Battle of Jenin (2002)

The IDF announced that it would not withdraw its troops from the Jenin camp until it had collected the bodies of the Palestinian dead.[49] The army would not confirm Palestinian reports that military trucks had removed dozens of bodies, nor would it comment on whether or not burials had taken place.[50]

According to Haaretz, some of the bodies had already been removed from the camp by soldiers to a site near Jenin on April 11, but had not yet been buried. Palestinians allegedly buried others during the battle in a mass grave near the hospital on the outskirts of the camp.[49] On the evening of April 11, Israeli television showed footage of refrigerator trucks waiting outside the camp to transfer bodies to "terrorist cemeteries".[51] On April 12, Haaretz reported that

"The IDF intends to bury today Palestinians killed in the West Bank camp ... The sources said two infantry companies, along with members of the military rabbinate, will enter the camp today to collect bodies. Those who can be identified as civilians will be moved to a hospital in Jenin, and then on to burial, while those identified as terrorists will be buried at a special cemetery in the Jordan Valley."[51]

The same day, in response to a petition presented by the Adalah organization, the Israeli High Court ordered the IDF to stop removing the bodies of Palestinians killed in battle until after a hearing on the matter. MK Ahmed Tibi, one of many signatories to the petition before the court, said that removing the bodies from the city violated international law and was "intended to hide the truth from the public about the killing that occurred there".[52] Following the court's decision, issued by Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, the IDF stopped clearing the bodies from the camp.[49] It was reported that by the afternoon of April 13, the IDF had determined the location of 23 bodies in the camp which were marked on maps.[49] On April 14, the Supreme Court reversed its decision, and ruled that the IDF could remove the bodies.[49][50] IDF Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz confirmed to Israeli media on April 14 that the army intended to bury the bodies in the special cemetery.[49]

On April 15 humanitarian aid organizations were granted access to the camp for the first time since the invasion had begun.[50] Palestinian Red Crescent Society and International Committee of the Red Cross staff entered the camp, accompanied by the IDF. Officials from the Red Crescent told lawyer Hassan Jabareen that the IDF did not allow them to move around the camps freely, and that advanced decomposition, as well as the enormous destruction in the camp, made it impossible to find and retrieve bodies without the proper equipment. That same day Adalah and LAW, the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, filed a petition asking the Court to order the IDF to immediately hand over the bodies of Palestinians to the Red Cross or the Red Crescent, saying that the bodies of dead Palestinians were being left to rot in the camp.[53] On April 19, a day after Israeli troops withdrew from the camp, journalists reported counting about 23 bodies that were lined up on the outdoor grounds of the clinic, before being quickly buried by Palestinians.[47]

Tanya Reinhart notes that later Israeli media reports attempted to conceal and reinterpret their intention to transfer the bodies to the special cemetery in the Jordan Valley. As an example, she cites a July 17, 2002 article by Ze'ev Schiff in Haaretz which provided a wholly different explanation for the presence of the refrigerator trucks posted outside the city on April 11. Schiff's article said: "Toward the end of the fighting, the army sent three large refrigerator trucks into the city. Reservists decided to sleep in them for their air-conditioning. Some Palestinians saw dozens of covered bodies lying in the trucks and rumors spread that the Jews had filled the trucks full of Palestinian bodies."[51]

The Israelis said they found explosive-making labs and factories for assembling Qassam II rockets.[54] One Israeli special forces commander who fought in the camp said that "the Palestinians were admirably well prepared. They correctly analyzed the lessons of the previous raid".[35] Mardawi told CNN from prison in Israel, that after learning the IDF was going to use troops, and not planes, "It was like hunting ... like being given a prize. ... The Israelis knew that any soldier who went into the camp like that was going to get killed. ... I've been waiting for a moment like that for years".[26]

General Dan Harel, Head of the IDF Operations Directorate, said "There were indications it was going to be hard, but we didn't think it was going to be so hard".[1] An internal investigation published by the IDF six months after the battle implicitly cast the responsibility for the death of the thirteen soldiers on the soldiers themselves, for straying from their path unreported. It also said that the focusing on the rescue instead of subduing the enemy complicated things.[42] Buchris was given the Chief of Staff citation.[37]

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, who left the compound in Ramallah for the first time in five months on May 14, 2002 to visit Jenin and other West Bank cities affected in Operation Defensive Shield, praised the refugees' endurance and compared the fighting to the Battle of Stalingrad.[55] Addressing a gathering of about 200 people in Jenin, he said: "People of Jenin, all the citizens of Jenin and the refugee camp, this is Jenin-grad. Your battle has paved the way to the liberation of the occupied territories".[56] The battle became known among the Palestinians as "Jeningrad".[57]

