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Jenin Truth
5/2/2002 (9:01) |
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Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Palestinians are determined to depict the battle of Jenin as a 'massacre' of innocents for maximum propaganda value. Matthew Gutman reports
'Where's the stench?' a German journalist wonders out loud, as he gingerly picks his way through the heap of rubble that is the center of the Jenin refugee camp. Using a stick he prods a bloodstained jacket lying in what used to be someone's living room. Turning to his Palestinian interpreter, the journalist asks: 'If there are so many dead bodies underneath us, why doesn't it smell worse?'
Asked about the absence of stench, Dr. Hamed Abu Ghali, director of the Jenin Hospital, says the odor of decomposing flesh so voluminously reported in the past few weeks is now gone because 'we began our prevention campaign early, and we put a lot of chemicals on the ruins. If we did not treat the ruins, we would have had a lot of disease. We could have had complications from the massacre, which might be more difficult than the massacre itself.'
But for many others who have spent time in Jenin since the end of Operation Defensive Shield, including Israeli soldiers, journalists and most international aid workers, there is a more obvious answer to why there is no smell of corpses: The camp was physically devastated, but there was no massacre.
According to the Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, to 'massacre' is 'to kill in considerable numbers where much resistance cannot be made; to kill with indiscriminate violence, without necessity, and contrary to the usages of nations; to butcher; to slaughter.'
The evidence uncovered thus far even by international rights organizations harshly critical of Israeli army tactics, indicates that the violence in Jenin was neither 'indiscriminate' nor without resistance.
'The majority of those killed,' says Peter Bouckaert, a researcher at Human Rights Watch posted to Jenin, 'were killed by snipers. Only one man, that we know of, was crushed in his home by a bulldozer.'
As opposed to the estimates of the Palestinian Authority, which predicted a death toll 10 times as high, aid workers and local doctors have found only 53 corpses so far in the ruins of the camp. They estimate that 21 of them were civilians, including four women, two 14-year-old boys, two invalids and at least three elderly men.
Hospital director Ghali believes that many more bodies lie beneath the ruins of the camp.
Bouckaert, whose group has worked closely with the medical teams at Jenin Hospital, believes that, in fact, very few corpses remain buried beneath the tons of rubble in what has come to be known among foreign rescue workers, Palestinians, and Israeli soldiers alike as 'Ground Zero.' He is almost certain that the death toll will rise very little as the rescue efforts continue. The rate of the removal of bodies has already slowed significantly in the past week, as no more than two bodies had been pulled from the rubble.
Bouckaert, like other aid workers, fears Israel will try to 'whitewash' the massive amounts of 'unnecessary destruction' in the camp. But he says plainly: 'There was no massacre.'
Yet Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza. specially those in Jenin, continue to believe that Israel committed a human rights violation and a crime against humanity by slaughtering dozens if not hundreds of innocent civilians. Already, the myth of what happened in the northern West Bank city has taken hold of the Palestinian national psyche, fueling ever-increasing waves of anger which will gird it for the next stage of the conflict.
'What happened here is obviously a war crime,' claims Jenin district governor Zuhair Almanasreh. Pointing to the sheet rock walls of his office riddled with bullet holes, Almanasreh, distinguished by his tall stature and long thin patrician's nose, leans back in his chair. 'And it was a crime against humanity,' he adds, 'because it was committed by a state using the most powerful military in the region to enforce its political will on civilians. It was state-conducted terror addressed to civilians, in a civilian camp.'
Dr. Amikam Nachmani, a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Institute for Strategic Studies who just this week delivered a paper at Bar-Ilan University comparing the Palestinian symbols and myths of the first intifada and of the 'Al Aksa intifada,' is certain that Jenin will be used as another symbol of the Palestinians' national struggle and their national suffering. Through this, he adds, the 'Jenin Massacre' will be manipulated to bring pressure on the international community to protect the Palestinians from the Israelis, most likely by demanding that an inter
national force be sent to the region.
