven-point proposal for a settlement.
Inside the basilica, there are at least 10 wounded people - and an unknown
number of sick - including a man with a severe gunshot wound to the leg. The
unburied body of a Palestinian policeman lies in a Greek Orthodox grotto,
the victim of an Israeli sniper. His corpse has lain unburied after
Christian officials persuaded the Islamic militias not to place him in a
temporary grave for fear that that a Muslim martyr's tomb would be created
within a few yards of Christ's manger. And an Armenian monk is being treated
in an Israeli hospital after being shot in the back by an Israeli sniper.
"I cannot understand why both parties in this stand-off - despite the
intervention of the Pope, the White House, presidents around the world, the
EU and a host of others - cannot find the minimum humanity necessary to
reach a peaceful and honourable solution," said Father Jaeger.
"And I am completely unable to understand how the Israeli army can possibly
justify denying water, light and food to Franciscan friars and nuns... I
want to ask Israel whether it is worth it?"
The Palestinians who have taken over the church yesterday released
statements to the Pope, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and General
Powell, appealing for immediate intervention. It invited General Powell to
"come as a pilgrim and to witness what is going on inside the church, the
place which the Israeli occupation army has made into a prison."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=284814
Israel's bloody intransigence silences Bush
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington and Colin Brown in London
14 April 2002
Middle East links
The bloody evidence of he tragedy that is Jenin
The camp that became a slaughterhouse
Jews in Britain: Behind the pro-Israel sentiment lies fear
Franciscans refuse to quit besieged birthplace of Christ
Israel's bloody intransigence silences Bush
The soldier and the bomber: the tale of two grieving families
With his condemnation of terrorism and of Friday's Palestinian suicide
bombing in Jerusalem, Yasser Arafat yesterday opened a chink of possibility
in the bloodiest and most ominous Middle Eastern showdown in two decades.
As Washington perused the statement to see whether it was sufficient to
clear the way for a meeting between Colin Powell, the Secretary of State and
the Palestinian leader today, a massive diplomatic effort continued to try
and defuse the crisis.
It is placing in jeopardy Washington's campaign against global terrorism,
straining to the limit US relations with moderate Arab states who face
street demonstrations against Israel's savage military offensive into
Palestinian cities on the West Bank.
The turmoil is spilling across Israel's northern border with Lebanon. It is
disturbing international oil markets and fuelling outbursts of anti-Semitism
in countries as far away as France.
Speaking to the Independent on Sunday, the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw
warned that General Powell's mission was "hanging by a thread" but that
"there is a slim chance this weekend for the region to step back from
catastrophe."
In a break with the anti-Palestinian language which prevails here, General
Powell yesterday issued a statement demanding that Israeli forces in the
West Bank "exercise the utmost restraint... and refrain from the excessive
use of force." This will go a little way towards meeting Palestinian
insistence that the Bush administration condemns Israeli military actions
against Palestinian civilians.
This however will not dispel the impression that even the US, which is
conventionally assumed to be the only outside party able to exert leverage
on Israel, is powerless to halt the bloodletting.
For the fifth day President Bush was silent on the crisis yesterday, and
even as General Powell issued his warning, Israeli forces entered more
Palestinian areas on the West Bank. Though Mr Arafat has condemned
terrorism, most other Arab states have conspicuously failed to do so.
With the failure to achieve a breakthrough by the US - which is perceived as
too sympathetic towards Israel, the focus is shifting to a new multinational
initiative, involving the US, the EU, Russia and the UN, who issued a joint
appeal last week for an Israeli pullback and an end to the Palestinian
terror attacks.
One conceivable way forward is the despatch of an international force to
keep the two sides apart, for which Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General,
pleaded on Friday. But this also raises more problems than it solves.
