MCC Palestine Update #46

MCC Palestine Update #46

The talk in the international media this past week was of an Israeli pullout from West Bank towns. Reality proved more complex, with Israel still very much present in many West Bank towns while completely besieging others. Curfews and severe restriction on movement are the order of the day in many places.

Palestinian institutions--be they non-governmental or governmental, private or public--are beginning to dig out from under the looting, vandalism and destruction. Banks, development organizations, human rights organizations, the Ministry of Education, shops: the list of places trashed and from whom valuables were stolen goes on and on. The Israeli military has been engaging in a war against the Palestinian infrastructure, on the Palestinians' ability to function as a normal society. One example: the Ramallah and Nablus offices of the East Jerusalem YMCA were trashed and looted. MCC supports women's development programs and projects with persons with disabilities operated by the East Jerusalem YMCA: now they'll have to operate without needed equipment and records.

MCC continues to participate, along with Catholic Relief Services, World Vision International, Caritas International, the Pontifical Mission for Palestine, the Lutheran World Federation and the International Orthodox Christian Committee, in relief convoys to West Bank cities. Last Saturday we went to Nablus; this Thursday to Jenin.

Below you will find four pieces. The first, by Edward Said, provides a trenchant analysis of the first three weeks of April. The second, by Israeli academic Avi Shlaim, details the obstacles the current Israeli government places before peace. The third, by Amira Hass of Ha'aretz newspaper, provides a report from the Jenin refugee camp. Fourth, Gideon Levy of Ha'aretz asks what, if any, political horizon Israel's currently military action presupposes. In the fifth and final piece, Naseer Aruri provides some historical perspective to the recent conflict, examining claims (which have been received repeated airings recently) that Israel generously offered the Palestinians an end to occupation.


1. What Israel Has Done
Edward Said
Al Ahram Weekly, 19 April 2002

Despite Israel's effort to restrict coverage of its extraordinarily destructive invasion of the West Bank's Palestinian towns and refugee camps, information and images have nevertheless seeped through. The Internet has provided hundreds of verbal as well as pictorial eyewitness reports, as has Arab and European TV coverage, most of it unavailable or blocked or spun out of existence from the mainstream US media. That evidence provides stunning proof of what Israel's campaign has actually (has always) been about: the irreversible conquest of Palestinian land and society. The official line (which the US, along with nearly every American media commentator has basically supported) is that Israel has been defending itself by retaliating for the suicide bombings that have undermined its security and even threatened its existence. That claim has gained the status of an absolute truth moderated neither by what Israel has done nor by what in fact has been done to it.

Plucking out the terrorist network, destroying the terrorist infrastructure, attacking terrorist nests (note the total dehumanization involved in every one of these phrases): the words are repeated so often and so unthinkingly that they have therefore given Israel the right to do what it has wanted to do, which in effect is to destroy Palestinian civil life with as much damage, as much sheer wanton destruction, killing, humiliation, vandalism, purposeless but overwhelming technological violence as possible. No other state on earth could have done what Israel has done with as much approbation and support as the US has given it. None has been more intransigent and destructive, less out of touch with its own realities, than Israel.

There are signs, however, that the amazing, not to say grotesque, ature of these claims (its "fight for existence") is slowly being eroded by the harsh and nearly unimaginable devastation wrought by the Jewish state and its homicidal prime minister, Ariel Sharon. Take this front-page report, "Attacks Turn Palestinian Plans Into Bent Metal and Piles of Dust" by the New York Times's Serge Schmemann (no Palestinian propagandist) on 11 April: "There is no way to assess the full extent of the damage to the cities and towns -- Ramallah, Bethlehem, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Nablus, and Jenin -- while they remain under a tight siege, with patrols and snipers firing in the streets. But it is safe to say that the infrastructure of life itself and of any future Palestinian state --roads, schools, electricity pylons, water pipes, telephone lines has been devastated." By what inhuman calculus did Israel's army, using 50 tanks, 250 missile strikes a day, and dozens of F-16 sorties, besiege Jenin's refugee camp for over a week, a one square kilometre patch of shacks housing 15,000 refugees and a few dozen men armed with automatic rifles and with no defenses whatever, no leaders, no missiles, no tanks, nothing, and call it a response to terrorist violence and the threat to Israel's survival? There are reported to be hundreds buried in the rubble Israeli bulldozers are now trying to heap over the camp's ruins.

Are Palestinian civilians, men, women, children, no more than rats or cockroaches that can be killed and attacked in the thousands without so much as a word of compassion or in their defense? And what about the capture of thousands of Palestinian men who have been taken off by Israeli soldiers without a trace, the destitution and homelessness of so many ordinary people trying to survive in the ruins created by Israeli bulldozers all over the West Bank, the siege that has now gone on for months and months, the cutting off of electricity and water in all Palestinian towns, the long days of total curfew, the shortage of food and medicine, the wounded who have bled to death, the systematic attacks on ambulances and aid workers that even the mild-mannered Kofi Annan has decried as outrageous? Those actions will not be pushed so easily into the memory hole. Its friends must ask Israel how its suicidal policies can possibly gain it peace, acceptance and security.

A monstrous transformation of an entire people by the most formidable and feared propaganda machine in the world into little more than "militants" and "terrorists" has allowed not just Israel's military but its fleet of writers and defenders to efface a terrible history of suffering and abuse in order to destroy the civil existence of the Palestinian people with impunity. Gone from public memory are the destruction of Palestinian society in 1948 and the creation of a dispossessed people; the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza and their military occupation since 1967; the invasion of 1982 with its 17,500 Lebanese and Palestinian dead and the Sabra and Shatila massacres; the continuous assault on Palestinian schools, refugee camps, hospitals, civil installations of every kind. What anti-terrorist purpose is served by destroying the building and then removing the records of the Ministry of Education, the Ramallah Municipality, the Central Bureau of Statistics, various institutes specializing in civil rights, health and economic development, hospitals, radio and television stations? Is it not clear that Sharon is bent not only on "breaking" the Palestinians, but on trying to eliminate them as a people with national institutions?

In such a context of disparity and asymmetrical power, it seems deranged to keep asking the Palestinians, who have neither army, nor air force, nor tanks, nor defenses of any kind, nor functioning leadership, to "renounce" violence, and to require no comparable limitation on Israel's actions. Even the matter of suicide bombers, which I have always opposed, cannot be examined from a view point that permits a hidden racist standard to value Israeli lives over the many more Palestinian lives that have been lost, maimed, distorted and foreshortened by long- standing Israeli military occupation, and the systematic barbarity openly used by Sharon against Palestinians from the beginning of his career in the 1950s until now.

There can be no conceivable peace, in my opinion, that does not tackle the real issue: Israel's utter refusal to accept the sovereign existence of a Palestinian people that is entitled to rights over what Sharon and most of the people supporting him consider exclusively to be the land of Greater Israel, i.e. the West Bank and Gaza. A profile of Sharon in the 6-7 April issue of the Financial Times concluded with this extremely telling extract from his autobiography, which the FT prefaced with "he has written with pride of his parents' belief that Jews and Arabs could live side by side." Then the relevant quote from Sharon's book: "But they believed without question that only they had rights over the land. And no one was going to force them out, regardless of terror or anything else. When the land belongs to you physically... that is when you have power, not just physical power but spiritual power."

In l988, the PLO made the concession that the partition of historical Palestine into two states would be acceptable. This was reaffirmed on numerous occasions and certainly again in the Oslo documents. But only the Palestinians explicitly recognized the notion of partition. Israel never has. This is why there are now over 170 settlements on Palestinian lands, why a 300-mile network of roads connecting them to each other and totally impeding Palestinian movement exists (according to Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, it has cost $3 billion and has been funded by the US), why no Israeli prime minister, from Rabin on, has ever conceded any real Palestinian sovereignty to the Palestinians, and why of course the settlements have increased on an annual basis. The merest glance at a recent map of the territories reveals what Israel has been doing throughout the peace process, and what the consequent geographical discontinuity and shrinkage in Palestinian life has been. In effect, then, Israel considers itself and the Jewish people to own the land of Israel in its entirety: there are land ownership laws in Israel itself guaranteeing this, but on the West Bank and Gaza the network of settlements, roads, and no concessions whatever on sovereign land rights to the Palestinians serve the same function.

What boggles the mind is that no official -- US, Palestinian, Arab, UN, European, or anyone else -- has challenged Israel on this point, which has been threaded through all of the Oslo documents, procedures and agreements. That is why, of course, after nearly 10 years of "peace negotiations," Israel still controls the West Bank and Gaza. They are more directly controlled (owned?) by over 1,000 Israeli tanks and thousands of soldiers today, but the underlying principle is the same. No Israeli leader (and certainly not Sharon and his Land of Israel supporters who are the majority in his government) has either officially recognized the occupied territories as occupied territories or gone on to recognise that Palestinians could or might theoretically have sovereign rights that is, without Israeli control over borders, water, air, security on what most of the world considers Palestinian land. So to speak about the "vision" of a Palestinian state, as has become fashionable, is mere vision alas, unless the question of land ownership and sovereignty is openly and officially conceded by the Israeli government. No Israeli government ever has made this concession and, if I am right, none will in the near future. It needs to be remembered that Israel is the only state in the world today that has never had internationally declared borders; the only state not the state of its citizens but of the whole Jewish people; the only state where over 90 per cent of the land is held in trust for the exclusive use of the Jewish people. That it is also the only state in the world never to have recognised any of the main provisions of international law (as argued recently in these pages by Richard Falk) suggests the depth and structural knottiness of the absolute rejectionism that Palestinians have had to face.

This is why I have been sceptical about discussions and meetings about peace, which is a lovely word but in the present context simply means that Palestinians will have to stop resisting Israeli control over their land. It is among the many deficiencies of Arafat's terrible leadership (to say nothing of the even more lamentable Arab leaders in general) that he never made the decade-long Oslo negotiations focus on land ownership, and thus never put the onus on Israel to declare itself constitutively willing to give up title to Palestinian land; nor did he ever ask that Israel be required to deal with any of its responsibility for the sufferings of his people. Now I worry that he may simply be trying to save himself again, whereas what we really need are international monitors to protect us, as well as elections to assure a real political future for the Palestinian people.

