JERUSALEM -- Twenty years ago, Israel set out to rearrange the geopolitical balance in the region by invading Lebanon. The result--for Israel, the Palestinians, the United States and the peace process--was a catastrophe whose lessons should not be forgotten by either the warriors or the peacemakers in the current West Bank conflict.
The circumstances of the two military adventures are eerily similar. So is the cast of characters, as well as the high stakes involved for Washington. Israel's reasons for taking the offensive in Lebanon and the West Bank were the same: to root out terrorism. The world's angry reaction was the same. So much is unchanged that one Israeli newspaper has called the current crisis "Sharon versus Arafat, Round II."
Today, as he was in Lebanon, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is trapped by the forces of Ariel Sharon, now Israel's prime minister. Refugee camps look as though they have been struck by an earthquake. The United States is once again oddly uninfluential with Israel and less than accommodating to Palestinians. As one Israeli columnist put it, rephrasing Marx, people should remember that history occurs twice--first as tragedy, then as super-tragedy.
Saturday, April 20, 2002
The Palestinians came back to Jenin to bury their dead yesterday. They came in their hundreds back to the dust and rubble that used to be their homes. Those who found the bodies of their loved ones buried them in white shrouds, some with tributes of purple flowers, some with their names in red. Men stood in the freshly dug graves to lay the bodies to rest, while all around the women wailed.
And the machine-guns echoed. Some said it was Palestinian fighters firing in tribute; others said it was Israeli soldiers firing at those trying to drive here on the roads.
The Palestinians were able to return because the Israeli army withdrew from Jenin, but it only withdrew so far. And in defiance, the Palestinians festooned the ruins of their homes with flags and banners. A huge Palestinian flag was draped across the rubble and the green flag of Hamas flew over the refugee camp for the first time since the Israeli onslaught.
Seven Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli forces occupying Ramallah yesterday, including two who the army said were trying to infiltrate a Jewish settlement. Among the dead were two boys, aged nine and 14.
The bloodshed came as a suicide bomber from Islamic Jihad blew himself up at an Israeli military checkpoint in the Gaza Strip, injuring two soldiers. The return of violence to Gaza raised fears that Israel might try to repeat its massive military operation in the West Bank inside the strip.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, cancelled her fact-finding mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip yesterday after Israel refused to provide the necessary help.
THE UN Security Council has adopted a resolution to send a fact-finding mission to Jenin to discover what happened during the Israeli army's attack on the West Bank town.
The decision to send the mission was passed unaminously last night in New York.
The Israelis announced this afternoon that it will co-operate fully with the mission. Gideon Meir, a spokesman for the foreign minister, said the army could provide evidence that would refute Palestinian claims that a "massacre" took place in in Jenin when the town was invaded on April 3.
The resolution came after Shimon Peres, the Israeli foreign minister, told the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that Israel would welcome a UN official "to clarify the facts".
He said: "Israel has nothing to hide regarding the operation in Jenin. Our hands are clean."
Earlier this week, the UN envoy to the region described the devastation in Jenin as "horrific beyond belief" and attacked Israel for preventing aid agencies entering the town.
A US envoy to the Middle East has described the devastation at the Jenin refugee camp as a "tragedy for thousands of innocent Palestinian people".
US Undersecretary of State William Burns on Saturday toured the camp which has been the scene of recent heavy fighting between Israel and the Palestinians.
Late on Saturday, the Israeli army said tanks and armored vehicles had began pulling out of parts of the West Bank city of Ramallah, with the exception of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's besieged headquarters.
Israel has said it will co-operate fully with a United Nations fact-finding team which is to look into what happened in Jenin.
The Palestinians have accused Israel of committing a massacre at the camp; Israel has denied the allegation, saying those who died were mainly armed fighters.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that "Israel has nothing to hide regarding the operation in Jenin."
The Palestinians have welcomed the UN mission as a step forward, but insisted that an international peacekeeping force should be sent too.
The Israeli reoccupation of Palestinian cities and towns has seen a rise in incidents of alleged human rights abuses in the West Bank.
Most of these relate to the curfews imposed in places such as Nablus and Bethlehem. These incidents, normally unreported in the media, are collated by human rights groups such as B'Tselem, the main Israeli group focusing on the West Bank and Gaza, and by peace activists such as Gush Shalom.
Many of the incidents are in the city of Nablus, which, along with Jenin, has suffered most from the present Israeli offensive:
Qossay Abu 'Aisha, 12, was playing in his yard in the Askar neighbourhood of Nablus on Tuesday. The yard is surrounded by a two-metre high tin fence. Israeli soldiers, part of the force that has reoccupied the city, opened fire, punctured the fence and hit him with two bullets, killing him instantly. Source: B'Tselem
The curfew in Nablus was lifted between 2pm and 6pm on Sunday. Mustafa Antar, 40, a married father of four from A-Dahiya neighbourhood, went to visit his father and then bought some food supplies. He shared a taxi home with three others. At 5pm a group of soldiers opened fire and he was hit in the neck. According to doctors at the Rafidia hospital in Nablus, the injury will leave him partially paralysed. Source: B'Tselem
Ibrahim Jabarin, 18, from the al-Arrub refugee camp, was in Bethlehem on April 2 when the army imposed a curfew. He attempted to return home on Monday when it lifted the curfew for the first time for a few hours. At around 1pm, before the curfew was reimposed, soldiers shot Jabarin and other civilians who were out buying food. He is in hospital with a gunshot wound to the leg. Source: B'Tselem
Dr Hameed Massri, a neuro-surgeon at the Nablus special hospital, said yesterday that two patients had been buried the day before after bleeding to death because the curfew meant ambulances could not get through to them. Both had been shot but the wounds would not have been fatal if they had been able to reach hospital, he said. The dead, both from Nablus, were: Amar Ali Salamah, 32, a carpenter, and Sakher Mohammed, 23, a baker. Dr Massri said it was three days before the body of Mr Mohammed, who was at home when he was shot, was taken away by ambulance. And it was a week after Mr Salamah was shot before his body was removed. Guardian interview
Four children, two from Qalqiliya and two from the village of Qusra in Nablus district, suffer from a blood disorder that requires regular transfusions. Because of the curfew, the children have been unable to reach Al-Watani hospital in Nablus for treatment. The children, when last contacted, were still waiting to be taken to hospital. Source: Physicians for Human Rights Israel
Friday, April 19, 2002
JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank, April 17 — Thousands of Palestinians poured back into this demolished refugee camp this afternoon when Israeli forces briefly seemed to have withdrawn. Under a blazing sun, they began clawing at mounds of rubble with backhoes, shovels and their bare hands.
Some searched for people they thought might be buried alive beneath buildings flattened by Israeli bulldozers. Others simply hoped to bring dignity to the dead.
Among them was Muhammad Abu Khurj, 75, who had returned to look for the remains of his sister, who had been killed in their house on April 5 in an Israeli missile attack. He himself had been ordered to leave the camp two days later by Israeli troops. Now he walked into his bullet-pocked home and forced his aged legs up four flights of stairs. Entering a room on the top floor, he looked panicked.
"They moved her! They moved her!" he said. "Do you see her blood?" he said, frantically pointing at the blood stain. "This is her blood!"
Then he spotted something in the corner and lifted up a piece of carpet covering it. Underneath was the body of a woman. Her curly gray hair teemed with maggots. Mr. Khurj left the room in silence.
Ramallah (April, 02, 2002) -- 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. A foreign refugee-AID volunteer asks me to honk my horn to prove we are alive. Beeb Beeb Beeb. All the cars 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.
I wave a victory sign to a carefully hidden sniper carrying an M16, then I give him the finger, he aims to shoot at my car, but, for some odd reason, he doesn't. I smile at him and speed away.
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 warm smiles. We're alive. We will not die. I know where the doctors want to go, they are looking for a supermarket. I drop them in front of a small store, but only peanuts are available. They buy five kilos. Five kilos of peanuts. They offer me some, I share their feast. The meal is most delicious. I've never tasted anything so satisfying. Peanuts.
It starts to rain. It pours. The snipers are still watching, the sounds of the horns are louder than the echo of the rain. The tanks are still there, waiting like wolves for victims.
The streets are full of life, not death. We did not die. We will not die. Life is good.
OSLO: While little action has been taken against Israel to end its occupation and killings in the West Bank, Norway's largest labor union today called for a boycott of Israel.
There is a growing dismay in Norway and strong rejection of the mass killing committed by Israeli troops in various West Bank areas.