The battle attracted the interest of the US military, which was trying to build a doctrine for urban warfare as the 2003 invasion of Iraq loomed. US military observers were sent to study the fighting. US officers dressed in IDF uniforms were reportedly present during the final stages of the battle. The United States Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory studied the battle, and a Joint Chiefs of Staff delegation was sent to Israel to make changes to US Marine Corps doctrine based on the battle.[58]

The BBC reported that ten percent of the camp was "virtually rubbed out by a dozen armoured Israeli bulldozers."[15] David Holley, a Major in the British Territorial Army and a military adviser to Amnesty International, reported that an area within the refugee camp of about 100 m by 200 m was flattened.[29] According to Stephen Graham, the IDF had systematically bulldozed an area measuring 160 by 250 m in the Jenin refugee camp.[59] The Hawashin neighbourhood was levelled.[60] Many residents had no advance warning, and some were buried alive.[60]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI) reported that an estimated 4,000 people, more than a quarter of the population of the camp, were rendered homeless because of this destruction. HRW listed 140 buildings, most of which housed multiple families, as completely destroyed, and 200 other buildings as sustaining damage rendering them uninhabitable or unsafe for use. AI said complete destruction affected 164 houses with 374 apartment units, and that other buildings had been partially destroyed. Israel said those numbers were exaggerations.[61]

On May 31, 2002, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published an interview with Moshe Nissim, nicknamed "Kurdi Bear", a D-9 operator who took part in the battle. Nissim said he had driven his D-9 for seventy-five hours straight, drinking whiskey to avoid fatigue, and that apart from a two-hour training course before the battle, he had no prior experience in driving a bulldozer. He said he had begged his officers to let him destroy more houses and added:
"I didn't see, with my own eyes, people dying under the blade of the D-9 and I didn't see house[s] falling down on live people. But if there were any, I wouldn't care at all ...
"But the real thing started the day 13 of our soldiers were killed up that alley in the Jenin refugee camp.
"If we had moved into the building where they were ambushed, we would have buried all those Palestinians alive.
"I kept thinking of our soldiers. I didn't feel sorry for all those Palestinians who were left homeless. I just felt sorry for their children, who were not guilty. There was one wounded child, who was shot by Arabs. A Golani paramedic came down and changed his bandages, till he was evacuated. We took care of them, of the children. The soldiers gave them candy. But I had no mercy for the parents of these children. I remembered the picture on television, of the mother who said she will bear children so that they will explode in Tel Aviv. I asked the Palestinian women I saw there: 'Aren't you ashamed?'" [62][63]

Reporting of casualty numbers during the invasion varied widely and fluctuated day to day. On April 10, the BBC reported that Israel estimated 150 Palestinians had died in Jenin, and Palestinians were saying the number was far higher.[64] That same day, Saeb Erekat, on a phone interview to CNN from Jericho, estimated that there were a total of 500 Palestinians killed during Operation Defensive Shield, this figure also including fatalities outside of the Jenin camp, in other areas of the West Bank.[65] On April 11, Ben Wedeman of CNN reported that Palestinians were reporting 500 dead, while international relief agencies were saying possibly as many as 200; he noted that his efforts to independently verify the claims had so far come to naught since people were being prevented from entering the camp by Israeli soldiers.[66]

On April 12, Brigadier-General Ron Kitri said on Army Radio that there were apparently hundreds of Palestinians killed in Jenin. He later retracted this statement.[67] Secretary-General of the Palestinian Authority, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, said that thousands of Palestinians had been killed and buried in mass graves, or lay under houses destroyed in Jenin and Nablus.[68] On April 13, Palestinian Information Minister, Yasser Abed Rabbo, accused Israel of killing 900 Palestinians in the camp and burying them in mass graves.[69] On April 14, Haaretz reported that the exact number of Palestinian dead was still unknown, but that the IDF placed the toll between 100 and 200.[49] On April 18, Zalman Shoval, adviser to Sharon, said that only about 65 bodies had been recovered, five of them civilians.[46] On April 30, Qadoura Mousa, director of the Fatah for the northern West Bank, said the number of dead was 56.[70]