The profound question facing Israel and its people is this: is it willing juridically to assume the rights and obligations of being a country like any other, and forswear the kind of impossible land ownership assertions for which Sharon and his parents and his soldiers have been fighting since day one? In 1948 Palestinians lost 78 per cent of Palestine. In 1967 they lost the last 22 per cent, both times to Israel. Now the international community must lay upon Israel the obligation to accept the principle of real, as opposed to fictional, partition, and to accept the principle of limiting Israel's untenable extra-territorial claims, those absurd Biblically-based pretensions, and laws that have so far allowed it to override another people completely. Why is that kind of fundamentalism tolerated unquestioningly? But so far all we hear is that Palestinians must give up violence and condemn terror. Is nothing substantive ever demanded of Israel? Can it go on doing what it has without a thought for the consequences? That is the real question of its existence: whether it can exist as a state like all others, or must always be above the constraints and duties of all other states in the world today. The record is not reassuring.


2. America must see that Sharon is the problem
Avi Shlaim
The Observer, 14 April 2002

The Middle East conflict cannot be resolved while the Israelis are led by a man who sees military force as the only instrument of policy.

When running for Prime Minister in February of last year, Ariel Sharon, Israel's ferocious hawk, tried to reinvent himself as a man of peace. Against the background of the al-Aqsa intifada, which he had helped to trigger by his provocative visit to Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount), he ran on a ticket of peace with security. In his first year in power, Sharon has achieved neither peace nor security but only a steady escalation of the violence. In the last two weeks Sharon has revealed himself once again as a man wedded to military force as the only instrument of policy.

The 74 year-old Israeli leader has been at the sharp end of confrontation with the Arabs for most of his life. The hallmarks of his career are mendacity, the most savage brutality towards Arab civilians, and a persistent preference for force over diplomacy to solve political problems. These features found their clearest expression in the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 which Sharon masterminded as defense minister in Menachem Begin's Likud government.

The war that Sharon is currently waging on the West Bank fraudulently named 'Operation Defensive Shield', is in some ways a replay of his war in Lebanon. It is directed against the Palestinian people; it stems from the same stereotypes that the Palestinians are terrorists; it is based on the same denial of Palestinian national rights; it employs the same strategy of savage and overwhelming military force; and it displays the same callous disregard for international opinion, international law, the UN, and the norms of civilized behavior. Even the principal personalities are the same: today, as in 1982, Ariel Sharon confronts Yasser Arafat.

The invasion of Lebanon was not a defensive war but a war of deception. Sharon obtained cabinet approval for a limited military operation against the PLO forces in southern Lebanon. From the beginning, however, he planned a much bigger operation to serve broader geo-strategic aims. The principal objective of Sharon's war was to destroy the PLO as a military and political organisation, to break the backbone of Palestinian nationalism, to spread despair and despondency among the inhabitants of the West Bank, and to pave the way to its absorption into Greater Israel. A second objective was to give Israel's Maronite allies a leg-up to power, and then compel them to sign a peace treaty with Israel. A third objective was to expel the Syrian army from Lebanon and to make Israel the dominant power in the Levant.

Under Sharon's devious direction, an operation that was supposedly undertaken in self-defence developed into a merciless siege of Beirut and culminated in a horrendous massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila which led to the removal of Sharon from the ministry of defence.

In his crude but relentless propaganda war, Sharon tries to portray Arafat as the master terrorist who orchestrates the violence against Israel and secretly encourages suicide bombings by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. To be sure, Arafat is not above using violence. Nor has he done as much as he could to curb the activities of the Islamic militants. Yet Arafat is the leader who persuaded his movement to abandon armed struggle and adopt the political path in the struggle for independence. By signing the Oslo Accord in 1993, and clinching it with a hesitant handshake, he and Yitzhak Rabin undertook to resolve the outstanding differences between their two nations by peaceful means. Until the assassination of Rabin two years later, Arafat proved himself an effective partner on the road to peace. The subsequent decline of the Oslo peace process was caused more by Israeli territorial expansionism than by Palestinian terrorism. Israeli settlements on the West Bank, which Sharon's government continues to expand, are the root of the problem.

Ever the opportunist, Sharon was quick to jump on the bandwagon of America's 'war against terror' in the aftermath of 11 September. Under this banner, Sharon has embarked on a sinister attempt to destroy the infrastructure of a future Palestinian state. His real agenda is to subvert what remains of the Oslo accords, to smash the Palestinians into the ground, and to extinguish hope for independence and statehood. To add insult to injury, he wants to remove Yasser Arafat, the democratically elected leader and symbol of the Palestinian revolution, and to replace him with a collaborationist regime which would serve as a sub-contractor What Sharon is unable or unwilling to comprehend is that security cannot be achieved by purely military means. The only hope of security for both communities lies in a return to the political track, something that the champion of violent solutions has always avoided. Consequently, Sharon's second war, like his first, is doomed to failure. If the history of this conflict teaches anything, it is that violence breeds more violence.

Many people who do not necessarily support Sharon's brutal methods nevertheless have sympathy for Israel's predicament. They point out that the suicide bombs against innocent Israeli civilians pre-dated the incursion of Israeli tanks into West Bank towns and villages. Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, however, goes back to 1967 and constitutes the underlying cause of Palestinian frustration, hatred, and despair of which the suicide bombs are only the cruelest manifestation. They say that Hamas and Islamic Jihad deny altogether Israel's right to exist. These are, however, them extremist fringes. The savage treatment meted out by Sharon to the Palestinians is self-defeating precisely because it undermines moderates and strengthens extremists.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the current crisis is America's complicity in the Israeli onslaught. One might have expected George Bush Jr. to resume the even-handed policy of his father towards Arabs and Israelis. Instead, he has reverted to a blatantly pro-Israeli policy reminiscent of the Reagan years. Although America is a signatory to the Oslo Accord, Bush has abandoned the Palestinian side.

Sharon is holding Arafat hostage in his headquarters in Ramallah, depriving him of food, water, medicines and telephone lines. The only concession that the American President has managed to extract from the truculent Israeli Prime Minister is a promise not to kill the Palestinian leader. The Israelis have destroyed much of Arafat's police force and security services, leaving him with a mobile phone. Under these conditions the embattled Palestinian leader does not have the means to prevent suicide attacks even if he had the will to do so.

In an apparent reversal of American policy a week ago, President Bush called on Sharon to pull out his troops from the Palestinian towns and villages. Sharon insisted they would stay as long as necessary to accomplish their mission of uprooting the infrastructure of terror. Secretary of State Colin Powell was dispatched to the region to broker a cease-fire and restore the political track. He is unlikely to get far with Sharon unless he backs up his words with the threat to cut economic and military aid to Israel. The death toll in 'Operation Defensive Shield' is more than 200 Palestinians and 60 Israelis. How many more lives will have to be sacrificed before the Americans understand that General Sharon is part of the problem, not the solution?

Avi Shlaim is a professor of International Relations at Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000)


3. What kind of war is this?'
Amira Hass
Haaretz, April 26, 2002

It is still impossible to know how many people are buried under the ruins in the Jenin refugee camp, where the smell of decomposing bodies mingles with the stench of garbage and the scent of geraniums and mint.

Leaning on a cane, the man stood on a huge pile of ruins: a jumble of crushed concrete, twisted iron rods, shreds of mattresses, electric cables, fragments of ceramic tiles, bits of water pipes and an orphaned light switch. "This is my home," he said, "and my son is inside." His name is Abu Rashid; his son is Jamal, 35, and confined to a wheelchair. The bulldozer began to gnaw into the house when members of the family were inside it. And where would they be, if not in the house, seeking - like all the inhabitants of the refugee camp in Jenin - the safest place to hide from the firing of the mortars and the rockets and the machine guns, and waiting for a brief respite?

Abu Rashid and the other members of his family hurried to the front door, went out with their hands up and tried to yell to the huge bulldozer, the operator of which was unseen and unheard, that there were people inside. But the bulldozer did not stop roaring, retreating a bit and then attacking again, returning and taking a bite out of the concrete wall, until it collapsed on Jamal before anyone could save him.

All around Abu Rashid other people were climbing up or down heaps of rubbish, making their way between piles of cement, sharp iron wires and fragments of metal, concrete pillars and ceilings that had collapsed, fragments of sinks. Not all of them were as as Abu Rashid, who talked to himself more than he talked to those who stopped to listen to him. There were those who tried to rescue something from the ruins: a garment, a shoe, a sack of grain.

Nearby, a young girl almost stumbled on a pile of broken cement blocks, pointed at the ceiling, at her feet, and wept and wept. Between the wails, she managed to say that this had been her parents' home and that she does not know who is buried under it, who had managed to get away, whether anyone was alive under the ruins, who would get them out, or when.

Among the piles of ruins, and in the midst of some houses that were still partially standing, the walls that had not collapsed riddled with numerous bullet holes of all sizes, a broad expanse had been created. Where, up until two weeks ago, several houses had stood, some of them three stories high, one or more Israel Defense Forces bulldozers had gone over the piles of cement several times, flattened them, ground them to dust, "made a `Trans-Israel highway,'" as A.S. put it. His home had also fallen victim to the bulldozers' teeth. Someone indicates a small opening in one pile of rubble. From it he had heard cries for help until Sunday night. On Monday morning there were no longer any sounds coming from it. Someone else points to what had formerly been a house where two sisters lived. Someone says that they are crippled. It is still unknown whether they are under the ruins or whether they got out of the camp in time.

Relative quiet

There are houses that were empty of inhabitants when they were demolished. In some cases the soldiers ordered people to leave immediately, so that they would not get killed. One old man, people say, refused to leave his home. "Fifty years ago you expelled me from Haifa. Now I have nowhere to go," they report he had said. The soldiers lifted the stubborn old man bodily and hauled him out. And there were cases in which they did not bother to issue a warning -and the bulldozers came. Without announcing over the bullhorns, without checking whether anyone was inside. This happened on Sunday, April 14, to the members of the Abu Bakr family, who live on the thin line between the refugee camp and the city of Jenin proper.

In both city and camp, a curfew had been imposed; soldiers were circulating in tanks and armored vehicles and on foot, shooting from time to time, tossing stun grenades or blowing up suspicious objects. But relative to the previous week it was quiet: There was no longer any firing from helicopters, no more exchanges of fire with a handful of armed Palestinian activists. But all of a sudden, at four in the afternoon, the members of the Abu Bakr family heard the sound of a wall being crushed. The father of the family went outside, waved a white flag and yelled to the soldiers: "We are in the house; where do you want us to go, why are you demolishing our home with us inside?" They yelled at him: "Yallah, yallah, get inside," and stopped the bull- dozer.