The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions accused Israel of committing gross violations of international law and human rights.
The 800,000-member union, also known as LO, demanded the Norwegian government to help in bringing international sanctions against Israel if it does not withdraw from occupied territories and follow United Nations resolutions.
The government which showed some interest in the idea, said sanctions would have to be part of an international decision.
But LO, a powerful group in Norway, urged members to boycott Israeli products, Israeli state and embassy functions and to avoid travel to Israel until its troops withdraw.
The union asked members to show solidarity with the Palestinian people in parades and demonstrations on May 1, International Labor Day.
Norwegians are taken part in an international solidarity movement aimed at defending the Palestinian people by using themselves as human shields in the face of Israeli army attacks, and Norwegian aid groups sent an expert team to the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin today to secure damaged structures and prepare for other efforts following what is described by the UN as mass killings.
JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank: Terje Larsen, the U.N. special envoy touring the ruins of the Palestinian refugee camp at Jenin condemned Israel’s refusal to allow humanitarian and medical aid to the camp, which is believed was a stage of a new Israeli massacre against the refugees.
He blasted Israel for denying search and rescue teams unrestricted access to the camp, which, according to Larsen, smells of death and looks like an earthquake hit it.
The Israeli rejection and denial of access to the camp is "morally repugnant," saying that conditions there are "horrific beyond belief."
Israel invaded the camp over two weeks ago, killing hundreds and leveling entire neighborhood to the ground.
The Israeli army had refused to allow aid groups or media unrestricted access to the area since fighting stopped last week, making new allegations that surviving structures are booby-trapped with explosives.
Larsen denounced that argument, saying Israel could have allowed international experts to help clear the area of explosives and search for survivors.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip: Israel reinvaded the West Bank city of Qalqiliya amid heavy firing and shelling in and around the city. One Palestinian was killed and six others wounded. Meanwhile, 8 Palestinians were killed elsewhere in the West Bank and Gaza.
Israeli forces have also raided the Naseiriah neighborhood near Nablus, killing one Palestinian. Many others were reportedly detained.
In Nablus, seventy Palestinians, including many children and women were buried in a mass grave during a 5-hour lift of the Israeli military curfew imposed on the city for days. The seventy were killed during the Israeli attack on the Old City of Nablus.
15 Israeli tanks attacked the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip early Friday and opened fire, killing at least three Palestinians in the Brazil neighborhood.
The Israeli military says it shot and killed another Palestinian late Thursday near the Jewish settlement of Dugit, in northern Gaza. The army says the man had been carrying a bomb.
JENIN, West Bank: After hours of an Israeli announcement of pulling back its forces from the Palestinian town of Jenin, in the northern West Bank, its forces were re-deployed again into the town of Jenin and its refugee camp.
The short-lived withdrawal, if lasted, would have ended a three-week-long military invasion that resulted in the death of hundreds of Palestinians and wide-scale destruction of property, , more than 300 homes according to some estimates.
An Israeli army General Eyal Schlein at Jenin was quoted as saying the military had destroyed the infrastructure of Palestinian militant groups that allegedly staged suicide bombings and other attacks against Israelis.
But hundreds of people, mostly civilians, were killed on the hands of Israeli troops during the Israeli attack on Jenin.
Meanwhile, Israeli tanks re-invaded the West Bank town of Qalqiliya early Friday. Israeli forces had withdrawn last week from the town, located near the border with Israel.
As the Israeli military began withdrawing from key towns in the West Bank, the violence spilled over into the Gaza Strip today, where a Palestinian suicide bomber struck at an Israeli military checkpoint and Israeli troops killed five Palestinians in exchanges of fire.
Israeli tanks moved into the Gaza Strip today in a departure from the relative quiet there during the three weeks of the Israeli invasion in the West Bank. Islamic militants threatened to carry out more attacks in Israel.
An Israeli military spokesman said a suicide bomber detonated explosives in his car at a military checkpoint near the Kissufim crossing, killing himself and lightly wounding two Israeli soldiers. Local residents said the Israelis arrested three Palestinians, and announced a curfew on loudspeakers.
Further south, Israeli troops moved briefly into Palestinian-controlled territory in Gaza near the border with Egypt, the scene of frequent clashes and incursions. Palestinians opened fire on Israeli troops, who pounded the area with heavy machine gun fire, witnesses said.
Palestinian doctors said three Palestinian civilians were killed and six wounded by Israeli gunfire. Israeli military sources said that during a routine operation, Palestinians shot at soldiers who returned the fire.
The Israeli army says it is has left the West Bank town of Jenin and its refugee camp, but will continue to surround them to prevent "terrorist attacks".
The withdrawal from Jenin - scene of the fiercest fighting during Israel's military operation in the West Bank - began on Thursday, as a UN envoy visiting the camp described the situation there as "horrific beyond belief".
In other developments, a Palestinian suicide bomber exploded his car near the entrance to the Israeli settlement block of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip on Friday, killing himself and injuring a soldier.
Witnesses said Israeli troops staged an incursion into an area round the southern Gaza village of Al Qarara following the attack.
THE Israeli army has completed its withdrawal from the West Bank town of Jenin, following days of fierce fighting.
Palestinian security officials confirmed Israeli claims that the army had pulled completely out of Jenin, the scene of the bloodiest fighting during the Israeli campaign launched three weeks ago, but said troops continue to surround the area.
Troops and tanks remained on the outskirts of the town, inside the autonomous Jenin zone near the town and its refugee camp.
When they found the body it was in pieces and so they gathered it all up out of the rubble, great chunks of blackened, rotting flesh with bits of bone sticking out, and piled them up on a blanket. The smell made us retch and stumble away, gasping for clean air. The Palestinians said the putrefying flesh and bone was Mohammed Massoud Abu Sb'a.
The people of Jenin refugee camp returned to look for their dead yesterday amid the devastation that the Israeli army had made of their homes. The destruction was more complete than an earthquake, yet the Israelis have not allowed in any heavy lifting equipment, so the Palestinians dug out the bodies with their hands, scrabbling in the dust and heaving away the broken blocks.
Aid workers and human rights monitors have started to call this ground zero. The television pictures do not convey the devastation. You have to come here to walk over the dust and rubble that used to be people's homes, picking your way through the little pieces of their lives, the children's schoolbooks and discarded clothing. You have to smell the stench of death that clings to certain corners. The piles of rubble tower high above your head and the work of removing the bodies is nerve-racking and haunting.
JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nation's top Middle East envoy, stood on a pile of rubble here Thursday and surveyed a landscape of utter wretchedness and destruction.
Just a few feet away, two middle-aged brothers used plastic buckets to excavate the ruins of their former home, uncovering a partial human torso. It was all that remained of their elderly father.
"We've been trying for 11 days to have access," said Larsen, who finally got permission from the Israeli Army to visit the camp on Thursday and witness the aftereffects of the fierce two-week battle that killed 23 Israeli soldiers and a greater though still unknown number of Palestinians.
"What we are seeing here is horrifying - horrifying scenes of human suffering," said Larsen. "Israel has lost all moral ground in this conflict."
Larsen, who likened the destruction to an earthquake, accused Israel of compounding human suffering in the camp by refusing to permit access by heavy equipment and search and rescue teams with dogs, suggesting that some people could still be trapped alive beneath the rubble.
Palestinians who had been displaced by the fighting in Jenin, meanwhile, continued to trickle home on Thursday. Some sat numbly on the ruins of their former apartment blocks. Others dug through pulverized concrete with buckets, shovels and even their bare hands, searching for prized possessions and sometimes the remains of relatives left behind.
At a time when many people complain that politicians are obsessed with spin, it's so refreshing to hear Israeli spokesmen, who refuse to make the slightest concession to PR whatsoever. Asked for their attitude towards the shooting of a baby by an Israeli soldier, instead of any waffle about regrets or needing to see the evidence, they'd say "What was the baby doing there? It was crawling in direct contravention of the curfew, it was shouting insults such as 'ber berder gabababab' at innocent civilians. Instead of accusing Israel of over-reacting, why don't you ask the dead baby whether it condemns suicide bombing?"
As they're fans of the Old Testament, they must wonder why the writers of the Bible didn't take a similar approach. So the story of David and Goliath would end with Goliath treading on every settlement in Judah, justified by a spokesman saying "Let me show you the young Philistine mother hit by a stone thrown by Mr David. And if the Lord wants us to withdraw our giants, why doesn't he condemn the use of slings and pebbles?"