Palestinians have always supported outside peacekeepers, while an Israeli
cabinet would only accept an all-US force, fearing that any other would
favour the Palestinian cause
Sources close to Mr Straw confirmed that Britain is willing to contribute
troops. But they warned, "We are a long way off at the moment." The Foreign
Secretary will, however, oppose EU sanctions on Israel at a meeting of EU
ministers tomorrow.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=284817
'I don't know if Sharon is right or wrong. But he is what we have'
Jews in Britain » Behind the pro-Israel sentiment lies a fear of where the
conflict will end Eye witness Cole Moreton
14 April 2002
We are drinking malt whisky from crystal tumblers as dusk falls on the
Sussex coast, and the Jewish Sabbath begins. In Jerusalem they are mourning
the victims of another suicide bomber. Israeli soldiers are searching
Palestinian corpses at the refugee camp in Jenin, as rockets explode on the
border with Lebanon.
Barry Hill, a silver-haired property developer, bows his head and recites
the Hebrew words of the Sabbath Eve Kiddush. "Blessed are You our God, King
of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine." Six of us stand around
the table at this immaculate Regency flat just off the seafront in Hove: Mr
Hill, his wife and two sons, myself, and a family friend called David Wilks.
Each man has covered his head with a kippa, or skull cap.
"We give thanks that we are able to keep the Sabbath," says Barry. "Friday
night is when everyone comes together and catches up on where they have
been, what they have done." Most of the 300,000 Jews in Britain respect this
tradition, he says. "It is the one time the family is together." Barry
smiles. "If you stood outside all the Jewish houses with children tonight
you would hear rows in 90 per cent of them."
We sip kosher red wine from tiny glasses - "you can't drink much of this
stuff; it tastes terrible" - and pass the chollah bread before Aileen brings
out bowls of chicken soup. There are two balls of matzo meal in each,
prompting David to remember the old story about when Marilyn Monroe was
served them in a Jewish house. "She looked at the balls and said: 'This is
very nice. Can you eat any other part of the matzo?'"
Everyone has heard it before but we laugh anyway, glad of a brief respite
from the deadly serious subject that dominates thoughts here, as it must
among all the 16 million Jews all over the world. "Many a time I've sat in
the comfort and security of what we have and taken a phone call from a
friend in Israel, or heard news like we had this afternoon which makes me
wonder if I am doing enough," says Barry. "It is never far from my mind."
His son Warren spent a year in Israel before university, including two
months' military training. "I had to sleep with my own M16 rifle, although
we were not allowed bullets." Warren is now 21 and studying law. The rise of
anti-Semitism on campuses alarms him: one friend had a brick put through his
window and the words "Death to the Jews" were daubed in Arabic on the wall
outside. He describes himself as a British citizen and a Jewish national. So
would he go to fight for the homeland, if called? "Yes. If Israel needed
me."
Aileen serves chicken in herbs and breadcrumbs, with roast potatoes. The
consensus around the table is that most people in Britain do not know or
care what is happening in Israel.
"The day I left, 50 members of the special forces were killed in an
operation on the West Bank," says Warren, with the intensity of youth. "I
flew back to London and the headline here was about who would win Big
Brother."
The Hills prefer Fox News to the BBC, whose correspondents they believe are
biased. "That woman they have in Jerusalem, I swear she's an Arab," says
Darren, 14. His family's arguments reflect the strong pro-Israeli stance of
most American broadcasters. Broadly, they believe there can be no
negotiations with Yasser Arafat, because he says one thing in English to the
outside world and the opposite in Arabic to his own people. Suicide bombers
threaten the state of Israel; so Prime Minister Sharon had no choice but to
send his tanks in to destroy the infrastructure that supports the bombers.
"Do you know their families get paid large amounts of money when they die?"
asks Aileen.
Israel has been restrained in its action against the Palestinians, argues
her husband. The present military operations will be short lived and result
in a more peaceful period, at which point Mr Sharon will be voted out of
office. "Sharon is the man for us in this time of war. When peace comes he
will go."
I question these views as the lockshen pudding disappears, but it is hard
work. The Hills are wonderfully hospitable but unrelenting. Their version of
history has been well learned and rehearsed. "This dispute goes back to the
beginning of time," says Barry. "If God gave us the land, it is ours."
As midnight comes it is David, the 56-year-old accountant, who expresses the
deep worry behind the rhetoric. "We're sitting here, around the table. An
Arab family is probably doing the same thing in Nablus, and saying the same
things, only against Israel. The truth is, I don't know whether Sharon is
right or wrong. He is what we have. I'm bewildered. I am scared. That's the
truth."