This narrow seamline where the house is located, several meters wide, has in recent days served as a transit bridge from the city to the refugee camp. The residents of the city, many of whom come from the refugee camp, tried to evade the soldiers and bring their relatives and friends water, food and cigarettes. At the Abu Bakrs' home they concluded that the soldiers wanted to expand the area that separates the city from the camp in order to prevent "smuggling" of one sort or another.

In the evening, an armored vehicle was positioned next to the house and soldiers combed the surrounding courtyard. Then the armored vehicle left. M. went to make coffee. He managed to put a teaspoon of sugar into the narrow-necked, long-handled coffee pot and began to stir the boiling water when someone or something came quickly in through the window,
broke the glass and set the kitchen on fire. A stun grenade? A tear-gas grenade? Did the soldiers outside think someone was firing at them when he lit the gas burner? M. thanks God that only his hands and face were burned in the flames that were immediately extinguished, and that other people in the family weren't hurt, and that the house was not destroyed.

Mohammed al-Sba'a, 70, was not so lucky. On Monday, April 8, the bulldozers thundered near his home in the Hawashan neighborhood, in the middle of the camp. He went out of his house to tell the soldiers that there were people inside - he and his wife, his two sons, their wives and seven children. He was shot in his doorway, hit in the head and killed, related one of his sons this
week. Members of his family managed to bring him inside. But then they were ordered to come out: The men were arrested, and then released and taken to the village of Rumani, northwest of Jenin. The women were taken to the Red Crescent building. The father's body remained in the house. When the men of the family returned from arrest, they could not find the house.

The destruction of dozens of houses by bulldozers began on Saturday, April 6, four days after the Israel Defense Forces attack on Jenin began. It is not yet possible to know how many people were buried under the ruined houses. The horrible smell of dead bodies of which new ones are being discovered every day - mingles with the stink of the garbage that has not been collected, the garbage that has been burnt and the surprising smells of geraniums, roses and the mint that grows near the bougainvillea that people cultivated in the narrow strips of ground between the crowded houses. When the time comes, UNRWA and the Red Cross will make lists of the detained, the wounded and the missing. But the most urgent mission right now is the distribution of water, food and medicines. The camp has been defined as a disaster area.

The demolition of the homes by bulldozers was preceded by heavy shooting and shelling from tanks, from the beginning of the IDF action on the night of Tuesday, April 2. The tanks surrounded the camp, took up positions on the hill to the west of it, rumbled into the main street. Two days later, firing from helicopters began, people relate: rocket fire and submachine-gun fire. People took shelter under staircases, on the ground floor, in interior bathrooms, in storehouses near the inner courtyards. People crowded into small rooms, feeling each other in the dark, frightened. They blocked their ears and shut their eyes, cuddled the small, crying children.

Damage statistics

When the shooting died down, they related, they went out and found their houses scorched, flames and smoke rising from them, riddled with holes, their floors shaky, doors and windows ripped out, windowpanes smashed to bits, huge holes in the front walls. The turn of the damage statistics will also come, and when it does, UN teams will tell of how many houses were destroyed by the bulldozers, how many were damaged by the shooting and whether they can be repaired or whether it is safer to demolish them altogether. How many families were in them. How many individuals.

Yumm Yasser rescued a year-old baby from the neighbors' house, which was shelled. The baby's father, Rizk, she related, crawled out with his two legs injured and his back burned by fire. He came out with his arm stretched forward, bleeding, she said. The house was surrounded by soldiers. A military doctor or paramedic came, cleaned the wounds, bandaged them, and soldiers took him to the area of the cemetery and left him there. Neighbors who saw him gathered him up and called a doctor. They managed to get him to a hospital only a week after he was wounded.

H. and her family were in their house when it was bombarded. They ran to take shelter in her father's home nearby. H. thinks that this was on April 8. People find it hard to remember exact dates; all the days of the attack have become a jumble of fear and blood and destruction, without nights or days. Y., her husband, was wounded by the shooting when he went out the door. She dragged him to her father's house. There they bandaged his leg, prayed that everything would be all right and managed to get him to a private hospital only on Sunday, April 14, evading the soldiers who patrolled the alley on foot.

A.S. was wounded in the course of performing an IDF mission: A foot patrol took him out of his house to accompany soldiers, walk ahead of them and open the doors of the neighborhood for them. A.S. did as he was told, and as he stood by one of the doors, another unit of soldiers appeared. Perhaps they thought he belonged to the mukawamin (insurgents, armed activists), because no one else dared to roam the streets during those first days of the IDF takeover of the camp. He was shot and wounded. For four days he lay in the home of neighbors, until his brothers managed to take him to medical care. Their home, on the second floor of the family's house on the hillside, was damaged by three to five rockets and numerous bullets. Soldiers took up positions in a tall house nearby, and shot.

His mother tells the story at length, leading visitors from one destroyed room to the next. And then she takes us out to the garden: he loved to plant things, he loved life, not death, she said of her son. Her other sons offered the visitors fruit from the garden: pleasantly tart loquats, refreshingly juicy plums. Most of the water tanks in the camp had been hit during the first days of the shooting. The water pipes were burst by the IDF bulldozers and the tanks. The fresh water supply was cut off immediately. Therefore, when every drop of water must be saved, biting into these fruits is a luxury.

Abu Riyad, 51, was also enlisted, like many others, for IDF missions. For five days he accompanied soldiers: During the day he walked ahead of them, from door to door, knocked on the doors as the soldiers concealed themselves behind him, their rifles aimed at the door and at him. At night he was with them in a house they had taken over. They handcuffed him and two soldiers guarded him, he said. At the end of his mission, they told him to stay in a certain house,alone. All around the bulldozers and the tanks thundered. One of the tanks rolled onto the house. Abu Riyad jumped to another house, leaping from one destroyed house to another until he got to his home, which he also found partially in ruins, from hits by three rockets. There were 13 people in the house when the rocket landed on it.

A soldier cleaned the bathroom

S. declared that she had been lucky. Her family's house was only occupied for a week, like a dozen other houses in the camp that climbs up the hillside and the cliffs. S. is a widow who lives withher brother and his family in a house at the western edge of the camp: four adults, 10 children. Most of the residents had left the neighborhood before the IDF invasion. On the first and second nights soldiers took over two or three houses adjacent to the home of S.'s family. The members of the family took shelter in the kitchen, which they thought was the most protected room. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, someone came in through the wall, made a gaping hole near the floor and came in right over the head of 8-year-old Rabiya. Windowpanes shattered and the room was covered in dust. The 14 people in the kitchen began to scream. Through the hole in the wall they heard someone shouting in Arabic: Anyone who leaves the house will die. They peeked and saw a group of soldiers in the narrow alley. They tried to negotiate with the soldiers; perhaps they would go out to the neighbors' house, to a safer room, but the only answer they heard was: "Whoever leaves the house will die."

After a short while, the soldiers made a hole in the wall that leads to the staircase and came in through it. The members of the family, huddled together in one corner, looked on in astonishment as more and more soldiers came in, their faces painted black. The members of the family were put in another room, full of broken glass and dust. They were held there from the evening until early Friday morning. The soldiers, related S., did not allow them to leave the dimly lit room. When they pleaded to go to the bathroom, the soldiers brought them a pot from the kitchen. S.'s brother-in-law was arrested, and three women and their children were left along in a house filled with strange soldiers.

At dawn, S. opened the door and discovered that the soldiers had been replaced. With hand gestures and body language she signaled that she wanted to go to the bathroom, to take the children to the bathroom, to bring food. Someone who looked to her like an officer said to go ahead. She had to make her way through any number of soldiers who were lying on the floor of her home, tiptoeing among them. The filth she found in the bathroom disgusted her. The officer who was next to her hung his head and she concluded that he was ashamed of what he saw. He went to a nearby house, where no one was home, and brought water. And he cleaned the bathroom. When they leave in about a week the soldiers will leave behind a large pile of leftovers from their rations.

During that night, when the family was locked into one room, the soldiers made a search of the house. They emptied drawers and cupboards, overturned furniture, broke the television, cut the phone line, took away the telephone and broke another hole in a wall that leads to another apartment. Along the broken wall is a picture done in watercolors that was painted by her brother-in-law's brother when he was 15. He drew a Swiss landscape: a lake, snowcapped mountains, evergreen trees, a deer, a house with a red-tiled roof and smoke curling from the chimney. By the shore of the lake he painted two mustached men dressed as Palestinians, riding a donkey. The date: May 10, 1995. The signature: Ashraf Abu al-Haija.

Al-Haija was killed on one of the first days of the IDF attack, hit by a rocket. On Tuesday of last week his scorched body was still lying in one of the rooms of the half-destroyed house. Al-Haija was an activist in Hamas, who together with members of other armed groups had sworn to defend the camp to the death. J.Z., two of whose nephews were among the armed men who were killed, estimates that they numbered no more than 70. "But everyone who helped them saw himself as active in the resistance: those who signaled from afar that soldiers were approaching, those who hid them, those who made tea for them." According to him, no door in the camp was closed to them when they fled from the soldiers who were looking for them, the people of the camp, he said, decided not to abandon him, not to leave the fighters to their own devices. This was the decision of the majority, taken individually by each person.

Despite his family and emotional relationship with many of the armed men, he admits that it is hard for him to describe exactly how the fighting went in which they were killed and in which Israeli soldiers were killed. "From reconstructions that we made together, it appears to us that the army attacked the camp with tank and machine gun fire from several directions and tried to get infantry forces in. But because of the resistance by our fighters, this failed. Then they started to attack all the houses in the camp with helicopters and tanks, indiscriminately. The soldiers that took over the houses at the edge of the camp signaled where to fire and hit." Gradually, the armed Palestinians were routed deeper into the camp, to their last battles.

J.Z. is a construction worker who built his own home and homes of friends. His house was destroyed by direct hits from several rockets. He is sleeping at the home of his young friend, A.M. When darkness envelops the camp, whose electricity has been cut off since April 3, candlelight shines through only a few of the windows. There is an illusion that a window through which light does not shine will not be hit by shooting. IDF fire continues at intervals, though there are no longer any Palestinians who will shoot in the direction of the soldiers. From time to time the silence is shattered by the sound of an explosion.