Colin Powell could learn from this forthright approach. Attacked for taking so long to get to Israel, he could have said that if he was going all the way to the Middle East, it would be rude not to pop in on friends in nearby Morocco and make a week of it. Again, he was simply following Biblical tradition, as the original version tells of how Moses said to his people, "Follow me unto the Promised Land. But on the way we might as well stop off in Galilee to see Terry and Eileen. And if we're going to part the Red Sea, it would be silly not to stop for a day in the middle to look at the view and buy some souvenirs."
Even at this stage, with the war going on, we are entitled, even obligated, to ask:
l What is Israel's strategy? Does it have a strategic vision, or is it merely following a tactic of acting in a relentless sequence of provocations and responses? This second possibility is unsettling: The leadership has an obligation to present a strategy, and use it as a basis for practical policy steps.
l Can we not learn the lessons of the past? Can we not learn from cases which so often proved that problematic results come from lack of forethought? Are we still unable to grasp how heavy a price was paid in terms of human life, and in terms of the state's diplomatic, economic and social welfare interests, due to these mistakes? This was true with regard to the non-acceptance of the interim agreement with Egypt in 1971-1972, the Lebanon War, the establishment of settlements, and the missed opportunity to advance to interim settlements with the Palestinians since 1995. Must such errors persist?
l Are we unable to grasp that the existence of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel is needed to ensure Israel's continuation as a democratic state with a decisive Jewish majority? Are there still those who really believe that we can annex 3 million Palestinians to Israel, control them with their consent, and still manage to run a flourishing democratic, Jewish state?
the Homeless in Nablus
I've been sitting with a 15 year old girl, a volunteer for the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, under a grapefruit tree here in Nablus. Earlier today about 25 internationals and 6 Palestinian UPMRC workers, including 3 medics, a doctor, the girl sitting with me, and her 16 year old friend, were attacked by Israeli soldiers.
After a sleepless night due to heavy tank shelling and the unceasing mosquito buzz of Apaches and their missile fire into nearby Askar Refugee camp, we attempted to deliver food aid by foot to the camp on the east side of Nablus that has been held under curfew by the Israeli military for 14 days. Communication with some inside the camp reveals an absence of food, clean water, medical treatment, and electricity.
Although we have been told that press is reporting a quietting in Nablus, and although we have heard Sharon say that Nablus is no longer a closed military zone, we were unable to pass the Israeli tank and APC that confronted us 2 km from the camp. The Israeli soldier atop the tank shouted, "this is a closed military zone." He said if we did not retreat he would be forced to shoot us. A few of the five soldiers shot warning shots and a hidden sniper hit metal pieces next to us. Although our only fear is of the Israeli military, the soldier atop the tank told us it was very dangerous to be here. He kept shouting he would have no choice but to shoot us.
When the US President George Bush, apparently in anguish, bluntly asked Israel to withdraw its forces from the Palestinian areas without any delay and announced in an emergency press conference to dispatch Colin Powell to the region in a bid to find ways and means essential for quelling the ongoing macabre violence, many sensed a positive change in the US attitude towards the Palestinian conflict, believing that Powell's visit would bring a cease-fire and might help scoop up the region from the bloody morass it finds itself in.
But such hopes soon evaporated following the meeting of Powell with Ariel Sharon that ended without an agreement on the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Palestinian area.
No doubt, Powell's statements regarding the conflict sounded somewhat logical.
He issued a statement calling on Israeli forces in the West Bank to exercise the utmost restraint and discipline and refrain from the excessive use of force, repeating declarations of his support for a Palestinian state and advising Israel that hunting down terrorists would not provide security without seeking a political approach to the conflict.
But faced with yet another defiance by the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and a suicide attack by a Palestinian woman, his somewhat rational posture turned as hawkish as to match the views possessed by the fanatic hawks of the Bush administration.
A SCOTTISH forensic professor, who travelled to the Middle East this week as part of an investigation into claims of a humanitarian disaster, has been denied access to Jenin refugee camp.
Derrick Pounder, professor of forensic medicine at the University of Dundee, sought access to the West Bank camp to gather evidence about the fate of those who died in a week-long Israeli siege. Palestinians claim up to 500 people died in the devastated camp, site of some of the fiercest fighting of an Israeli offensive launched on March 29 after a spate of suicide bombings.
Israel puts the death toll in the tens, not hundreds.
The Amnesty International mission hoped to explore claims that thousands of people in the camp are still trapped without water, food, and basic medical supplies.
Professor Pounder said the refusal to grant access raised questions about the motives of the Israeli authorities.
The European Union's external affairs commissioner has hit out at Ariel Sharon, accusing him of provoking an "insane cycle" in the Middle East.
Chris Patten also claimed the Israeli defence forces were "trampling over the Geneva convention"
In an interview with the BBC's Hardtalk programme, he said it was inevitable that Sharon would have to pursue a negotiated settlement to end bloodshed in the region.
He warned: "Until the Israeli politicians and leaders sign up once again to the principles behind the Oslo Agreement, until they sign up to a real Palestinian state, until they recognise the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians...there will continue to be violence."
BRITAIN took Israel to task yesterday for its offensive in the West Bank when Jack Straw proposed an international investigation into allegations of atrocities in Jenin.
Mr Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said that investigators should be allowed to see for themselves what happened in the refugee camp. There were also calls from the United Nations for the deployment of an international peacekeeping force in the area, and diplomats in New York were debating a UN Security Council resolution highly critical of the Israeli authorities.
Last night the Israeli army said that “dozens” of Palestinians were buried under the rubble of about a hundred houses destroyed in the battles in Jenin refugee camp, but reiterated its denial of Palestinian charges of a massacre. “Until now, we have transferred 25 bodies to the Palestinians. We believe that without doubt there are dozens of other dead buried under the ruins,” Sharon Feingold, an army spokeswoman, said. “There has not been a massacre, but it could be sadly that there are innocent civilians among the dead." Earlier yesterday an Israeli military spokesman described its operation in Jenin as a resounding success. He said that the army had lost 23 soldiers because of its concern for civilian life.
NASSARIYA, West Bank: Four Israeli helicopters opened fire on Thursday over the West Bank village of Beit Hassan, east of Nablus, after the army imposed a curfew there, an AFP journalist in the neighbouring village said.
The helicopters appeared to have opened fire on an abandoned house in an orchard in Beit Hassan, a village in an area of Palestinian administrative but Israeli security control 10 kilometres (six miles) east of Nablus.
Israel public radio, quoting Palestinian sources, said a wanted Palestinian suspect had been hiding out in the building.
Israel has been scouring the West Bank for suspected militants since March 29, as part of a controversial offensive called Operation Defensive Wall.
THEY left as departing heroes, waving victory salutes and grinning as they went. But even as Israel’s forces pulled out of the Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank, relief workers were claiming the carnage and destruction left behind was like an earthquake.
They spoke of a war crime on the scale of the Bosnia and Kosovo wars.
The United Nations, allowed access after 12 days during which ambulances were turned away and scores of injured bleed to death, struggled to find words to describe the devastation.
Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN special envoy, said simply: "We have expert people here who have been in war zones and earthquakes and they say they have never seen anything like it. It is horrifying beyond belief."
The UN was at last beginning to extract the corpses and search for survivors beneath the rubble, as well as provide food, water and shelter to camp residents. Its officials were unable to bring to mind a time when they had been so obstructed as they had been by the Israelis.
Peter Hansen, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency , who had served in the Balkans, said: "I and my colleagues working in crisis situations for decades do not recall a situation where co-operation from the authorities has been less than what we have experienced from the Israeli government. It is beyond any human decency to let ambulances, food and water stand outside the camp, as has been the case."
Thursday, April 18, 2002
OTTAWA, April 18 — Canada said on Thursday it was giving C$8 million ($5 million) in additional humanitarian aid to the Palestinian Authority and disclosed it had formally complained to Israel about the conduct of its troops during a three-week offensive in the West Bank.
British observer reports from Nablus, where his team were beaten
and threatened while trying to protect Palestinian medics.
Nablus still a military zone, main hospital being shelled.
An observer from North East England suffered cuts and grazes and one of his British
colleagues was badly beaten today, when they tried to protect a group of
Palestinians in Nablus, on the West Bank. The observers' cameras and
mobile phones were smashed and a stun grenade was used, while Israeli
soldiers tried to force the Internationals to leave behind a small group
of Palestinian medics.