Based on figures provided by the Jenin hospital and the IDF, the UN report placed the Palestinian death toll at 52 Palestinian, around half of whom were thought to be civilians.[71] In 2004, Haaretz journalists Amos Harel and Avi Isacharoff wrote that 23 Israeli soldiers had died and 52 had been wounded; Palestinian casualties were 53 dead, hundreds wounded and about 200 captured.[3] Human Rights Watch reported that at least 52 Palestinians died of whom at least 22 were civilians and at least 27 were suspected militants, and that it was unable to conclusively determine the status of the remaining three.[5] According to retired IDF General Shlomo Gazit, the death toll was 55 Palestinians.[72] Israeli officials estimated that 52 Palestinians were killed, of whom 38 had been armed men and 14 had been civilians.[73]

Human Rights Watch reported that of the Palestinians killed, "many of them were killed willfully or unlawfully, and in some cases constituted war crimes." Examples highlighted in the report include the case of 57-year-old Kamal Zugheir who was shot and then run over by IDF tanks while in his wheelchair, and that of 37-year-old Jamal Fayid, a quadraplegic crushed to death in the rubble of his home after an IDF bulldozer advanced upon it, refusing to allow his family to intervene to remove him. It also documented the killing of a Palestinian militant who had already been wounded.[74]

IDF and Israeli government sources reported that 23 Israeli soldiers were killed and 75 wounded. The UN report also noted that 23 IDF soldiers had been killed. The only exception was retired IDF General Shlomo Gazit, who initially said that 33 soldiers had died in Jenin.[72] This contradicted not only most IDF and other sources, but also IDF figures of 30 Israeli deaths total in Operation Defensive Shield.

The battle attracted widespread international attention due to allegations by Palestinians that a massacre had been committed. Reporters from various international media outlets quoted local residents who described houses being bulldozed with families still inside, helicopters firing indiscriminately into civilian areas, ambulances being prevented from reaching the wounded,[75] summary executions of Palestinians,[76] and stories of bodies being driven away in trucks or left in the sewers and bulldozed.[77] Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian cabinet minister, accused the Israelis of trying to cover up the killing of civilians.[78] The CNN correspondent noted that due to the IDF closure of the camp, there was "no way of confirming" the stories.[77] During and immediately after the battle, the United Nations and several human rights NGOs also expressed concern about the possibility of a massacre. A British forensic expert who was part of an Amnesty International team granted access to Jenin on April 18 said, "the evidence before us at the moment doesn't lead us to believe that the allegations are anything other than truthful and that therefore there are large numbers of civilian dead underneath these bulldozed and bombed ruins that we see."[46]

Israel denied charges of a massacre, and a lone April 9 report in the Israeli press stating Foreign Minister Shimon Peres privately referred to the battle as a "massacre"[79] was immediately followed by a statement from Peres expressing concern that "Palestinian propaganda is liable to accuse Israel that a 'massacre' took place in Jenin rather than a pitched battle against heavily armed terrorists."[80]

Subsequent investigations and reports by the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Time magazine, and the BBC all concluded there was no massacre of civilians, with estimated death tolls of 46–55 people among reports by the IDF, the Jenin office of the United Nations, and the Jenin Hospital.[81] A team of four Palestinian-appointed investigators reporting to Fatah numbered total casualties of 56,[70] as disclosed by Kadoura Mousa Kadoura, the director of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement for the northern West Bank.

The UN report to the Secretary General noted "Palestinians had claimed that between 400 and 500 people had been killed, fighters and civilians together. They had also claimed a number of summary executions and the transfer of corpses to an unknown place outside the city of Jenin. The number of Palestinian fatalities, on the basis of bodies recovered to date, in Jenin and the refugee camp in this military operation can be estimated at around 55."[82] While noting the number of civilian deaths might rise as rubble was cleared, the report continued, "nevertheless, the most recent estimates by UNRWA and ICRC show that the number of missing people is constantly declining as the IDF releases Palestinians from detention."[4] Human Rights Watch completed its report on Jenin in early May, stating "there was no massacre," but accusing the IDF of war crimes,[83] and Amnesty International's report concluded "No matter whose figures one accepts, "there was no massacre."[1] Amnesty's report specifically observed that "after the IDF temporarily withdrew from Jenin refugee camp on April 17, UNRWA set up teams to use the census lists to account for all the Palestinians (some 14,000) believed to be resident of the camp on April 3, 2002. Within five weeks all but one of the residents was accounted for."[84] A BBC report later noted, "Palestinian authorities made unsubstantiated claims of a wide-scale massacre,"[15] and a reporter for The Observer opined that what happened in Jenin was not a massacre.[85]