Anxiety and uncertainty are overcome in a conversation typical of these days, with A.N.'s mother and his aunt. On Monday evening the conversation with the guest from Israel began with the enumeration of those J.Z. knows were killed: Seven of them were armed men killed in battle. There were 10 civilians, among them three women and at least two old men. There are scores of people whose fate is still unknown.

The conversation jumps from memories of the prison installation at Ketsiot, where J. was imprisoned during the first intifada and which has now been reopened, for soldiers. One soldier, someone had told A.M., had left his skullcap in a house he had searched. Heavy shooting enveloped the neighborhood and the house where he had forgotten the skullcap. The soldier told a young Palestinian who had been "recruited" that if he brought him the skullcap he would be released. Dodging the bullets, the young man ran to the house, brought the skullcap and was allowed to go home. J. tells another story that is going around the camp, about soldiers who were attacked from inside a house they had taken over earlier, from which they fled, leaving their weapons behind. It is said in the camp that one of them cried: "Mother, mother, what kind of war is this?"


4. Listen to Barghouti
Gideon Levy

It's a good thing Israel did not kill Marwan Barghouti; but it's a shame that it arrested him. Following dozens of assassinations, the Israel Defense Forces suddenly proved that when it wants to arrest someone instead of assassinating him, it knows how to do it quite well. If Israel had only adopted the same approach with Fatah activist Dr. Thabet Thabet, or the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abu Ali Mustafa, plus a long list of other targeted Palestinians, the intifada's flames would be a lot lower and a lot of blood would have been spared on both sides.

Regrettably, however, Israel did not take the wiser course of action and allow the Tanzim leader to remain in hiding, the way it has done with some of the other leaders of the Palestinian security services whom, Israel says, have been involved in terror attacks. Arresting Barghouti may have been just, but it is not wise. Now he'll become the Palestinian Nelson Mandela.

Now that Barghouti is under arrest, Israel must put him on trial in a civilian court, as befits a political leader suspected of serious crimes. As for the difference between civilian courts and military ones, it has already been said that it's about the same as the difference between a philharmonic orchestra and a military band - the same instruments, but with different results.

Barghouti has a much greater chance of getting a fair trial to which, like any suspect, he is entitled - in a civilian court in Jerusalem than in the military tribunals of Beit El. The court hearings should be open to the public, so that the representatives of the Shin Bet security service and the State Prosecution are required to display the evidence against the man to the entire world. And do we still need to point out that Barghouti should not be tortured, as happened the last time he was arrested? Humiliating him will also fan the flames of rage in the Palestinian and Arab street.

Of no less importance is to listen to the accused. Not only could the Shin Bet learn quite a bit from him, all Israelis should take heed as well. Look at Barghouti and you'll understand the entire story.The path he took was the only one we showed the Palestinians a path on which we tripped and pushed them deeper and deeper into despair and ultimately to violence.

Barghouti may be responsible for ruthless terror attacks, but Israel is likely to long for leaders like him, because his heirs will be much, much worse. Full of vengeance and hate, they will not be partners to a compromise like he would be. "You think tomorrow they'll find someone more moderate than me, someone to make [Chief of Staff Shaul] Mofaz coffee in the morning?" he quipped to me a few months ago when he feared he was on Israel's death list.

Barghouti did not begin by killing. As a politician, who apparently turned into a terrorist, it cannot be said of him that he did not try the path of negotiations. He was a peace activist. Few Palestinians were as active as he in promoting peace. He was deeply involved in contacts with many Israelis - and not only ones from the left and never hid his admiration for certain elements of Israeli life. "I wake up in the morning and look West, not East," he once told me. In those days, he marched in peace demonstrations, his arms locked with those of Meretz lawmakers Dedi Zucker and Zahava Gal-On.

That image may be surreal now, just like the days when he used to take his children to the Safari animal park in Ramat Gan. He would visit the political parties' central committees and MKs, making friends with some of them on joint delegations overseas, never missing a meeting and believing all the time in the purpose of the dialogue. "When will you finally understand that nothing frightens the Palestinians the way the settlements do?" he asked me on Land Day in 1997, while we drove around burning tires in his little car.

A few months ago, while already in hiding, he still called himself "the Palestinian peace camp." An alumnus of Israeli prisons, Barghouti is practically the last vestige of those Palestinians who knew Israelis well and even admired some of their characteristics. "I tell myself how patient we were," he said recently. "I was ready to meet with Shas and the Likud - with everyone. To talk. To persuade. But the Israelis don't want to understand." Now, the beloved has become an enemy. "I know how I've changed," he admits.

More than anything else - and he should be believed on this he wanted an end to the occupation, not the killing of Israelis and the destruction of their state. But the path grew longer and longer, until, as far as he was concerned, it was never-ending. As in any criminal case, pay attention to the motive for the crime: Barghouti's motive was politically justified, even if his actions cannot be. The politician became the leader of a violent organization that chose terror. At first, he limited his organization to actions only inside the occupied territories, apparently escalating its efforts until he eventually sent suicide bombers to Tel Aviv. "Why should you feel safe in Tel Aviv when we don't feel secure in Ramallah?" he asked.

The image of Barghouti shackled by Israeli soldiers is also a picture that goes back terribly far in time. The former prisoner and deportee, who became a leader and a legitimate partner for dialogue, is once again in irons. Israeli tanks are in the casbahs, soldiers are in the refugee camps, the Ketziot Prison has reopened, and Barghouti is under arrest once again. The long path Israelis and Palestinians walked together seems to have vanished, as if it had never existed at all. When Barghouti is released again from prison, he'll be even more extreme. Maybe by then, there will be nobody to talk with.

"This is our gift for Independence Day," one IDF officer so arrogantly defined his arrest. No gift could be more depressing.


5. Israel’s recipe for perpetual conflict"
Naseer Aruri on why Oslo was doomed to fail
19 April 2002 Page 7

NO ISRAELI defense of its war on Palestinians would be complete without a reference to Yasser Arafat’s supposed rejection of "peace" at the Camp David summit hosted by Bill Clinton in 2000. The story is so engrained in the mythology of the conflict that the mainstream media repeat it at the drop of a hat--that an irrational Arafat walked away from a generous Israeli offer that would have given his Palestinian Authority (PA) control of 95 percent of the Occupied Territories of Gaza and the West Bank.

The facts are different. NASEER ARURI is the author of The Obstruction of Peace: The U.S., Israel and the Palestinians. He explained the reality to ANTHONY ARNOVE.

DID YASSER Arafat reject peace at Camp David?

ARAFAT WAS offered neither a credible peace nor a viable Palestinian state at Camp David II.

Israel had reneged on its obligation to make an agreed-upon withdrawal, and proceeded to Camp David with a speech by Prime Minister Barak in which three no’s were delivered: not to any return to the 1967 borders of Israel, no to any change in the status of Jerusalem, and no to the return of refugees.

The myth of the "generous offer" consisted of four enclaves, bisected by illegally built colonial settlements and bypass roads for Jews only that would have prevented the Palestinians from ever establishing a viable, independent and contiguous state in any area between the River Jordan and
the Mediterranean Sea.

Although the four cantons (northern West Bank, central West Bank, southern West Bank and Gaza) may have been called a "state," the requirements of nation-states were sorely missing. It would have been a state without sovereignty, without geographic continuity and lacking control over its borders, airspace and economic and water resources. In fact, it would have consisted of 64 clusters as islands in the midst of Israel--a "state" existing within Israel, but not alongside Israel.

Moreover, the often-touted story that Barak offered to relinquish 95 to 96 percent of the West Bank-Gaza territory was never examined by the army of U.S. journalists who never spare a chance to repeat it.

The percentage game didn’t take into account the fact that occupied and annexed East Jerusalem was expanded from six square kilometers to 70 square kilometers--to include the land of 28 Palestinian villages. Israel’s total percentage figures have conveniently excluded Jerusalem,the Dead Sea, the Jordan Valley and the settlements.

Needless to say, the West Bank and Gaza constitute 22 percent of pre-Israel Palestine, in which Jewish ownership comprised 7 percent. So the generous offer was not 95 percent of the 22 percent, but more like 70 percent of the 22 percent--which would be about 15 percent of historic
Palestine at best.

Moreover, Arafat was expected to relinquish the right of the refugees to return, which is guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as by UN General Assembly Resolution 194. In addition, Israel would have retained sovereignty on the land on which Muslim and Christian Holy places are built, while the Palestine Authority would have had control over the buildings.

This was certainly a recipe for perpetual conflict rather than peace.

DO YOU think the Oslo "peace" process was doomed to fail?

THE OSLO process failed because it was an agreement to reach an agreement with built-in gridlock. It was intended to create a facade of diplomacy that would enable Israel to conquer additional Palestinian territory for colonial settlements and bypass roads, under presumed peace
conditions.

The Israeli strategy behind Oslo was based on pursuing a settlement that excluded any sovereign existence for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. It was designed to be a cost-effective strategy, in which the economic and moral cost of policing the occupation would be transferred to Arafat and his Palestinian Authority, while Israel would be released to pursue its world trade ambitions in an atmosphere of normalization with the Arab Middle East.

Knowing that the end game would never include Palestinian independence and the dismantling of the occupation, Israeli governments--irrespective of whether they were led by Likud or Labor--exploited the gridlock in order to procrastinate and prolong the interim period, but never arrive at the final-status negotiations.

The Oslo process became, in effect, a mere process with little substance--a process of creating a self-governing modality for thePalestinians, instead of reaching accords on sovereignty, borders, water, Jerusalem and refugees.

That was the reason for Bill Clinton’s personal involvement in what became known as the Wye River agreement and the Hebron agreement during the late 1990s, among other attempts to iron out problems.

During these endless meetings, the Palestinian Authority was pressed to make one concession after another, including becoming virtually a CIA operative whose mission was to eliminate any popular resistance to the occupation (defined as terrorism).

When Ehud Barak finally decided to renege on Israel’s obligations to make scheduled withdrawals and opted for a final settlement at Camp David in July 2000, the pillars of a credible settlement were absent. Arafat, however, was coaxed into attending a prematurely arranged conference that was bound to fail. Having realized that they had more than exhausted the search for a negotiated settlement, the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories rebelled, and the rest is well-known.

WHAT STRATEGY is Sharon following now?

SHARON’S STRATEGY right now is a continuation of his strategy from more than a quarter of a century ago--the redefinition of Israel’s borders to include all of pre-1948 Palestine, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. He has been an outspoken advocate of the notion that the
Palestinians should have their sovereign state--in Jordan.