Adam Conway, from Morpeth in Northumberland, UK, was returning from the
Balata refugee camp in Nablus, with about 24 other international
observers and 6 Palestinians, both women and men, when they were stopped
by soldiers and military police. The whole group had been allowed
through the checkpoint earlier in the day, to take food and medical
supplies into Balata. On being refused access to the nearby camp of
Askar, they were returning to the city centre when they were stopped.
Speaking over a poor telephone line this afternoon (Tuesday), Adam
explained how the soldiers had attempted to separate the Palestinians
and Internationals. Shots were fired in the air and a stun grenade was
used, but the observers refused to leave the Palestinians behind. While
some of them (including Adam) stood or lay with individual Palestinians,
others attempted to talk with the soldiers and negotiate a way through.
Eventually the group was allowed to proceed, with the Palestinians
accompanied by just three Internationals, and the rest of the observers
following at a distance. The whole group was accompanied by soldiers
and followed by a tank. A group of French observers was allowed to
leave to collect their bags and depart, but the other Internationals
were not prepared to leave the Palestinians behind, and a long stand-off
ensued, until they were allowed to return to the Union of Palestinian
Medical Relief Committees clinic, where they are now staying.
Two Swedish TV reporters were shot at in the West Bank yesterday afternoon, 16 April. The incident occurred near Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah, according to the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
The Swedish TV crew encountered an Israeli tank, which suddenly opened fire on their car with a machine gun. The shots went over the car and were interpreted by the reporters as warning shots, so they turned the car around. As they were driving back they were shot at again, this time by an Israeli sniper.
The reporters, Peder Carlquist and Odd Ragnar Lund from Swedish State TV, managed to escape unharmed by laying down on the floor and driving as fast as they could out of the area. The reporters say the shots were fired from a short distance, or 15-20 meters, and that the bullets were live ammunition rather than rubber bullets. The car was hit several times and a window was broken.
The Swedish TV station intends to issue a formal protest to Israeli authorities regarding this incident.
I was not raised with any religion except that of justice. My father’s parents escaped Germany at the beginning of the Holocaust. They were both devout atheists and marxists. My mother’s grandmother came here to escape the pogroms in Russia. She became a Christian Scientist. Her father came here from Poland to escape poverty and anti-Semitism. I was raised around hippies, Buddhists, lapsed Catholics, and atheist Christians and Jews. I didn’t know there was such thing as “being Jewish” until I was a teenager and then I knew it by this family history of escaping oppression, by the stubbornness of my hair, my olive skin, by my love of arguments and outsiders.
What I have since learned is that being a Jew means, in part, being scared. Actually, being human in an inhumane world means being scared (and angry and murderous and loving) and Jews are no more or less scared (or angry, or murderous, or loving) than anyone else. Like people of color, like women, like poor folks the world over, people in power have tried to get rid of Jews and survival has become our knock-bottom response. But the Israeli Occupation does not keep Jews safe, anymore than this war-without-end, this “war on terrorism” keeps America safe. Our survival cannot depend on another people’s oppression. True safety only comes with justice and equality.
How can Powell move Sharon?
We suggest that Powell take a trip to Jenin, the West Bank community that saw fierce fighting - with serious losses of Israeli and Palestinian lives - on the eve of Powell's arrival. The details of what happened in Jenin and other West Bank cities, villages and refugee camps after Israeli Defense Forces entered those regions remain cloaked in mystery because of an Israeli-imposed news blackout.
Sharon claims Israel's actions in Jenin were part of a legitimate effort to find and either arrest or kill Palestinian terrorists who are responsible for launching suicide bombing attacks on Israeli civilians. Arafat claims that Palestinian civilians were killed in great numbers in Jenin and elsewhere, and that the infrastructure of Jenin and other cities, villages and refugee camps was destroyed as part of a military assault that aimed to destroy the ability of the Palestinian Authority to function.
HOSPITALS THROUGHOUT THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES ARE RUNNING OUT OF BASIC MEDICAL SUPPLIES such as syringes and gauze pads, and soon will be unable to treat patients. A medical emergency state has been declared.
Working with other organizations, the Physicians for Human Rights have received a list of immediate supplies needed from various hospitals in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in order to continue to provide medical treatment. The cost for these supplies is $100,000 and is needed in a most immediate and urgent manner.
I would appreciate if you could circulate this request for IMMEDIATE FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE. IF PALESTINIAN HOSPITALS WILL NOT RECEIVE THESE SUPPLIES WITHIN THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS THEY WILL BE UNABLE TO TREAT THEIR PATIENTS!
Following are contacts' information as well as a bank account to which money can be wired (any organizations or persons who have transfered money to this account please make sure to also contact one of the following persons by phone or e-mail) .
Bank Account 160213/574 in Poalim Bank West Jerusalem
Yasser Akawi (Physicians for Human Rights) 972/67-577696
Dr. Neve Gordon 972/53-368603 ngordon@bgumail.bgu.ac.il
At night, suddenly I hear blasts. The blasts are different from the sounds of Apache helicopters firing missiles or tank shells. We've become familiar with that sound coming from the north. I look out the window and see fireworks. "How appropriate," I say silently. Israel celebrates "independence", that is, on the expense of Palestinians locked up in their homes, that is, if their home is not destroyed by Israeli bulldozers, attack helicopters or tanks. Israel celebrates "independence" while Palestinians have been yearning for freedom all along Israel's existence. In every settlement on the West Bank, that is, colonies that have been built on confiscated Palestinian land, fireworks shoots into the sky. "How appropriate to celebrate with fireworks, even from the Psgot settlement that overlooks Ramallah, where all residents are confined to their homes and shelters," I sigh.
Israel celebrates "independence" on the expense of refugees, the ultimate victims of dispossession, expulsion, and destruction. Refugees that have their shelters being bulldozed, shelled, destroyed, who are looking for relatives that might be killed, injured, detained or missing. Refugees that have experienced the horrors of Israeli war crimes committed under the eyes of the world.
Israel's "independence" in 1948 followed mass expulsions and ethnic cleansing that led to the death of 13,000 Palestinians, the expulsion and displacement of 750,000 Palestinians, and the destruction of 531 Palestinian villages. How appropriate to celebrate this "independence" when there has been ongoing dispossession of land, homes, and identity. In the past 18 months the world has witnessed an escalation of destruction, expropriation of land, property, homes, arbitrary detention, torture, mass killings, suppression, and oppression.
East Jerusalem [17 April]--It is a disturbing indication of my acclimation to the militarization of everyday life here that when a group of Apache helicopters began bearing down overhead in a closed village where no one is allowed to be on the streets, what first came to my mind were Lauri Anderson lyrics and second, whether there are batteries in my camera. Then, of course, the fact that i may soon be under aerial rocket attack establishes itself as a reality and yet, something about the obscenity of it all and knowing that this is hardly surprising to the people we are interviewing, seems to block any sense of real fear.
Fortunately, they did not bombard us and the journalists I was translating for agreed we should continue on into the center of the town. About an hour later I received my second dose of teargas within 12 hours, having been at the access road to another closed village in East Jerusalem in the middle of the night, where some inexperienced soldiers quickly reached their limits in a relatively non-aggressive confrontation by Palestinians who had been waiting for over 14 hours to get to their homes.
The situation in East Jerusalem is becoming quite tense. The invasion in Abu Dis, the 400 year old hilltop village I was in this afternoon, is part of a broader strategy to bring the war here into everybody's holy city, while across the Green Line, Israelis were treated to fireworks and concerts in commemoration of their Independence Day. Sharon may be flaunting plans for withdrawal to the international media hungry for "the latest developments," however the reality here is clearly not withdrawal but rather, a rearrangment of where the tanks and gunmen are located.
As the blockaded workers last night sarcastically pointed out, their village, `Isawiya, is now Camp `Isawiya, in the tradition of Israeli forces rustling 10,000 people out of their homes like cattle, under the guise of searching for one lone "terrorist" while media and human rights workers are prevented entry as the soldiers loot and bulldoze.
ON THE second day of the Israeli invasion into Ramallah, Iptisam Anwar watched her 18-year-old son Fadi being led away by Israeli soldiers through the crack in the yellow- curtained kitchen window.
“I was crying but I couldn’t say anything,” remembers the spirited woman, her face framed in black cloth, “I was afraid they would find my eldest son and husband, who were here.” Fadi was staying with his friends and an uncle in the adjoining apartment and when the soldiers came, they came first to the door near the mosque.
