BY AHMAD NIMER
RAMALLAH — Israel's attack on the Jenin refugee camp will be recorded as one of the bloodiest massacres in the history of the Zionist state.
The scenes of devastation go beyond anything describable in words. Friends of mine who have visited the area in recent days are unable to speak about what they saw — every few sentences they are choked by tears, unable to continue because of the horrors they have seen.
The refugee camp, located near the city of Jenin in the north of the West Bank, housed descendants of Palestinians evicted from their land near Haifa in 1948 by Zionist militias. It was densely packed, with 15,000 residents — 50% of them children — living in an area of around one square kilometre.
The camp barely exists today. For nine days, beginning on April 5, thousands of Israeli soldiers, supported by tanks, helicopter gunships and F16 warplanes, systematically bombarded the area with the clear aim of killing residents and razing the camp.
During the assault residents were trapped in their houses. Electricity and water supplies were cut off, and the camp was sealed off from the outside world. The Israeli army prevented anyone from leaving or entering the camp, including the Red Cross or any other medical services.
With the entire population imprisoned in their homes, hundreds of missiles were fired at houses and buildings in the camp. Bulldozers then systematically moved to demolish houses while residents were trapped inside, burying entire families alive. Many others — babies, the sick and the elderly — died because they had no access to food or medical supplies.
Stories from the survivors tell of unspeakable horrors. A journalist from the English Independent newspaper was told of "a woman with her leg all but ripped off by a helicopter rocket, the mangled remains hanging on by a thread of skin as she slowly bleeds to death; a 10-year-old boy lying dead in the street, his arm blown off and a great hole in his side; a mother shot dead when she ran into the street to scream for help for her dying son."
All those who have visited the camp in recent days speak of one thing — the stench of rotting bodies lying in the streets and under rubble.
Cover up
The Israeli army has tried desperately to cover up its crimes, barring journalists from entering the area and preventing ambulances and the Red Cross from coming to remove the bodies.
Countless survivors recount witnessing Israeli soldiers placing corpses in bags and dumping them in mass graves. The remains of houses were then bulldozed onto these graves and flattened by tanks in an attempt to hide evidence of the massacre.
Hundreds of people are missing, and conservative estimates place the death toll at around 400. Today, one third of the camp has been completely flattened with unknown numbers of corpses lying buried underneath.
The UN envoy to the Middle East, Terje Roed Larsen, usually known for his guarded diplomatic language, after visiting the camp on April 18, could not control his anger, calling the scene "horrifying beyond belief". Demanding immediate access for humanitarian organisations, Larsen stated from the centre of the camp, "Just seeing this area, it looks like there's been an earthquake here, and the stench of death is over many places where we are standing."
The Jenin residents have been made refugees once more. Thousands of men have been taken by the Israeli army to one village near the destroyed camp, while the women and children have been taken to another. The TV broadcasts countless interviews with sobbing parents, unsure where their children are or even if they are alive.
Some eyewitnesses speak of how they saw Israeli soldiers line up groups of men in the centre of the camp and execute them, each by a single bullet to the head. Others speak of seeing tanks moving back and forth over the bodies of people lying injured in the street.
These crimes were not accidental or the actions of undisciplined troops. They were led and directed by the highest echelons of the Israeli government and military. Several days into the attack, Israeli media reported that the local commander had been replaced by the highest-ranking Israeli military officer, chief of staff Lieutenant-General Shaul Mofaz, who personally led the attack from a helicopter hovering over the camp.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon also spoke afterwards how he had spent considerable time at the military base near the camp, overseeing the attack. Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres even lamented that the massacre could be a problem — because it might damage Israel's image in North America and Europe.
Zionism's criminal record
The crimes committed by the Zionist regime in Jenin are nothing new. They are merely the latest link in an unbroken thread that stretches back to the founding of the Israeli state. In 1947-48, some 400 Palestinian villages were completely destroyed and their populations forcibly evicted by Zionist militias that eventually formed the Israeli army. The refugees that resulted from this expulsion of the indigenous population today live in refugee camps like Jenin.
In a terrible irony, the 54th anniversary of the infamous massacre of civilians by Zionist troops in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin in April 1948 was marked while Israeli troops were carrying out the Jenin massacre.
The most common comparison being made today is with the massacres that took place in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon in 1982. These massacres were personally directed by Ariel Sharon, who was Israel's defence minister at the time. Even an inquiry carried out by the Israeli government found Sharon responsible for these massacres.
It is this same war criminal who is directly responsible for the crime in the Jenin refugee camp. It is the racist movement of Zionism, a colonial-settler movement that carried out the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population in 1948, which has nurtured people such as Sharon, Peres and the thousands of soldiers who so willingly kill to preserve their apartheid state.
There is hope however that this time the story won't be buried along with the corpses. Countless journalists, human rights organisations and solidarity activists are near the area of the camp, collecting stories and recording what happened from the survivors.
Some brave journalists have made it into the camp itself — despite the fact that it is still under an Israeli army curfew — and they have broadcast images to the world of the rotting corpses and weeping parents. Parliamentarians in Europe have called for an immediate inquiry, and Palestinian organisations have called for forensic experts to make their way to the area in order to help gather evidence.
On April 20, the US and Israel agreed to a UN "fact-finding mission" in Jenin. The US threatened to veto an earlier UN Security Council draft resolution that called for an "investigation". The US resolution, eventually adopted by the council, calls for a mission to "develop accurate information regarding recent events in the Jenin refugee camp".
Initially, Washington's UN ambassador, John Negroponte, said the US wouldn't support any investigation at all, telling the Security Council: "Alleviating the situation in Jenin should be our priority humanitarian objective at this time. Further Security Council action is not the best way to meet this objective."
Sitting trapped in our houses in Palestine we see images of the thousands of people marching on the streets in every country in the world demanding an end to the Israeli occupation. It is these expressions of solidarity which give us hope.
From Green Left Weekly, April 24, 2002.
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