Under the pretext of dismantling the "terrorism infrastructure," he launched an all-out onslaught designed to obliterate not only the Palestinian Authority, but also the economic and political infrastructure of the Palestinians, including cultural, medical and humanitarian institutions.

As prime minister, he has been vigorously trying to browbeat Palestinians into an unconditional surrender--forcing them to end their uprising against the occupation once and for all and accept a fragmented entity under Israel’s overall control.

He has tightened the economic siege and blocked communication between towns, villages and cities--making life unbearable for the ordinary Palestinian, with the purpose of persuading as many as possible to leave.

This is calculated to implement the policy known in Israel as "transfer"--meaning expulsion of Palestinians, or ethnic cleansing.

A negotiated settlement, even on the basis of Oslo, hasn’t been and isn’t now on Sharon’s agenda. That doesn’t mean that it’s on the agenda of the Labor Party, whose luminaries such as Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak have adhered to the same strategies with different tactics.

Thus, any attempts by Colin Powell to broker a settlement will be futile unless the occupation is dismantled in accordance with international law, and negotiations begin over implementing international law relating to the principal issues, such as the status of Jerusalem, rights of refugees, water and borders.

MCC Palestine Update #45

MCC Palestine Update #45

The US Secretary of State comes, the US Secretary of State departs, and the humanitarian crisis in the occupied territories only intensifies. As of today's writing, the Israeli military is withdrawing from Nablus and Jenin, even as it remains in Bethlehem, Ramallah and Tulkarem. The devastation has been widespread. MCC is participating in relief efforts to Jenin, Nablus and other West Bank cities through two means: first, through convoys organized jointly by the Association of International Development Agencies and the Palestinian NGO Network; second, through a Joint Humanitarian Emergency Response of Christian NGOs (MCC, Catholic Relief Services, Lutheran World Federation, Caritas, Pontifical Mission for Palestine). For more information on MCC's relief efforts, see MCC's website: http://www.mcc.org/

As MCC staff accompanies these relief convoys, we hear one refrain repeated over and over: this relief aid is good and appreciated, but what we want is our freedom. The mounting humanitarian crisis in the occupied territories and the devastation of the Palestinian infrastructure which will take years to rebuild are simply the byproduct of Israel's ongoing military occupation of the West Bank.

Below are reports from the Jenin refugee camp, scene of the greatest devastation of the past three weeks.

INSIDE THE CAMP OF THE DEAD - The Times
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-268533,00.html

GRISLY EVIDENCE OF WAR CRIMES - The Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=285413

THE LUNAR LANDSCAPE THAT WAS CAMP JENIN - The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,685133,00.html

BLASTED TO RUBBLE BY THE ISRAELIS - The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$IWRB3RYAAF115QFIQMGSFF4AVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2002/04/16/wmid16.xml&sSheet=/portal/2002/04/16/ixport.html

JENIN CAMP SITUATION 'HORRENDOUS' - BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1930000/19302 95.stm


AMID THE RUINS OF JENIN, THE GRISLY EVIDENCE OF A WAR CRIME
From Phil Reeves in Jenin

[The Independent - 16 April 2002]: A monstrous war crime that Israel has tried to cover up for a fortnight has finally been exposed. Its troops have caused devastation in the centre of the Jenin refugee camp, reached yesterday by The Independent, where thousands of people are still living amid the ruins.

A residential area roughly 160,000 square yards about a third of a mile wide has been reduced to dust. Rubble has been shoveled by bulldozers into 30ft piles. The sweet and ghastly reek of rotting human bodies is everywhere, evidence that it is a human tomb. The people, who spent days hiding in basements crowded into single rooms as the rockets pounded in, say there are hundreds of corpses, entombed beneath the dust, under a field of debris, criss-crossed with tank and bulldozer tread marks.

In one nearby half-wrecked building, gutted by fire, lies the fly-blown corpse of a man covered by a tartan rug. In another we found the remains of 23- year-old Ashraf Abu Hejar beneath the ruins of a fire- blackened room that collapsed on him after being hit by a rocket. His head is shrunken and blackened. In a third, five long-dead men lay under
blankets.

A quiet. sad-looking young man called Kamal Anis led us across the wasteland, littered now with detritus of what were once households, foam rubber, torn clothes, shoes, tin cans, children’s toys. He suddenly stopped. This was a mass grave, he said, pointing.

We stared at a mound of debris. Here, he said, he saw the Israeli soldiers pile 30 bodies beneath a half-wrecked house. When the pile was complete, they bulldozed the building, bringing its ruins down on the corpses. Then they flattened the area with a tank. We could not see the bodies. But we could smell them.

A few days ago, we might not have believed Kamal Anis. But the descriptions given by the many other refugees who escaped from Jenin camp were understated, not, as many feared and Israel encouraged us to believe, exaggerations. Their stories had not prepared me for what I saw yesterday.

I believe them now.

Until two weeks ago, there were several hundred tightly-packed homes in this neighborhood called Hanat al-Hawashim. They no longer exist.

Around the central ruins, there are many hundreds of half-wrecked homes. Much of the camp – once home to 15,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war – is falling down. Every wall is speckled and torn with bullet holes and shrapnel, testimony of the awesome, random firepower of Cobra and Apache helicopters that hovered over the
camp.

Building after building has been torn apart, their contents of cheap fake furnishings, mattresses, white plastic chairs spewed out into the road. Every other building bears the giant, charred, impact mark of a helicopter missile. Last night there were still many families and weeping children still living amid the ruins, cut off from the humanitarian aid. Ominously, we found no wounded, although there was a report of a man being
Rescued from beneath ruins only an hour before we arrived.

Those who did not flee the camp, or not detained by the army, have spent the bombardment in basements, enduring day after day of terror. Some were forced into rooms by the soldiers, who smashed their way into houses through the walls. The UN says half of the camp's 15,000 residents were under 18. As the evening hush fell over these killing fields, we could suddenly hear the children chattering. The mosques, once so noisy at prayer time, were silent.

Israel was still trying to conceal these scenes yesterday. It had refused entry to Red Cross ambulances for nearly a week, in violation of the Geneva Convention. Yesterday it continued to try to keep us out.

Jenin, in the northern end of the occupied West Bank, remained "a closed military zone", was ringed Merkava tanks, army Jeep patrols, and armored personnel carriers. Reporters caught trying to get in were escorted out. A day earlier the Israeli armed forces took in a few selected journalists to see sanitized parts of the camp. We simply walked across the fields, flitted through an olive orchard overlooked by two Israeli tanks, and into the camp
itself.

We were led in by hands gesturing at windows. Hidden, whispering people directed us through narrow alleys they thought were clear. When there were soldiers about, a finger would raise in warning, or a hand waved us back. We were welcomed by people desperate to tell what had occurred. They spoke of executions, and bulldozers wrecking homes with people inside. "This is mass murder committed by Ariel Sharon," Jamel Saleh, 43, said. "We feel more hate for Israel now than ever. Look at this boy." He placed his hand on the tousled head of a little boy, Mohammed, the eight-year-old son of a friend. "He saw all this evil. He will remember it all." So will everyone else who saw the horror of Jenin refugee camp. Palestinians who entered the camp yesterday were almost speechless.

Rajib Ahmed, from the Palestinian Energy Authority, came to try to repair the power lines. He was trembling with fury and shock. "This is mass murder. I have come here to help by I have found nothing but devastation. Just look for yourself." All had the same message: tell the world.


THE LUNAR LANDSCAPE THAT WAS THE JENIN REFUGEE CAMP
By Suzanne Goldenberg in Jenin

[The Guardian - Tuesday April 16, 2002] A fortnight ago, before Israeli forces invaded, this was a crowded, bustling place. The narrow alleys between the cinderblock homes - spanning barely the width of outstretched arms - were packed with children.

Yesterday, the Hart al-Hawashin neighborhood, the heart of the Jenin refugee camp, was a silent wasteland, permeated with the stench of rotting corpses and cordite. The evidence of lives interrupted was everywhere. Plates of food sat in refrigerators in houses sheared in half by Israeli bulldozers. Pages from children's exercise books fluttered in the breeze.

In a ruined house, the charred corpse of a gunman wearing the green bandana of Hamas lay where it fell, beside his ammunition belt. Electric cables snaked through the ruins. Alleys leading off the square deepened the image of wanton destruction: entire sides of buildings gouged out, stripped out to the kitchen tiles like discarded dolls' houses. The scale is almost beyond imagination: a vast expanse of rubble and mangled iron rods, surrounded by the gaping carcasses of shattered homes.

Yesterday the first definitive accounts of the battle of Jenin began to emerge as journalists broke through the Israeli cordon and gained access to the heart of the refugee camp. Palestinians describe a systematic campaign of destruction, with the Israeli army ploughing through occupied homes to broaden the alleys of the camp and make them accessible to tanks and vehicles.

But they also say the demolition campaign increased dramatically in the last two days of the battle for Jenin, with Israeli bulldozers exacting harsh retribution for the killing of 13 Israeli soldiers last Tuesday. "When the soldiers were killed, the Israelis became more aggressive," said Ali Damaj, who lives on the eastern edge of the camp."In one night, I counted 71 missiles from a helicopter."

For the Palestinians, the battle for the Jenin refugee camp has become a legend. Before the last of the militants surrendered last Wednesday, the camp saw the bloodiest fighting of Israel's offensive on West Bank towns. The brutal close-quarters combat claimed the lives of 23 Israeli soldiers, and an unknown number of Palestinians, civilians as well as fighters.

Palestinians accuse Israel of a massacre, and there are convincing accounts from local people of the occasional summary execution. However, there are no reliable figures for Palestinian dead and injured. The Red Cross carried away seven bodies yesterday, but the smell of rotting corpses remained.

"The soldiers had a map with them of the houses they wanted bulldozed, and outlined them with a blue marker," said Aisha Salah, whose house overlooks the field of destruction. "You could see the houses, you could see the trees. It was a very detailed map. I could even find my own home."

Ms Salah's home was occupied by Israeli soldiers who entered her living room by punching a hole through the neighbour's wall. Before they withdrew, one of the soldiers wrote a message on the wall in neat blue ink: "I don't have another land".

A week ago, one of the Israeli soldiers bedded down in Ms Salah's house was shot in the face by a Palestinian sniper as he stood at the window. Two days later, 13 Israeli soldiers were lured to their deaths in a nearby alley by a series of booby trap explosives, and then picked off by Palestinian gunmen.