Outside the Anwar home in Ramallah’s Old City sits the detritus of war - police cars with their windows shot out, a flashy red convertible smashed under the treads of a tank, garbage piled and scattered in the streets.
But the unseen remnants remain lodged in these young men - Fadi, Jilal, 21, and Jihad, 19. Fadi’s father says he told him a lot about the five years he spent in Israeli jail. Now Fadi has stories of his own.
The childhood friends were first taken by soldiers to the empty home of a neighbor, where they were strip searched, blindfolded and their hands tied with wide plastic thread. “They tied our hands so hard that that itself was a lesson,” remembers Fadi.
From five in the morning to some time that afternoon, the young men were left there on the floor, the smell of human waste around them. “One soldier came and we told him that we would like to smoke,” says Jihad. “He gave us cigarettes and a piece of chocolate that we split. We were hungry.” A few minutes later, another soldier came in. When he saw the cigarettes, he started to hit the boys. Jihad was struck with a plastic stool in the back of his skull.
“My hands were tied,” says the lanky teen, headphones hanging around his neck. “What could I do?” It was the worst of many such blows in their ten days of the young men’s detention by the Israeli military.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip: The Israelis have a political term that isn’t applied as much as it should be to the current conflict. Tahalikh Medini," means "settling state affairs."
Wipe away all of the humanitarian masking on this topic and you are left with Israeli pragmatism. Unchallenged in any serious political manner by either the Palestinians or the Israeli left, PM Ariel Sharon is simply proceeding as he wishes to settle his affairs and to move on. It’s a callous, one-sided calculation to say the least, but it goes much further to explain things than UNRWA or the Red Cross will ever be able to do in the rubble of Jenin.
The human rights organization I work at, Al Mezan Center, issued a press release on April 16, warning that the situation is becoming dire in the Gaza Strip. It isn’t a case of interrupted services and destroyed infrastructure as is the case in the West Bank – a far more dire situation – but rather one of slow and unnoticed strangulation. The Israeli government has been quietly squeezing the life out of the Gaza Strip. Because they are in total control of the passage of goods and transit inside the Strip, they can shut down Palestinian life here at will. And this happens constantly without any fanfare or attention from the outside world, as Sharon settles this matter out of the limelight.
The Gaza Strip of course, despite perceptions in America, has never been fully free of occupation. Indeed, tiny Israeli settlements continue to prosper, where some 6,900 Israelis along with their security cordon, occupy about 40% of the total area of Gaza while 1.2 Million Palestinians share the remainder. What’s more, small incursions into Palestinian controlled areas in towns like Rafah, Khan Yunis and Beit Hanoun are so frequent, the press typically just ignores them.
CAIRO: Secretary of State Colin Powell ended his visit to the Middle East with a stop in Cairo and a meeting with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and their Jordanian counterpart Marwan al-Muasher. The secretary's just completed trip has produced a harsh reaction from political analysts in Egypt.
Without an immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian-controlled territories or a cease-fire, political analysts in Egypt are calling Secretary of State Colin Powell's mission to the Middle East a failure.
Hassan Nafae is the head of the political science department at Cairo University. He says Mr. Powell's only accomplishment was to further alienate an already angry Arab world from the United States.
"I think you will not find any single citizen in the whole Arab and Muslim world that has any respect now for the American government," he said. "And we all have the impression that Israel will lead the United States to a tremendous and very regrettable confrontation between the United States and the Arab world."
(PINA): The current massacring of Palestinian civilians in the refugee camp of Jenin and the cities of the West Bank reminded me of a story my Serb teacher told me in high school more than twenty years ago. She had been a young girl during the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia and remembers the conduct of the German soldiers as they filed through Belgrade.
She remembers receiving rich German chocolate and cakes from the soldiers. The world may have painted German soldiers as barbaric Visigoths, but to her, they were civilized and did not inflict harm on civilians.
I decided to conduct some research of my own and find any story, any documented factoid of the Israeli army’s treatment of Palestinian children. I came up empty. Instead, I came across a plethora of the most revolting pictures of twisted flesh and once-human carcasses that had been shot, trampled, bulldozed and run over by tanks. Picture after picture of mutilated bodies, smashed skulls, bloodied torsos, missing eyes, and splattered brains.
As a journalist, I am sometimes sent pictures directly from Occupied Palestine. They are horrific and I shudder to try and describe them. I am at a loss for words, frankly. Yesterday, I received a selection of photos of one family that had been bulldozed to death as they tried to hide from the Nazi Israeli onslaught.
One picture was of a young girl – half her head was missing. Another picture showed an elderly man, perhaps a grandfather or uncle – the bottom part of his jaw was ground up flesh. Then the picture of what looked like the mother, her chest deflated, her guts meshed in with her ribs, the look on her face one of horrific silence.
Human rights groups protested yesterday at the lack of rescue efforts in the Jenin refugee camp amid claims that a family buried for several days in the rubble had pleaded for help by phone.
"It is shocking that the [Israeli] authorities have not asked for help and that the international community is not offering it," Amnesty International said. "Help is needed now to save what life there is left."
Speaking from inside the ruined camp, Amnesty representative Javier Zuniga said: "This is one of the worst scenes of devastation I have ever witnessed. There is a real possibility that people are still alive under the rubble of their former homes."
Amnesty said that although it was contacted by a local human rights group which had received a call from a family of 10 trapped underground and asking for help, there was still no concerted effort to search for and rescue survivors.
Israeli tanks again fired machine guns into Jenin late yesterday and loudspeakers announced a new curfew, witnesses said. Earlier in the day, about 50 tanks were seen leaving the city, but it was unclear whether they were pulling out entirely or just regrouping. The Israeli army had no immediate comment.
The area, where Israeli bulldozers demolished many homes during the bloody battle, remained a closed military zone according to the army, although some organisations were let in.
Colin Powell was at pains to place a positive spin on his Middle East mission at a final press conference in Jerusalem. But there was no disguising the fact that his high-profile foray on to the frontlines of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had achieved little or nothing - and no hiding his relief to be heading home.
Nobody should take comfort from this verdict. For the two principal parties, for the Arab world, and for others such as the EU, Russia, the UN secretary-general, and George Bush's White House, Mr Powell's failure spells big trouble down the road. For ordinary Jews and Palestinians, it means more daily fear, misery and pain.
All involved had been depending, to varying degrees, on the American somehow pulling a rabbit out of a hat - even as many, by their words and actions, were daily making it harder and harder for him to succeed. But the hoped-for conjuring trick failed to materialise. The US secretary of state and career soldier turned out to be no magician - not even a particularly imaginative diplomat.
American efforts to broker a new ceasefire in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ended in humiliation for the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, yesterday. He was forced to return home with neither a truce nor any evidence that Israel is ending its siege of Palestinian cities in the West Bank.
In a speech to the Virginia Military Institute, President George Bush claimed that Mr Powell had made "progress toward peace", but gave few details of what that progress entailed.
But in a sign of growing Arab anger at the US failure to rein in Israel, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt - one of Washington's closest Arab allies - abruptly cancelled a scheduled meeting with Mr Powell in Cairo, in what was seen as a snub following the failure of his mission.
A British forensic expert who has gained access to the West Bank city of Jenin says evidence points to a massacre by Israeli forces.
Prof Derrick Pounder, who is part of an Amnesty International team granted access to Jenin, said he has seen bodies lying in the streets and received eyewitness accounts of civilian deaths.
The Dundee University expert said the Amnesty investigation has only just begun but Palestinian claims of a massacre were gaining foundation as the team continued its analysis.
He said: "The truth will come out, as it has come out in Bosnia and Kosovo, as it has in other places where we've had these kinds of alegations.
"I must say that the evidence before us at the moment doesn't lead us to believe that the allegations are anything other than truthful and that therefore there are large numbers of civilian dead underneath these bulldozed and bombed ruins that we see."
The professor said recovering the bodies would be difficult because many buildings collapsed during bombardment.
He said: "We know there are families who were there and killed and buried.
"We were on the ruins yesterday and two elderly men came forward, each of them pointed to where their houses had been and one of them told us that 10 members of his family were buried under the rubble."
About 150 Israeli Arab medics gathered at the main Walajeh checkpoint into Jenin early on Wednesday morning.
They hoped to gain access to the city and the Jenin refugee camp which the Red Cross has described as "resembling an earthquake zone".