At the same time, Human rights organizations and some media reports charged Israel with war crimes.[86] In November, Amnesty International reported that there was "clear evidence" that the IDF committed war crimes against Palestinian civilians, including unlawful killings and torture, in Jenin and Nablus.[87] The report also accused Israel of blocking medical care, using people as human shields and bulldozing houses with residents inside, as well as beating prisoners, which resulted in one death, and preventing ambulances and aid organizations from reaching the areas of combat even after the fighting had reportedly been stopped.[88] Amnesty criticized the UN report, noting that its officials did not actually visit Jenin.[89] The Observer reporter, Peter Beaumont, wrote that what happened in Jenin was not a massacre, but that the mass destruction of houses was a war crime.[85] Some reports noted that Israel's restriction of access to Jenin and refusal to allow the UN investigation access to the area were evidence of a coverup, a charge echoed by Mouin Rabbani, Director of the Palestinian American Research Center in Ramallah.[90]

On the other side, Israeli media sources and analysts suggested media bias and propaganda efforts were the source of the allegations. Haaretz editor Hanoch Marmari stated, "some correspondents might have been obsessive in their determination to unearth a massacre in a refugee camp".[91] Mohammed Dajani of Al-Quds University said that the Palestinian Authority wanted "to turn Jenin into an 'Alamo episode'. Here the press was a willing partner [as] they aspired to make Jenin a symbol of resistance to Palestinians".[92] In May 2009, the IDF released a videotape showing what it called "a phony funeral that the Palestinians organized in order to multiply the number of casualties in Jenin," wherein a live person is wrapped in a green sheet and marched in a procession.[93] LAW, the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights, held a press conference on May 8, disputing the conclusions drawn by Israel. LAW stated that Mohammad Bakri who was in Jenin on April 28, making his documentary film Jenin, Jenin, shot the same footage from the ground, and that it shows a group of children playing "funeral" near the cemetery. LAW added that, "The media uncritically took up the Israeli spokesmen conclusions, without investigating what the footage actually shows."[94]

Harel and Issacharoff wrote that the IDF's misconduct with the media, including Kitri's statement, contributed to the allegations of massacre. Mofaz later admitted that the limitations imposed on the media were a mistake. Head of the Operations Directorate, General Dan Harel, said: "Today, I would send a reporter in every APC".[27] IDF Spokeswoman, Miri Eisen, said the decision not to allow reporters into the camp was a difficult one: "The press people said 'Listen, the journalists aren't going to like it' and the operational people said 'We don't care about the journalists right now and about our image, we don't want them inside.' It had to do with the way we were working operationally inside the camp. We had infantry coming in from 360 degrees which means that you're firing in all different directions. It's not like a journalist can be [safe] on one side or another. It's a very difficult type of combat to coordinate with the forces, let alone with somebody you don't know who's inside."[95]

In Pierre Rehov's documentary The Road to Jenin, a Palestinian doctor claimed that on the second day, the city's hospital was hit by eleven tank shells. However, in both Rehov's film and Richard Landes's 2005 film Pallywood, the supposed hits shown on Jenin hospital were compared to an actual building hit by Merkava tank shelling, suggesting that the supposed hit marks were staged.[96]

Lorenzo Cremonesi, the correspondent for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in Jerusalem, writes in a 2009 article, that he slipped past the army barricades and entered the Jenin camp on April 13, 2002. He says the hospital was almost deserted as doctors played cards in the emergency room and that he spoke to 25 lightly wounded patients who told heartrending stories but when asked for names of the dead and urged to show where the bodies were, became evasive. "In short, it was all talk and nothing could be verified," wrote Cremonesi. "At the end of that day, I wrote that the death toll was not more than 50 and most of them were combatants". Cremonesi criticized Israel's exclusion of the media from Jenin and from Gaza during the 2009 war, saying, "If you hide something from me, that means first and foremost that you want to hide it, and secondly, that you have done something wrong."[97]

On April 18, as Israeli troops began pulling out of Jenin and Nablus, UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen entered the camp. He told reporters that the devastation was, "horrific beyond belief," and relayed his view that it was "morally repugnant" that Israel had not allowed emergency workers into the camp after the battle with Palestinian gunmen had ended.[98] On April 19, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1405 to send a fact-finding mission to Jenin. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, that Israel would welcome a UN official "to clarify the facts", saying "Israel has nothing to hide regarding the operation in Jenin. Our hands are clean".[99] Abed Rabbo said the mission was, "the first step toward making Sharon stand trial before an international tribunal".[100]

The composition of the fact-finding team was announced on April 22. Led by former Finnish President, Martti Ahtisaari, the other two members were Cornelio Sommaruga, former president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (controversial in Israel for previous "Red Swastika" remarks),[101] and Sadako Ogata, the former UN high commissioner for refugees who was Japan's special envoy on Afghan reconstruction.[102]