"When there was resistance, especially after the 13 soldiers were killed, I could see a lot more squares on the map," said Ms Salah.

The systematic bulldozing of Palestinian homes began four days after Israeli forces blasted their way into the camp on the night of April 3, strafing houses from helicopter gunships, and pounding them with tank shells. Several civilians were killed in the initial assault, including Afif al-Dasuki. An elderly woman, who lived alone, she was evidently too slow when the Israeli soldiers pounded on her door and asked her to open up. Her neighbours discovered her body a week after her death, by the smell of decomposition, huddled behind the yellow-painted steel door, with the large hole in the middle.

Four days later, the army razed six houses in the Damaj neighbourhood on its eastern edges. They began with the house of Fatima Abu Tak, flattening homes on both sides of the street, "When I saw the house of Ahmed Goraj collapse, there was a tremendous amount of smoke and dust. I never expected that the bulldozers would continue moving. I was in a state of shock,"said Mr Damaj, who fled to a neighbour's when his own home became dangerously unstable.

A few hours later, soldiers entered the camp on foot, shooting their way between the cinderblock homes in groups of 15 or 20.Israeli soldiers injured in Jenin describe this as the most nerve-wracking part of the battle. "They booby trapped every centimeter. In one meter you would find 20 small booby traps or a big balloon attached with a wire. Every metre was very dangerous," said Dori Scheuer, who was shot in the stomach by a Palestinian gunman a week ago on Monday. "It was much more dangerous for us than it was for them because they knew the territory."

People in the camp say the capability of their fighters did not run much beyond pipe bombs packed with homemade explosives. However, the fighters were organised.

Palestinians admit the camp was liberally mined two or three days before the assault. But the strategy failed because Israel had no compunction about razing homes to make roads for its tanks.

"The thing we did not count on was the bulldozer. It was a catastrophe. If the Israelis had only gone one by one inside the camp, they would never have succeeded in entering," said Mr Damaj.

After the 13 soldiers were killed, Israel appears to have abandoned foot patrols. Instead, the army began knocking houses down indiscriminately, creating a vast plaza of rubble in the centre of the camp, a crossroads for the Israeli tanks.

"They just started demolishing with the people inside," said Hania al-Kabia, a mother of six whose flat is on the edge of the lunar landscape. "I used to hear them on the loudspeaker saying come out, come out. Then they stopped doing that, but they went on
bulldozing."


THE JENIN REFUGEE CAMP BEFORE THE MASSACRE
Who Lives In Jenin Refugee Camp?
A Brief Statistical Profile
By Rita Giacaman and Penny Johnson

[Birzeit University - April 14, 2002]: The international media has begun to show some of the tragic human consequences of Israels assault on Jenin refugee camp: from one BBC report alone images flash of an old woman in a wheelchair abandoned in a field, dislocated families streaming towards neighboring villages, a woman weeping by the roadside for her husband shot while tending sheep, an injured man huddling in bed surrounded by his family who has called repeatedly for am ambulance.Yet Israeli officials persist in a rhetoric that brands Jenin refugee camp as a terrorist camp, with its all of its inhabitants, men, women and children of any age, thus also marked as terrorists and all actions taken against them thus justified.

Who are the people who live in Jenin Refugee Camp? Using data from the PCBS 1997 national census, UNRWA information and a 1999 community- based household survey by the Institute of Womens Studies at Birzeit University, in cooperation with the Institute of Community and Public Health, which included Jenin camp among the nineteen communities studied, we can glimpse a community of human beings living in want, and in very difficult circumstances, with particular vulnerabilities and with aspirations for a
better future for their children.

The 1997 national census recorded a population of 9104 in Jenin refugee camp, living in 1614 households. UNRWA reports a larger population of registered refugees at 13,055, suggesting that some households live outside formal camp boundaries which are quite restricted. Jenin camp lies within the municipal boundaries of Jenin, and was established in 1953 on 373 dunums of land, roughly a square kilometer. The dense population of the camp and the crowding of houses and facilities contributes to the dangers to innocent civilians, mostly women and children and older people, as those constitute roughly 67% of the population living there, particularly when Israeli airpower (F-16s and Apache helicopter gunships) and tank fire were used against the camp.

Almost half of camp children or elderly

Using PCBS figures, average household size is thus 5.6, slightly larger than the adjoining city of Jenin but lower than the national average of 6.1. 42.3% of the population of Jenin refugee camp is under fifteen years of age and 4.3% over sixty-five years of age; about 47% of the population are thus children and the elderly and particularly vulnerable in times of armed conflict and war. There are roughly equal numbers of males and females.

Both Jenin camp and city are refugee populations

Over 95% of the residents of the camp are registered refugees according to the national census. UNRWA reported that " Most of the camp's residents came from villages which can be seen from the camp and which lie today inside the Green Line in Israel'. Many of the refugees still maintain close ties with their relatives in those villages. Also of interest is that half (49.7%) of the population of Jenin city (population in 1997: 26,650) are also refugees. Israel's assault on Jenin is thus an attack on a largely refugee population.

One-third work as unskilled laborers; unemployment high even before intifada

In the 1997 national census, about 70% of Jenin refugee camp males 15 and over were economically active in the formal labor force and another 20% were students. About 14% of refugee camp women 15 years and over were economically active in the labor force, which is higher than the national average, while 21% were students and 53% were home-makers. For the male labor force, as UNRWA points out : " while many camp residents find employment in the agricultural sector, many are still dependent on work inside Israel".

Following the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the close proximity of Palestinian communities inside Israel to communities in the Jenin District, as well as social and cultural links, encouraged an increase in commercial activities across the borders. An increasing number of workers, formerly absorbed in local agriculture began working inside Israel and local agricultural activities declined with a consequential serious deterioration in agricultural productivity. More recently, conditions which emerged during the first and particularly the second uprising, the tightening of Israeli restrictions of movement, and the cutting off of relations between the town and even its villages led to serious economic strife. The inability of laborers to travel freely for employment led to very high levels of unemployment there, and a severe drop in family incomes.

Patterns of occupation and employment, as found in the IWS survey, also indicate chronic deprivation, with 48% of those living in the town being employers or self employed, in contrast to 25% in the camp. Almost a third of the camp labor force are unskilled workers, most of these are among the third of the labor force that works irregularly as day laborers. The IWS household survey revealed a relatively high unemployment rate in the camp, even before the beginning of this uprising. For those in the labor force, we found that only 64% of camp dwellers were working regularly, compared to a higher 81% in the town. We also found that the unemployment rate was
around 10% in the camp, compared to 4% in the city. Looking at unemployment by household, we found that 94% of households in towns have at least one member working, compared to only 85% in the camp. Even before the invasion, one can assume that the quarter of the camp labor force that worked outside the Jenin District was largely unable to reach their work

Home economy sustains families, but women under heavy burden

The home economy in Jenin camp seems to be an important means to sustain families, and indicative of under-development, deprivation and poverty. It appears to take up significant amounts of women’s labor. In this day and age, a high of 52% of Jenin camps women respondents reported baking bread on a daily basis, compared to 23% in Jenin town. Nine percent in the camp still process dairy products, 23% preserve foods, 15% raise poultry, 17% bake pastries and sweets always and 59% sometimes, and 4% sell poulty and livestock products for money. In contrast, these home production activities especially in the towns of the West Bank, are by now almost extinct. When asked about why they engage in these activities, 27% reported that this cuts down on family expenses.

Both in situations of chronic deprivation and vulnerability and in times of crisis, there are particularly heavy burdens on women. In the IWS survey, 14% of the married female population between 15-65 had married before the age of 15 and 28% under the age of sixteen. Drop-out rates in the Jenin district are also particularly high. Pressures for girls to leave school for marriage and boys for work arise from difficult economic circumstances in the family. These difficult circumstances also affect health: a large 48% of women in the 15-65 age group, for example, reported at least one miscarriage.

Chronic poverty in refugee camps

In available data for 1996-1998, residents of refugee camps are generally poorer than residents in villages and cities. In the West Bank, where camp residents make up about 6% of the population, 19% of refugee camp residents were under the poverty line in the relatively prosperous year of 1998, while 16.5% of villagers and 10.4% of urban residents were. Levels of deep poverty were also higher in camps. In addition, the Jenin and Hebron Districts are the poorest of the West Bank eight districts, with three times as many households under the poverty line in 1998 than households in the Ramallah/Bireh district, for example. Given PCBSs estimates of a 48% drop in median household income nationally after six months of closures and siege during the second Palestinian intifada, wecan only assume that Jenin camp households were already struggling to survive even before the Israeli assault on their homes, and must now suffer serious want.

The poorest of the poor: Special concern for those who depend on social assistance
Of special concern are those households already surviving on special hardship assistance from UNRWA or the Ministry of Social Affairs primarily female-headed households (mainly widows) or households whose head is elderly, disabled or chronically ill. In 1999, the Ministry of Social Affairs reported that 7.4% of households in Jenin camp (120 households) were receiving social assistance and UNRWA reports 307 households in Jenin camp receiving special hardship assistance, for a total of 877 beneficiaries. In the Jenin camp sample from the Institute of Women’s Studies (IWS) 1999 survey, 20% reported receiving formal social assistance from MSA, UNRWA’s or NGOs, compared to only about 2% in the city of Jenin, itself a relatively poor environment. Using the wealth index in this survey, 47% of Jenin camp residents were poor, while only 23% in Jenin city fell into this category (basically the lowest third of the population). Only 3% of camp residents owned any land. Tellingly, 70% of camp respondents in the IWS survey reported food as the biggest expense for their children, compared to only 24% in the city, an indication of lives where basic needs continue to be a struggle, even before the beginning of this Uprising. It is highly unlikely that the Ministry of Social Affairs is able to operate under current conditions and UNRWA also faces restrictions in reaching those poorest of the poor who are dependent on a monthly stipend for survival.

Jenin camp was also poorer than the adjoining city in census data, as measured by possession of durable goods. Only 36% of Jenin households had a phone line and 14% a private car, as opposed to 45% in Jenin city with a phone line and 33% with a private car. In times of war, these indicators of poverty are also indicators of increased vulnerability, blocking routes of escape and communication.