On a hot, dusty day, doctors in clean white smocks, many with stethoscopes at the ready on their necks and their medical cases in hand, milled about the checkpoint for more than two hours.
They had a lorry and minibus packed with all kinds of medical supplies.
A delegation representing them argued, cajoled, gently harassed and sometimes shouted at the commanding Israel Defence Forces (IDF) officer at the checkpoint to let them through.
According to the IDF, the whole of Jenin was again a closed military zone and no one apart from soldiers and settlers who lived beyond the checkpoint was getting through.
A UN envoy has said that the devastation left by Israeli forces in the Jenin refugee camp is "horrific beyond belief".
Terje Roed-Larsen, who toured the West Bank refugee camp on Thursday, said it was "morally repugnant" that Israel had not allowed rescue teams in after the fighting.
He demanded the full withdrawal of Israeli forces and the lifting of a curfew in the area.
Palestinians claim hundreds of bodies are buried beneath the rubble, but Israel says the numbers of dead are far fewer. An independent forensic expert says evidence suggests that a massacre has taken place.
GAZA REFUGEE CAMP, Jordan -- Gloom hung over the house where Amin's adult daughter had died of an unknown disease. Rain was leaking through the tarpaulin that served as a roof in half of the two-room structure of mud brick and cinder blocks where 15 people live.
So bitterness was not far from the surface when Amin and a handful of fellow Palestinian refugees gathered to discuss their flight from Israel in 1948. "Jewish gangsters came and occupied our village, and we were forced out," he said.
His anger may be unsurprising in one of Jordan's impoverished refugee camps, a town of 35,000 near the ancient city of Jerash, 40 km north of the capital, Amman. But the sentiment hints at the stresses that a majority Palestinian population brings to Jordan, one of only two Arab states that have signed peace treaties with Israel (Egypt is the other). The fragile peace is fraying in Jordan as Israel's military campaign grinds on in the West Bank.
About 60 percent of Jordan's 5.1 million population classifies itself as Palestinian. Ethnically and linguistically, they are identical with native Jordanians. Many are active in business and the professions, and half live not in camps, but in Amman and other cities (even Jordan's queen, Rania Al-Abdallah, comes from a Palestinian family). Yet memories are long, and many are bitter at Jordan's 1994 peace treaty with Israel.
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli tanks and troops returned to two West Bank villages Wednesday in a hunt for Palestinian suspects, and an angry Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) warned that his confinement by Israel was damaging Middle East stability.
Israeli military operations showed few signs of easing, and the Palestinian leader complained to Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) that rather than withdraw as Washington had demanded, Israel was reoccupying towns it had previously left.
"This means that they are continuing their aggression against the Palestinian people," Arafat told reporters in a darkened hallway of his headquarters after Powell had left.
He appealed for international pressure on Israel to end his own imprisonment in his Ramallah office. "Is this acceptable that I cannot go out the door?" said Arafat, who did not escort Powell to his car at the end of their meeting.
Selwa Dheis is looking at her office window.
"Yesterday, I saw their laundry hanging there," she says. "It seems they are here to stay."
Two tanks and two armoured personnel carriers block the door to the building where Selwa has worked for 15 years. She does research on economic development and human rights for a non-governmental organisation called the Miteen group.
She last left her workplace in a hurry, hearing that Israeli soldiers were about to invade. Now it has been turned into the army's operations headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
"We have lots of very rare and unpublished documents and books," she says.
"My computer, actually my whole life is in there, including my 15-year-old cactus which I think is dead by now, it's awful."
MIDDLE EAST: For the Chief-of-Staff of the Israeli army, Lieut Gen Shaul Mofaz, the failure of US Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell's mediating mission is no surprise. David Horovitz reports from Jerusalem
In a Hebrew press interview ahead of Israel's 54th Independence Day yesterday, Gen Mofaz was unequivocal: Neither Mr Powell nor any other would-be Middle East peacemaker would succeed so long as Mr Yasser Arafat was leading the Palestinian Authority.
Mr Arafat "uses terrorism against us, and under his leadership we will never reach an accord", the chief-of-staff said. "Eventually the Palestinian leadership will realise that he is the obstacle. I'm convinced they'll kick him out. History is full of people who were apparently irreplaceable, until they were replaced."
It was late afternoon and not another soul could be seen in the utter desolation at the heart of the Jenin refugee camp - just the smell of death and a mundane jumble of clothing and household stuff that fluttered in a tangle of steel that used to reinforce the homes in which thousands lived.
Suddenly the silence was broken by a voice from just over a crest in the rubble. It was a US reporter, not quite able to believe his own eyes as he briefed his foreign desk by mobile telephone.
"It's just like Hiroshima," he said of the frenzied destruction thought to have been wreaked in the last two days of the Israelis' assault on a camp that was home to 15,000 people and to some of the strongest resistance to Israel's control of the West Bank and Gaza.
Putting aside politics and war, and the propaganda brawl over how many died in the fighting, this is a disaster zone without an adequate response.
The guns have been silent for five days, but desperate voices are still trying to kick-start an emergency operation - heavy-lifting machines, food, water and medicine - that some of the agencies involved said was being made difficult and painfully slow by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
In the Israeli Supreme Court, human rights groups sought an order that would make the IDF hand over bodies that are rotting in the rubble after arguing that the IDF were hindering the search and had reneged on a promise to provide rescue teams and the right digging equipment for the job.
Israeli leader Ariel Sharon has been branded a "war criminal" and a "fool" by former Labour minister Gerald Kaufman.
In a blistering attack, the veteran MP, who is Jewish, said Mr Sharon had reduced his country to an "international pariah" whose actions were staining the Star of David with blood.
Mr Kaufman was speaking in a Commons debate on the crisis in the Middle East in which he also condemned Palestinian suicide bombers as "mass murderers".
Earlier MPs had heard Foreign Secretary Jack Straw say that the prospect of peace in the Middle East was "hanging by a thread".
In his speech Mr Kaufman said: "Sharon has ordered his troops to use methods of barbarism against the Palestinians.
"It is time to remind Sharon that the Star of David belongs to all Jews and not to his repulsive government.
"His actions are staining the Star of David with blood."
Evidence of atrocities by Israeli troops in Jenin refugee camp grew yesterday when a British pathologist said he found "highly suspicious" wounds during the first autopsy on a victim.
Derrick Pounder, professor of forensic medicine at Dundee University, who is working with Amnesty International, visited the ruined camp and said: "Claims that a large number of civilians died and are under the rubble are highly credible.It is not believable that only a few people have been killed, given the reports we have that a large number of people were inside three and four-storey buildings when they were demolished."
The autopsy on the 38-year-old Palestinian revealed that "he was either shot in the foot, and then in the back, or shot in the back first – receiving a fatal wound – and his corpse was for some reason shot in the foot," he said. "Whichever order the shots occurred in, it was highly suspicious".
JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank, April 17 (Reuters) - Israeli tanks fired heavy machineguns inside Jenin's refugee camp on Wednesday and the army warned residents combing the rubble of their homes that a curfew remained in force.
Earlier, witnesses in Jenin had said about 50 Israeli tanks had left the camp and the surrounding West Bank town, two days after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had said the army would pull out "in a couple of days".
It was not immediately clear what had prompted the tanks still in Jenin to open fire in the camp's smashed streets.
Earlier in the afternoon, hundreds of Palestinians had poured back into the refugee quarter from the town, many of them residents who had fled fierce fighting between the Israeli army and Palestinian militants that abated at the weekend.
Although a general curfew has prevailed for over a week, it appeared not to have been strictly applied in parts of the town and camp over the past three days, with many more people on the streets and even some local cars moving around.
Before Wednesday's tank shooting started, civilian medics had been digging in the rubble that was once the camp's main square, uncovering what looked like a large human bone.
When the tanks opened up, the medics hurriedly covered up what they had found with boards and fled into a nearby alley.
An Israeli helicopter gunship pilot reportedly refused to fire a missile at a Palestinian house, the latest sign of growing unease among some Israeli troops over the conduct of the fighting in Palestinian cities of the West Bank.
The rightwing Israeli newspaper Hatzofeh said the Apache pilot refused a direct order for fear of hitting civilians. The disclosure follows widespread condemnation of the use of such gunships during the operation.
Palestinian doctors in Jenin blamed a significant number of civilian casualties on the gunships.
The claim also follows growing concern among some soldiers over the legality and effectiveness of certain actions, in particular firing on ambulances trying to recover casualties. Some soldiers have questioned such tactics.