Official Israeli sources expressed surprise that they were not consulted as to the composition of the team, adding that, "We expected that the operational aspects of the fact-finding mission would be carried out by military experts." On April 22, Israeli Defense Minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer expressed his disappointment at the team's make-up, and his hope that the mission would not overstep its mandate. Peres asked Annan to deny reports that the mission would look into events outside the refugee camp, and that the findings would have legal validity. Annan said the findings would not be legally binding, and that the mission would only investigate events inside the camp, but may have to interview residents currently displaced outside.[102]

On April 23, Gideon Saar, the cabinet secretary, threatened to ban the team from entering Jenin.[103] In private discussions, Giora Eiland, Major General and Head of the IDF Operation Branch, convinced Shaul Mofaz that the team would ask to investigate officers and soldiers, and that it might accuse Israel of war crimes, paving the way for the sending of an international force. Sharon accepted Eiland and Mofaz's position, and announced Israel's decision that the UN team was no longer acceptable on April 24, citing the lack of military experts.[103][104] The US rebuked Sharon's decision, and a White House official said, "We were the sponsors of that and we want it implemented as written. We support the initiative of the secretary general."[103]

Annan initially refused to delay the mission. Expressing Israeli sentiment that the world ignored its victims, Ben-Eliezer said: "In the last month alone, 137 people were slaughtered by Palestinians and nearly 700 wounded. Is there any one who is investigating that?"[105] Saeb Erekat accused Israel of "trying to sabotage the mission. I believe that they have a big thing to hide."[105] On April 25, the UN agreed to postpone the arrival of the team by two days, and acceded to an Israeli request that two military officers be added to the team. Annan said talks with Israel had been, "very, very constructive and I'm sure we'll be able to sort out our differences".[106] Peres said that a delay would give the Israeli cabinet the opportunity to discuss the mission before the team arrived.[107]

Avi Pazner, an Israeli Government spokesman, said he expected the UN mission to investigate "terrorist activity" and guarantee immunity for Israeli soldiers. Israel Radio reported that Israel was also pushing for the right for both sides to review the team's report before its presentation to Annan.[107] Following a lengthy cabinet meeting on April 28, Reuven Rivlin, the Israeli Communications Minister, told reporters that the UN had reneged on its agreements with Israel over the team, and so it would not be allowed to arrive. Speaking for the cabinet, he said that the composition of the team and its terms of reference made it inevitable that its report would blame Israel.[108]

The UN Security Council convened the following day to discuss Israel's decision not to grant entry to the UN team.[108] Meanwhile, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby in Washington was called to pressure Annan and George W. Bush.[104] On April 30, Annan urged that the UN team, which had been waiting in Geneva to start its mission, be disbanded, and it was on May 2.[109][110] On May 4, Israel was isolated in an open debate in the Security Council. The deputy US ambassador to the UN, James Cunningham, said it was "regrettable" Israel had decided not to cooperate with the fact-finding team. Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian observer to the UN, said the council failed to give Annan its full support, and had caved to "blackmailing" by the Israeli Government.[111] The General Assembly passed a resolution condemning Israel's military action in Jenin by 74 votes to four, with 54 abstentions.[112] The Bush administration supported Israel as part of a deal in which Sharon agreed to lift the siege of the Mukataa in Ramallah.[104]

On July 31, the UN issued a report indicating that at that time 52 Palestinians had been killed and that it was possible that as many as half of them were civilians.[113]

In the aftermath of the invasion, many camp residents ended up living in temporary shelters elsewhere.[114] The camp itself became the site of intense efforts at documenting, recording and expressing the experiences of those displaced and affected by the incursion. In discussing how to properly honor those who had fallen, one proposal suggested leaving the destruction, at least in the Hawashin neighborhood, exactly as it was, as a memorial and testament to struggle and sacrifice. Camp residents, however, insisted that the camp be rebuilt almost exactly as it had been, while also establishing a museum of memory in the Old Hijaz Railway building. They rejected the proposal of the Israeli housing minister to rebuild the camp at a nearby site with enlarged roads, viewing it as an attempt to erase the political reality of the camps whose existence they see as living testaments to the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight.[115]

• Goldberg, Brett (2003). A Psalm in Jenin. Israel: Modan Publishing House. p. 304. ISBN 965-7141-03-6.
• Baroud, Ramzy Mohammed, ed. (2003). Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion 2002. Seattle, Washington: Cune Press. p. 256. ISBN 1-885942-34-6.