Education: Low Rates in Present; High Aspirations for Future

The national census reports that a third of women in Jenin camp over 12 (33.4%) are illiterate or have no formal schooling but some basic skills, while 20.9% of males are in the same category. As is true nationally, illiteracy is mostly among the older population. Still, only 22% of males and 18.9% of women have achieved secondary education or higher.

The Institute of Women’s Studies household survey of 1999 also investigated aspirations for male and female children. Despite the relatively low educational rates of the adult population in Jenin refugee camp or perhaps because of them mothers and fathers have high educational aspirations for their children. Almost 70% (69%) wanted their sons to achieve post-secondary education at a bachelors degree level and 67% wanted this same level of higher education for their daughters. The present times of war, dislocation and immiseration make these and other aspirations even harder to realize and at the same time more important in order for the people of Jenin refugee camp to survive, develop and realize their hopes for the future.


References:

1- BBC World Service, 11 April 2002, Report by Olga Guerin.
2- PCBS , Population, Housing and Establishment Census 1997, unpublished data on Jenin and Jenin refugee camp provided to the Institute of Womens Studies.
3- Giacaman and Johnson, ed. 2002. Inside Palestinian Households: Initial Analysis of a Community Based Household Survey, Volume 1. Birzeit University
4- See http://www.unrwa.org/refugees/wb/jenin.html
5- PCBS 2000. Poverty in Palestine(January-December 1998), table
6- PCBS April 2001, Impact of Israeli Measures on the Economic Conditions of Palestinian Households. Also see UNSCO reports on the Palestinian economy during this period.

MCC Palestine Update #44

MCC Palestine Update #44

In 1949 MCC began work in Jericho will Palestinian refugees following the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948. For more than ten years, the bulk of MCC's program with Palestinians was relief distribution to refugees. Then, from the 1970s through to the present, MCC's work focused more on development work, support of local Palestinian initiatives to build up Palestinian services and infrastructure in agricultural, women's empowerment, kindergarten education, rehabilitation of persons with disabilities, and conflict resolution.

Sadly, the mounting humanitarian crisis in the occupied territories has meant right now that it once more makes sense for MCC to be engaging in relief efforts. MCC has so far committed US $43,750 for the local purchase of basic foodstuffs (e.g., flour, rice, sugar) to be sent to cities recently reinvaded by Israeli troops to families whose monies and food are running low thanks to 19 months of 60-80% unemployment and now nearly three weeks of curfew. The first convoy--joined by a wide variety of international and Palestinian humanitarian aid organizations--went to Nablus on Tuesday; after some negotiation, we were able to enter and deliver the goods. Many more convoys are planned during the coming days.

Below you will find five pieces. The first, by Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, outlines in a grim way the massive support the Israeli public is providing its governments' repressive actions in the occupied territories. While we celebrate the refusal of some soldiers to participate in this senseless war, we must also be realistic about the fact that the vast majority of Israelis are simply giving the Sharon government carte blanche for all of its actions in the occupied territories. The second piece, by Bir Zeit professor Islah Jad, is a report on life in Ramallah under curfew. Third. This is followed by a report from LAW, a leading human rights center in the West Bank, on reports of Israeli soldiers digging mass graves in Jenin. Fourth, we include a poignant call by a Palestinian lecturer to UNESCO, asking the United Nations to take action to protect historic Palestinian buildings if it does not wish to protect Palestinians themselves. Finally, Israeli journalist Tom Segev discusses the disturbing frequency in Israeli political discourse of talk of "transfer" (i.e., expulsion/genocide).


1. The People’s War
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, 7 April 2002

For the second time in Israel’s history, Ariel Sharon is leading the country into a war of choice—as pernicious as any war of choice—and nearly the entire public is following him more than willingly. When history judges this war, only a few will be able to say that they opposed it from the outset. In the last analysis, it will also be very difficult to blame Sharon for the consequences of the war, in the light of the sweeping support he has been give by the majority of Israelis.

With a huge leap in the percentage of citizens who “rely on him”—from 45 percent in March to 62 percent in April, according to a poll reported by the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth—it seems that no one can express the aspirations of most Israelis like the prime minister. This is not a war that was waged by Sharon, the “warmonger,” this is the war of all of us. The call that was sounded at the right wing’s demonstration almost a month ago—“We want war,” the kind of call that is not heard in any enlightened country—has become the general sentiment.

Israel has set out on a bewildering operation whose goal no one understands and whose end no one can guess. Nearly 30,00 men were mobilized and they reported for duty as one man, making the refusal movement, with 21 refuseniks currently in jail, irrelevant. “We didn’t ask why, we just came,” the reservists told the prime minister, expressing the “together” syndrome that characterizes Israel at such times. Tens of thousands of men leave their homes, putting their normal life behind them, and set out to kill and be killed-and they don’t even ask why? That is the behavior of the herd.

The series of horrific suicide terrorist attacks in the heart of Israeli cities, which were preceded by brainwashing, brought about the present mess. The groundless contention that former prime minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians “almost everything” and in return they set in motion a wave of terrorism, has become the most widely accepted axiom in Israeli public opinion. To it was added the old assumption that “something has to be done” in the light of the terrorist attacks and that “doing something” means making use of a lot more force.

The Labor Party and the Likud joined forces in order to reach the conclusion that it was necessary to reoccupy the Palestinian cities, and to strike hard against the Palestinians to teach them a lesson in the practice of peace. Even the lying statements of prime minister that he had done everything he could to achieve a cease-fire, while ignoring the wholesale liquidations of wanted Palestinians, were widely believed.

So we have again become one nation that speaks in one voice and doesn’t ask questions, such as: Who will fight terrorism after we crush all the Palestinian security units? Who are all the “armed people” Israel is arresting, and will they become Israel’s security contractors after their release? What is the infrastructure of terrorism if not the occupation, the despair and the hatred? How will the shattering blow we have delivered against the entire Palestinian population help in the war against terrorism? How will it advance the peace, or at least the security of Israelis?

The nation wanted war, and it got what it wanted. Within a few days we succeeded in sowing hate in the heart of every Palestinian and it will not soon fade. The tens of thousands of Palestinians who are imprisoned in their homes after an unbearable year and a half, who are frightened by the sounds of gunfire and the rumbling of the tanks, the bodies that continue to be brought to the hospitals without letup; the mass arrests and the general destruction—these are now generating fierce resentment against us. The world, with the exception of the United States in the meantime, is again treating us like lepers, and public opinion in the Arab states is threatening to push their leaders into an all-out war. This is the balance of blood and terror of this operation, which has not a thing to be said to its credit, other than it satisfies the feelings of a public that is terrified by the terrorist attacks.

The Labor Party is a full partner to everything that is happening, despite its leaders’ talk about a political horizon, the Saudi plan and the day after. The problem is not the “day after” when the acts that are being perpetrated in Labor’s name today are horrendous. Meretz, Hadash [Israeli political parties] and the extra-parliamentary movements have begun to come out of the slumber lately, but have not been able to obtain mass support. Over the weekend the Peace Now organization announced that it would hold a “demonstration of tens of thousands”—but only a month from now.

Most of the press is in one of its lowest periods, not only in its near total mobilization in the cause, but also because it is not supplying the public with concrete information about what is going on an hour away. Rare shots of the suffering that the Palestinians are enduring were broadcast on Channel 2 and led the defense minister to temporarily close the territories to the Israeli media, according to a report last week.

In any event, much more about what is really going on can be gleaned from the foreign networks. The suffering of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians is hardly given expression, and the critical damage being done to the health and supply systems is barely mentioned. Again, the majority of Israelis don’t have the slightest idea of what their neighbors are going through.

This is a dark time in Israel. The damage we are causing ourselves will in part be irreversible. In the not so distant future, when it becomes clear that this war was pointless, the meaningful voices of opposition will begin to be heard. But they will be too few and toolate.


2. Where is the world to see this?
Islah Jad
9 April 2002

Dear friends everywhere,

Today is day 11 of the re-occupation of Ramallah. We hear less shootings but from time to time we hear explosions of forced entry into houses and I keep hearing the same stories over and over again. Ask everyone to gather in a room, they start their 'searching'. It is supposed to be a search for people, but in many cases they were 'searching' for something else, money, jewels, laptops, mobile phones... etc.

Jenine Al-Bina gave me a call to tell me that she cannot connected via e-mail first because she has no electricity and second because they stole her laptop during their 'visit'. She is neighbor to Elan Halevy who is in France. They 'visited' his apartment and turned everything upside down. Majdi al Malki is also a nearby neighbor. They used his house for two days, used the bath, kitchen, food, sleep, then stole his wife's gold and his two girls gifts. They did not forget to urinate on his carpeted floor. Today, I managed to get finally a bottle of gas for cooking, it took me one hour to find it, I was so happy to get one, everybody was asking me from where I got it. The usual shopsfor cooking gas were empty, the shopkeeper told me you are our customer, I will tell you, they allowed us only one truck to bottles, but it is in the industrial zone you have to get a taxi, if you find, and get one. This becomes so difficult, but I have to get one, since two days I am using my electric oven to heat water and also for cooking. I found a taxi, take my empty bottle, go to the place, get a bottle and come back full of happiness. I paid 35 NIS for the bottle and 30 NIS for the taxi ($12). In my house, Amal was waiting for me, we have to go and give some money to a woman who lives in downtown Ramallah.

This is the second case today I heard about, without having any money to buy food. We gave her some money.Her baby had an infection for two days with a fever. We told her to take him to one of the Medical Relief clinics. We went to the market to buy some vegetables and fruits, forget it. One kilo of tomatoes cost 10 NIS ($2). On normal days we get 4 or 5 kilos for that price. I was angry, and said to the man, "Are not you ashamed, why you are raising the price?" He denied and said "This doesn't stem from us, they allowed very little quantity from Israel. Our gardens where we get the good vegetables are sealed. Not even a bird can get out of Jenin and Nablus now." We left without buying. I wrote down a list of things to buy, but when you see the devastation in the city, shattered windows, the dirty streets, the clouds of dust filling the air, the provocative presence of the Israeli troops in al-Manarah square, I lost the desire to buy anything. I ask Amal about our friends in Nablus. She tells me what happened to Inas. She lives very close to the old city, the hottest point now, they visited her at 3 a.m., searched her house and asked her to come with them. They took her as a human shield to her neighbor's house about 20 meters away. They ordered her to knock the door, she rang the bell, they laughed at her and told her "Stupid! Don't you know that we cut all power in the city?" She knocked with her hand, but was pushed aside and they put a kind of dough on the door. It was blown up in a second while she was close to it. She started to shake all over.