The unnamed pilot's refusal reportedly took place on Tuesday last week when infantry, backed by tanks and helicopters, captured Dura, a village near Hebron, in the southern West Bank. Although the army has not yet commented on the claim, Guardian reporters in the village that day, did spot a helicopter.
Hatzofeh claimed the pilot's refusal came after a regimental commander's order to fire at a Palestinian house to "liquidate" five alleged terrorists apparently hiding inside.
Wednesday, April 17, 2002
JERUSALEM (AP) - A bitter Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) wound up more than two hours of talks with Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) on Wednesday by demanding that the Bush administration and the international community act together to break his isolation. He accused Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) of reoccupying the West Bank after promising to pull back.
"They are continuing their aggression against the Palestinian people," Arafat said in a darkened hallway of his battered headquarters after seeing Powell off.
Powell made no immediate statement, but planned to hold a news conference later in Jerusalem before heading for home via Cairo, Egypt.
Arafat said he was appealing to President Bush (news - web sites) and to the international community to break Israel's siege of his headquarters.
"I cannot go out the door," he said, his voice rising with apparent exasperation. Just next door, Israeli gunners peeked through half-opened windows and Israeli tanks maintained their confinement of the Palestinian leader.
"Who can accept this?" Arafat asked. "They are returning back," referring to Israel's latest surge into Palestinian areas, after Sharon had said he would withdraw Israeli troops within a week from all towns and villages except Ramallah and Bethlehem.
Queen Rania of Jordan has accused Israel of creating a "human rights catastrophe" in the West Bank and suggested Mideast peace is impossible without a strong U.S. mediating role.
Speaking on CNN's "Larry King Live" Tuesday, Rania said Israel has deprived Palestinian civilians of water, food and medicine and caused deaths by blocking access to hospitals during its nearly 3-week offensive in the West Bank.
"What we are seeing actually in the West Bank is collective punishment of people," said the queen.
"Prime Minister (Ariel) Sharon is after some suspects that he believes are terrorists, but in the process he is terrorizing the lives of many, many people," she said.
Rania said the incursions are "dismantling the infrastructure for peace" by stoking hatred. "Nobody's a winner here, except extremists," she said.
The Israelis and Palestinians cannot end the violence on their own, Rania said.
"There needs to be the full engagement of a third party, preferably the United States because that's viewed as the party that has leverage over Israel and can assure the fairness - can make sure that both sides are honoring any
agreements that are reached between them," she said. (Albawaba.com)
The Palestinian leadership said US Secretary of State Colin Powell's Middle East mission had been a failure caused by Israel's refusal to end its three-week occupation of West Bank towns and villages.
"Israel assumes the whole responsibility for Powell's failure to obtain an immediate (Israeli) pull-out from all the towns and areas that were entered," said the statement released by the Palestinian Authority cabinet and the Palestine Liberation Organisation's executive committee.
The leadership added: "The Palestinian people have been made the object of the greatest terrorist campaign in history, which has the aim of destroying our national institutions, achievements and infrastructure."
They also called for the UN Security Council to meet and for the international community to condemn Israel's continuing military occupation.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Powell was leaving with the situation on the ground "much worse" than when he came and that Sharon had "torpedoed" Powell's efforts.
For his part, Mohammed Dahlan, the Palestinian Preventive Security chief in the Gaza Strip said Wednesday "after the failure of Powell's mission, Sharon will consider this a green light to escalate aggression and even storm into Arafat's office. This is a real danger."
The meeting due between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and US Secretary of State Colin Powell has been cancelled.
Egyptian presidential sources told AFP Powell would instead meet with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher.
They gave no reason for the cancellation Wednesday.
The presidential sources announced the move after a top Palestinian official was quoted as saying Powell's talks with Yasser Arafat earlier Wednesday in the West Bank town of Ramallah were a "catastrophe."
At a press conference in Jerusalem shortly before he was due to travel to Egypt, Powell said the meeting with the Egyptian president could not take place because Mubarak was "indisposed."
US officials in the region said that the meeting was called off because they had heard Mubarak was "sick," but no independent confirmation was immediately available.
The veteran Labour MP and prominent Jewish parliamentarian, Gerald Kaufman, yesterday launched a ferocious attack on the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, denouncing him as a "war criminal" who was staining the Star of David.
Speaking in a Commons debate on the Middle East crisis, in which MPs from across the house condemned Israel's incursions into the West Bank, Mr Kaufman likened Mr Sharon's tactics to the actions of Zionist terrorists in Palestine in the 1940s.
In an emotional speech, in which he described himself as a lifelong friend of Israel, the former shadow foreign secretary said: "Sharon has ordered his troops to use methods of barbarism against the Palestinians ... It is time to remind Sharon that the Star of David belongs to all Jews and not to his repulsive government. His actions are staining the Star of David with blood. The Jewish people, whose gifts to civilised discourse include Einstein and Epstein, are now symbolised throughout the world by the blustering bully Ariel Sharon, a war criminal implicated in the murder of Palestinians in the Sabra-Shatila camp and now involved in killing Palestinians once again."
To nods of approval from MPs, Mr Kaufman condemned Palestinian suicide bombers. But he added that it was important to ask why Palestinians resort to such tactics. "We need to ask how we would feel if we had been occupied for 35 years by a foreign power which denied us the most elementary human rights and decent living conditions."
The outcry in the European press over the killings of civilians in Jenin has not been echoed in US newspapers. Since being allowed into the West Bank town, American journalists have reported extensively on the devastation there, but the editorial pages have offered a mixed response.
The New York Times has made no direct criticism of the Israeli operations, noting only that "there remained heated charges and counter-charges regarding the number of the dead and the extent of the attack's brutality".
A news analysis by one of the paper's leading commentators, RW Apple, pointed out that broad support for President Bush's anti-terror policy "had dissolved on the Continent", but attributed this to European unease with its own position in the world. "In truth, Europe is still trying to adjust to a world with a single superpower, and it is having a hard time doing so," he wrote.
The Washington Post has been far more outspoken against Israeli actions.
In a Sunday editorial, it argued: "Israel's right to target the authors of such murderous attacks is undeniable.
"But with its killings of women and children, its torture and terrorising of unarmed men and its mass destruction of the property and dignity of people in the West Bank, Mr Sharon's army is also achieving the opposite of its aim. Its brutal offensive has not and will not stop suicide bombers; it risks bringing on even more terrible bloodshed."
However, a front page Washington Post report from Jenin was sceptical of reports of a bloodbath: "Interviews with residents inside the camp and international aid workers who were allowed here for the first time today indicated that no evidence has surfaced to support allegations... of large-scale massacres or executions by Israeli troops."
Israel's international reputation slumped to its lowest point for two decades yesterday, amid condemnation in Britain and Europe of the Israeli army's behaviour at the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin in the West Bank.
There were calls for a United Nations-led inquiry into allegations that the Israeli army carried out a massacre and that its soldiers were guilty of war crimes. Senior politicians lined up in London and Brussels to express outrage.
The European Union's external relations commissioner, Chris Patten, in an interview with the Guardian, said Israel must accept a UN investigation of alleged atrocities against Palestinians or face "colossal damage" to its reputation.
In a Commons debate, Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP who is Britain's most prominent Jewish parliamentarian, launched a ferocious attack on the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, denouncing him as a "war criminal".
With MPs on both sides of the Commons condemning the Israeli incursion, Mr Kaufman said Mr Sharon had "ordered his troops to use methods of barbarism against the Palestinians".
Expressing fear that something dreadful had happened in Jenin, he said: "It is time to remind Sharon that the Star of David belongs to all Jews and not to his repulsive government. His actions are staining the Star of David with blood."
An Amnesty International team sent to investigate human rights abuses has been denied access to Jenin refugee camp, it was claimed today.
The delegation, including a British forensic pathologist, was sent to the devastated West Bank town to gather vital evidence about the fate of those who died during recent fighting.
Professor Derrick Pounder was part of the three-person team which he said was refused entry to the camp or Jenin Government Hospital by Israeli forces.
The University of Dundee expert said help was urgently needed for people trapped under buildings after fierce fighting.
He said: “There are two urgent tasks. The first is the humanitarian task of gathering evidence to identify the dead so that the bodies can be given to the families.
“The second is to obtain forensic evidence about the causes and circumstances of death which will clarify what has been happening in Jenin camp.
“International human rights and humanitarian law require that forensic investigations are conducted in this respect.