As I leave, Barry has the last word. "Now you can see how frightened we are.
We are afraid of where this is all going to end."
Jim Morris
http://www.petitiononline.com/liberty/
I just heard on CNN that the Israelis are not letting CNN take video of the
Israeli tanks (surrounding Arafat's compound) and Arafat's damaged
compound during Powell's meeting with Arafat.. So the Israelis are engaged
with censorship and manipulation of our media in Ramallah as well.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/04/13/amin.otsc/index.html
Rula Amin: Aid agencies can't enter Jenin
April 13, 2002 Posted: 1:47 PM EDT (1747 GMT)
CNN's Rula Amin
JENIN, West Bank (CNN) -- Israeli forces rolled into two more West Bank
villages early Saturday, while international aid agencies continued their
attempts to enter the Jenin refugee camp that was the scene of bloody
fighting earlier this week.
CNN Reporter Rula Amin is near Jenin and talked to CNN anchor Kyra Phillips.
AMIN: We are here in Burqeen village just on the outskirts of the Jenin
refugee camp. We're here because we have been trying for the fourth day in a
row to go into Jenin refugee camp, with no luck. Israeli army won't allow
anybody in, including the journalists.
So this morning, while we were in Burqeen, Israeli tanks and APCs (armored
personnel carriers) rolled into this little village around 6 in the morning.
Then the Israeli soldiers, through loudspeakers, enforced a curfew, asking
all residents to stay inside their homes.
This was about half an hour ago. Through the loudspeakers the soldiers asked
the men who belong to any kind of Palestinian Authority security
organization to come down to the center of town. We have seen many men,
dozens of people, just coming across the fields, going down to the center of
town, and saw some of the mothers or wives crying, concerned about their
fate.
This has been traditional procedure before. Every time that the army goes
in, they round up Palestinian males, and then they question them. Many of
them are released later on, but some are kept and are moved, transferred to
other locations.
So there's a lot of tension in this little village here, especially after
this incursion.
Again, we're here because we can't go into Jenin refugee camp, where the
Palestinians have been charging that the Israeli army had carried out a
massacre, killing more than 500 Palestinians. Israel denies these charges
vehemently. They say that is not true, it's lies. And they say that they
confirm that their casualties number is actually a large number. They're
saying at least 150 people have been killed. But they say it was not a
massacre, it was a fierce fight.
Apart from the journalists, neither United Nations nor aid agencies have
been able to go into the camp. We've spoken to the Red Cross, the United
Nations representatives, who have been trying to get in in order to take the
wounded out and to assess the damage. There's a lot of damage and
destruction in that camp. The United Nations estimates that there's about
3,000 Palestinians from that camp who are homeless now.
And those U.N. agencies and aid agencies have been trying to get in to
assess the damage in order to mobilize supplies and aid. They haven't been
able to do that. Israel won't allow them in. Today even Secretary of State
Colin Powell said that Israel should give access, unimpeded access, to those
agencies in order to get into the camp and see how can they help the
population there.
PHILLIPS: Rula, if Israel says there's not a massacre going on inside the
camp, then why don't they let you in? Are you concerned you're not getting
the entire truth?
AMIN: That is a big concern, not only among the journalists but among also
the agencies, the U.N. agencies and the aid agencies. Even the Red Cross
have not been able to get in. What -- the answer they are getting from the
Israelis officially is that it's not safe, it's not secure, they cannot
guarantee their safety, so they're not letting them in.
The Red Cross has been saying that this is part of their job, this is a risk
that they usually take to carry out their tasks. And they're willing to take
it. But they want to go into the camp. But no use, they have not been able
to get into that camp yet. Palestinians are charging, of course, that ...
the Israeli army is trying to cover up on whatever they have done in that
camp, they're trying to hide as much evidence before they let anybody in.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=276379
GARY FIRTH
given before they started their terrorism activities.They started all this .
They get what they deserve.
Robt Boyd
"GARY FIRTH" <g...@telusplanet.net> wrote in message
news:3CC96ADA...@telusplanet.net...
hole@yourknob.com AssMouth
Rocks that blow up.
Now blow me.
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