In the house a family of 10 people, half asleep. To wake them up, they threw a stun grenade with a huge reverberation. The mother started to weep, saying, "Please don't harm my children." Inas
started to cry to see her see her very proud neighbor weeping like this. They ordered Inas to leave. "How, and what if they shoot me?" she asks, "It is curfew and almost dawn." They pushed her out but she insisted. The officer called out to let her go and she returned back to her home in her night dress and her slippers.

I said to Amal, the story I heard on ANN t.v, an Arab satellite channel, at 3 a.m. They interviewed Dr. Tariff Ashour, he is the head of what he calls a 'field hospital' in the old city of Nablus. During the interview you can hear clearly the cries of injured people dying. He said that in front of him were 18 corpses, and 3 on the way. They were mostly civilians, "one was shot dead when he came to give us some blankets to cover the bodies, another one was shot when he went to dig a grave in the courtyard of the hospital". The field hospital is located in an old mosque with very simple equipment. "We could not get out of the Old City even a single one of the injured or any of the bodies," he said. "We have no morgue in this place. What we have are plenty of first aid staff who can treat light injuries, but for serious injuries we have to leave them to die. These are the ones you can hear crying now and we can do nothing to help them. I have another one with serious injuries in his leg, we have to cut it tomorrow at 7, we have no other choice."

"For your information," he added, "we do this under continuous bombardment, this place was hit several times, but we have to do our duty. Where are our Arab brothers? Where is the world to see this?" I was telling Amal what I heard. I felt so angry. Why did no one prepare a proper hospital there? Why did no one provide needed equipment there? She replied that no one ever expected that, "They will go to this limit." I tried to calm myself down, and said at least they are better off than injured and killed in Jenin refugee camp, where they have nothing. I heard Dr.
Mohamed Ghali, head of Jenin public hospital saying on Al-Jazeera t.v that he gives directions to people in the camp what to do and after 5 days of fighting and heavy bombarding in Jenin refugee camp and the Old City, and the Old City of Nablus, they did not allow one single ambulance to get to these places or to evacuate any injured or killed. Kamel Jaber from Jenin tells me too that his friend Ibrahim Said has the body of his son Walid of 19 years old in his arms since two days now. He does not want to bury him but even if he did, he cannot. The Apache helicopter did not stop firing missiles and nobody knows what to do with their dead. On al-Jazeerah too I heard the voice of Hussam Khader, a Palestinian MP from Balata refugee camp. "Yes, they fired three missiles at my door step. My young daughter could no longer speak and we cannot take her to a doctor." Then Mahmoud Al-Alool, Nablus governor, "The situation is horrible and catastrophic. I keep getting calls from the Old City about the killed and the injured. If the Red Cross cannot manage to get them out, who can?"

On April 7th, they demolished Hendeya building with an F.16 bomb, a building of 7 floors turned to rubble. An old woman refused to leave her house. She is buried now under the rubble. They commit war crimes but who will punish them? "But people in Jenin refugee camp manage with their injured," said Amal. "They have a 'field hospital'", she insisted. I was surprised and I wished that what she is saying is true. I said "But yesterday, I heard the head of a first aid clinic there and he does not say that they have a 'field hospital'" "No," she adds, "I have a friend there and she told me that some shabab (young men) in the camp collected all towels and keffeya (the checkered Palestinian scarves) and put them in a big pan of water and boiled them on coal because they have no electricity, of course. They use these towels as sterilized bandages." "These might be useful for light injuries," I asked her, "but what about serious injuries?" "No, they die,"
she said.

I felt so depressed and angry. We saw a big poster of Yasser Arafat in al Manarah square written on it 'Just decide what you want, you are the great knight of this time'. I noticed that something was written in Hebrew over the Arabic writing and asked some passing by what is written. Nobody could tell me. When I came back home, my daughter told me that they wrote over Arafat's picture, "Mother, mother, where did you leave me?" or something like this. In al-Manarah square we meet many other women, all say Hamdulla assalama, ("Thank god for your safety"). "Yes, for the time being," we answer back.

We were a small group of women but we shouted at soldiers. “Go away, go back to your mothers! Sharon, get out of our land!” They just stared at us but after few minutes they threw a stun grenade with huge sound, and we ran away. Amal was laughing and said history has to register that the first bomb thrown at demonstrators was probably thrown at women. “As usual,” I said, “women are always the first to demonstrate after each occupation.” This happened after the 1967 war and in 1987 in the first Uprising. I came back home exhausted as usual, my hair felt like metal wires, so dry and full of dust. I need to take a shower. My daughter cooked some spaghetti again. I feel no desire to eat.

She forced me, saying "You have to. This might go for a long time. We have to survive. At least we are lucky that we are not dead or under ferocious fire like in Jenin or Nablus." When she mentioned Jenin and Nablus, it was too much for me and I started to cry. She left the food and joined me crying too. "It is good for our survival to cry sometimes," said Yasmine.

By 7p.m, I hear the news. "We extend our hand to the Palestinians for peace. We want to live side by side with them. They have to abandon their leadership. They brought on them catastrophe after catastrophe," Sharon said. I felt that he was not talking to us. He talks to some aliens he sees. He addresses the outside world with this talk but us we know how he speaks on the ground. How can politicians lie like this?

Sharon decided to add three ministers to his government, all right wing. One of them, Effi Eitam, is an ex- general who says publicly that "The land of Israel cannot contain two nations, it is us or them. We will not bring buses to force them into but we will make their lives so difficult to leave by their 'free will'." What a free country, what a free people, what a free spirit!

With these people in power, I think the worst will happen, although we did not see it yet. My love to all of you. Islah


3. Israel digs mass graves - covering up war crimes
LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment
10 April 2002

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

____________________________


LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment is a non-governmental organization dedicated to preserving human rights through legal advocacy. LAW is affiliate to the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), the Federation Internationale des Ligues de Droits de l'Homme (FIDH) and the World Organization Organization Against Torture (OMCT).

LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, PO Box 20873, Jerusalem, tel. +972-2-5833530, fax. +972-2-5833317, email: law@lawsociety.org, web: www.lawsociety.org


4. To: UNESCO, United Nations, From: Re-Occupied Palestine
Nahla Assali

Having given up on the world community to provide protection for human life in the Palestinian towns, villages and camps in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, especially during the current
brutal incursions, we call upon you as guardians of culture and cultural heritage to act on preventing the equally brutal destruction taking place right now in the historical old city of Nablus, a city that treasures tens of invaluable sites and private property which goes back to hundreds of years and which include houses and even palaces to well- known Nabulsi families beside the mosques, Turkish baths, soap factories and traditional suks.

The Israeli government is persistent in its policy to destroy human kind, trees and stone (Al-Bashar, Al-Shajar and Al-Hajar: these are the rhyming equivalents in Arabic) and since there is
nobody-not even in the stature of the President of power number one in the world-capable or willing to bridle this insanity, we approach you to stand up to your claims to civilization and culture. And in case this appeal reached you after the fact i.e. after the disaster, we still hold you –as a United Nation body – responsible to exercise your right in conducting the required investigation and inventory of all the damage incurred and make the perpetrators pay for their crimes against our precious stone.

As to trees, there will be Palestinians to replant them for generations to come.

As to human life lost in this most unjust war, time will take care of that. Living or deceased, those who committed crimes against us shall be prosecuted when this world we inhabit regains its soul.

Nahla Assali
Retired lecturer / Birzeit University
Written on behalf of friends besieged in Nablus.


5. A Black Flag Hangs Over the Idea of Transfer
Tom Segev
Haaretz, 5 April 2002

An evil spirit is infiltrating public discourse: the spirit of expulsion.

The zealots among the settlers still mostly use the slogan “Kahane was right,” but the slogan “No Arabs—No Terror” is representative of increasing number of spokesmen. It happens whenever there’s a proliferation of terror attacks. Kahane relied on God, Rehavam Ze’evi on David Ben-Gurion. Ze’evi tried to dress up his expulsion plans in the costume of decency: His planned expulsions would be “by agreement,” meaning on the basis of an agreement between the basis of an agreement between the state of Israel and the state that would absorb the expelled.

This week, Ze’evi’s heir, former minister Benny Elon, gave up the “agreement” element: He proposed to exploit the current war, and under cover of the battles, to “evacuate” the refugee camps in the West Bank. Elon was allowed to express those views on Israel Radio.

Minister Ephraim Sneh recently came out with a plan to transfer some Israeli Arab towns, including, apparently, one city, Umm el Fahm, to Palestinian sovereignty. Like physical transfer, the legal transfer proposed by Sneh is an expression of the desire to get rid of all of the Arabs: those in the territories and those in Israel. While still in uniform, Dr. Sneh liked to nurture his image as one of those officers who knew how to help the Arabs. In government cabinet sessions he sounds like a Liberman-Landau clone. Some participants find it difficult to believe their ears. Passionately supporting that transfer concept, the minister was allowed to propose on one of the TV talk shows that Israel expel relatives of suicide bombers.

Israeli law and international law do not allow a person’s citizenship to be revoked. But the law is only a law, so Eli Yishai, the interior minister, is hurrying to prepare legislation that would allow the state to strip citizenship from those it chooses. One of the suicide bombers lived in the territories, but was an Israeli citizenship by virtue of his parents’ marriage. Yishai has already ruled that there will be no more family reunifications. He also wants to take action against residents of the territories who hold Israeli identity cards. The result could be the same as in Jerusalem: a flood of people with Israeli ID cards in the West Bank swarming into Israel, but that problem could be solved if Sneh’s proposal is accepted.

This is not merely a matter of clean language. If the wave of terror propels Israel back to the 1930s, the next stage of deterioration is possible. Leaders of the Zionist movement discussed the transfer idea; up to the War of Independence it was only written and spoken about, but there is a link between the idea and the Palestinian tragedy of 1948. In advance of the Sinai operation of 1956, plans were drawn up for the mass expulsions of Israeli Arabs from the “Triangle.”

In the Six-Day War, nearly a quarter million Palestinians from the West Bank moved to Jordan, many by force. It wasn’t easy for them to return, and not all managed to do so. This is where the danger lies when the possibility of transfer becomes part of the political discourse, when it seemingly becomes a legitimate subject. Like military orders that have a black flag hanging
over their illegality, there are ideas that should have black flags over
them.