“The refusal to allow us to conduct or even to assist in enabling others to conduct such investigations is very serious and gives rise to questions about the authorities’ motives.”
Ari Fleischer: Who Is the Murderer Here?Posted on Tuesday, April 16 @ 12:20:54 EST by RamallahOnline
JohnM writes "Is the 25yr old woman
who crawled out of one of the houses you bulldozed in Jenin
with her whole family's screams still ringing in her ears
a murderer?
Or is the bulldozer driver "a murderer"?
or General Mofaz, or Ariel Sharon?
or the State of Israel itself "a murderer"?
That 25yr old woman, with no family left
surrounded by the complete destruction of Jenin Ghetto,
She knew exactly what message to convey to a prejudiced World
who stood by while Tanks, Apaches, Missiles, and Bulldozers,
ran over and reduced to zero
the value of her insignificant life.
She strapped a bomb to her stomach,
the biggest bomb she could find,
and she didn't ask Arafat for permission
to make her statement to a dumb uncaring World.
The insignificant lives of European Jewry who
were also reduced to zero in the death-camps
came out of that experience with severe mental problems,
of smoldering hatred and self-righteous burning rage
as anyone would.
And no one will dare call them murderers
for submitting hundreds of thousands of other human beings
to the rack and groan of a Modern Inquisition,
because 6 Israelis have more valuable blood in them
than 200,000 "useless" Arabs.
The murderers have brilliantly succeeded in
demonizing and reducing some other hapless creatures
to absolute zero value.
Hitler would smile at such skill."
Osama bin Laden once told me that Americans did not understand the Middle East. Last week, in a little shuttle bus shouldering its way through curtains of rain across the Iowa prairies, I opened my copy of the Des Moines Register and realised that he might be right. "BIG HOG LOTS CALLED GREATER THREAT THAN BIN LADEN," announced the headline. Iowa's 15 million massive pigs, it seems, produce so much manure that the state waterways are polluted. "Large-scale hog producers are a greater threat to the United States and US democracy than Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, says Robert F Kennedy Junior, president of... a New York environment group... 'We've watched communities and American values shattered by these bullies,' Kennedy said..." I took out my pocket calculator and did a little maths. Cedar Rapids, I reckoned, was 7,000 miles from Afghanistan. Another planet, more like.
Mr Arafat, his shell-blasted headquarters surrounded by Israeli snipers, emerged from his talks with Mr Powell voicing outrage over his treatment by the Israelis.
He condemned Israel's crackdown in the West Bank and his own confinement, with the Israelis controlling his access to electricity, food and water.
"I have to ask the whole world... is this acceptable, that I can't go outside this door?" he told reporters.
The two-week-old church siege in Bethlehem continues
But he also thanked Mr Powell for his efforts and described the talks as "very warm, very important".
Mr Powell is now heading for Egypt to brief Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher on the results of his mission.
Israel has promised to withdraw its troops from Palestinian towns and villages, the US secretary state, Colin Powell, said today as he gave a blunt message to the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, that "terrorism must end".
Winding down a 10-day peace mission that has had limited results, Mr Powell said he would return to the region "to move ahead" with efforts to get negotiations on track.
Other US diplomats will remain behind to follow up on his talks and the US president, George Bush, is prepared to send the CIA director, George Tenet, to promote security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians, he added.
But he has been unable to get both sides to agree a ceasefire, which he said is impossible to achieve while the Israeli army remains in the West Bank. The Palestinians argue that its occupation means they are unable to crack down on militants using their own security forces.
Israeli troops today swept through Issawiyah, a Palestinian district of Jerusalem, and two villages in the West Bank, taking residents from their homes and making arrests.
The most recent United States intervention in the Middle East and the visit of Secretary of State Colin Powell faces serious obstacles, partly due to reasons right here and partly due to internal American politics. The overriding concern, however, is that the intervention simply came to late.
The fact that this visit came after Israel had already made the sweeping move of reoccupying all of the West Bank Palestinian territories has complicated the task of Colin Powell. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat had no problem accepting the three-fold plan presented by Colin Powell. The secretary of state, on the other hand, had no problem understanding the difficulties experienced by Palestinians and their leadership over recent weeks. Both are in agreement that the plan Powell has to get out of this crisis remains impractical as long as the whole of the Palestinian territories are under Israel's occupation. Therefore, the first hurdle facing Colin Powell's diplomacy is the new fact created by Israel and its invasion.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon seems to be insisting on continuing this invasion, however, offering two "reasonable" excuses. The first is that as long as there is no political process, there naturally will be no end of violent confrontations because the logic of the relations between the occupied Palestinian people and the Israeli occupiers can only be one of peace negotiations or confrontation.
On Friday, April 5, seven Israeli girls from good Jewish homes entered Ramallah. I was one of them. Our goal, simply stated, is to express objection to our government's war against the Palestinian civilian population currently taking place in Ramallah, as well as other cities in the West Bank, and to show solidarity with the Palestinians. It is currently illegal for Israelis to enter the Occupied Territories. Illegal, that is, unless you're a soldier. We know that the government does this to keep us Israelis from seeing what really goes on over there. That's the reason they also don't allow photographers in and shoot at them. But we were determined to see for ourselves. And we did.
We enter Ramallah by a combination of driving and walking. The whole process, while it only takes half an hour at most, makes us feel like outlaws on the run, like moving targets. Being Israeli, it's clear that we're facing danger from both whichever Palestinians would not happy with our presence in their neighbourhoods and see us as enemies and by the Israeli occupation forces that may capture and arrest us, plus whatever crossfire we may get caught in from either side. We can't be left alone for a minute. So we make arrangements for a Palestinian "tour guide". The first thing he asks of us is that if at any point after he leaves us we get caught, that we don't mention his name to the military. On the drive there we take a nice tour of every nearby refugee camp and the slum neighbourhood outside of Ramallah. The streets are empty and the stores are closed. Every once in a while we pass a car. The driver stops and talks with our driver, and based on that our driver knows where the tanks are placed and which route to take. We can't get caught because there's curfew and they can either shoot us or arrest us. At some e point we have to get out and walk in an open field. This is particularly dangerous because we're exposed. Every time we reach a crossroad, our guide instructs us to hide behind the nearby building while he goes to check if there are tanks or soldiers around the corner.
The United States of America is organizing another international conference in the Middle East. This one, sadly, emerges as a result of the destruction of Palestinian society by Israel. By doing so, the US is setting itself up for a political and security failure, yet again. The first US failure was called Oslo, where the Palestinian leadership was lured into a US-sponsored 'peace process' that has led to the intentional obliteration of Palestinian cities and dismantling of Palestinian leadership and the Palestinian Authority.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been central to the Middle East ever since Israel was created 54 years ago. Furthermore, ever since Israel occupied the remaining 22% of Palestine - the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem - on June 4, 1967 tensions in the region have been steadily increasing. Today's Middle East crisis reflects another round of US foreign policy failure and the continuation of Israeli disregard for international law and universal standards of nation-state behavior. There is, however, an important difference this time around: the world, including the Arab world, has finally been able to glimpse at the nature of the Israeli occupation. This one difference has the power to create a momentum that may change the political landscape of the Middle East forever, and with it US interests in Middle East.
As Israel defied President Bush's repeated call for an immediate withdraw from Palestinian cities and refugee camps, some US leaders such as Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have called upon the US to provide the region with the "strong leadership that only America can provide." This is a senior US foreign affairs official who was unable to predict and is now unable to admit that the last 35 years of US support - financially, politically and morally - for Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people would lead to a human catastrophe. Equally astonishing is the refusal of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to ask why Palestinians should accept American leadership now, after it failed throughout the entire course of the Oslo peace process to address the political rights of the Palestinian people.
At 7:30 tonight, about 2 hours ago, the Israeli military attempted to break into the Church of the Nativity. I got a phone call from a friend in Beit Jala who said she had just received a call from a friend inside the church. It seems this attempt lasted about half an hour. This attempt was going on as I was talking to [my friend], and we had a conversation later, when she had found out that this had happened. When we were talking the first time, [before we knew what had happened], my friend was saying: "My gosh there has to be something going on over there! There is tons of shooting. There are a lot of explosions. Something is happening." Sure enough, the Israeli military was indeed at that moment attempting to break into the Church of the Nativity by climbing over a wall on the Armenian side of the church. Now, the guys inside the church who have guns--which is not everyone--offered heavy resistance and forced the soldiers back out. I don't know of any casualties or injuries. The report from inside the Church didn't comment on that.