'The facts of what really happened in Jenin are actually immaterial,' notes Nachmani. 'What counts here, is how the Palestinians portray the events in the camp to the world.'
ISRAELI concern over attempts by the Palestinians to paint the battle of Jenin as a massacre were a factor in the security cabinet's decision this week not to cooperate with the United Nations fact-finding mission appointed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. According to the IDF, Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp are already trying to inflate the number of those killed during Defensive Shield by adding bodies of residents buried in a local cemetery to a collective grave of those killed during the battle.
While the numbers of those killed and exact percentages of homes destroyed are somewhat unreliable, the sheer scale of destruction is evident even to the untrained eye. Few of the refugee sector's poorly-built buildings do not bear the deep scars of structural damage. Trudging along the muddy, rutted roads and alleys of the sector - burst pipes have turned the lower ends of the camp into murky swamps - one has an unobstructed view into the living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms and toilets of scores of homes.
The IDF claims that no more than 10 percent of the houses in the refugee sector were destroyed, but a cursory glance indicates otherwise. Almanasreh, estimates that about 40 percent of the refugee camp's buildings were destroyed and another 20% rendered unlivable. He says that as many as 3,500 people have been left homeless as a result of the operation.
How can such a large chunk of a city be leveled, and only 53 people be killed? The answer is simple. The IDF entered the Jenin refugee camp almost a week after it started its operations in Ramallah. Just as the fighters had prepared in advance for the force of over 150 tanks that entered the city and its environs, so too were its civilians, most of whom fled into the nearby villages. Those who stayed through the initial stages of the battle either hid in cellars or were evacuated on buses by the IDF, also to the nearby villages, before the bulldozers were warmed up.
The IDF's mission stipulated that terror much be torn from its roots. These roots were firmly embedded in this refugee camp as in other Palestinian refugee camps across the West Bank. It was therefore necessary, say soldiers, to enter and search the home of almost every Palestinian in the sector.
Consequently, even in areas of the sector far removed from what is now universally called 'Ground Zero,' gaping holes exposing teeth of shredded metal were blown into many of the houses when the IDF forced its way in. Even in the city of Jenin, several hundred meters away from the camp, there are few buildings that don't bear bullet-hole marks, and the IDF also toppled many buildings there.
Despite the concern of UNWRA (United Nations Works and Relief Agency for Palestinian Refugees) and other aid organizations to begin to dig out the homes and start administering to the lives of their charges in the camp, the search and rescue work, says deputy director of UNWRA, Charles Capes, has been delayed by the large number of unexploded ordinances (UXOs) lying about the camp and a Palestinian interest in not rehabilitating the camp before the arrival of an international fact-finding commission.
Chomping on a cigar, Capes adds that while British and Norwegian sapper teams had last week attempted to remove some of the UXOs, when their short mandate ended they returned home with a majority of explosive devices left undetonated in the camp. A squad of the French Civil Guard rescue team began last Friday to try to mark and isolate buildings or areas believed to have munitions inside.
Capes said that Palestinian fighters planted many of the UXOs while others were left by the Israeli army after its April 16 pullout from the camp. Since April 19 one person was killed and at least 12 wounded by unexploded ordinances in the camp.
Sappers such as those from the 'Rapid U.K.' force left early because of the terrible working conditions.
'You can hardly keep people away from the rescue workers trying to defuse the bombs. As long as there is no control over the civilian population in the camp, it will be very hard to get rid of all the mines.'
Lately, the Palestinian 'Blue Police' have been keeping a semblance of order as various de-mining units work to rid the camp of munitions. However, the most immovable object blocking the rehabilitation of the camps is the refusal of many of the refugees, the Jenin Governorate and other Palestinian Authority bodies to remove the debris before the arrival of the UN fact-finding commission.
'Why even begin the search,' says Almanasreh, 'when we don't even know how many of our sons have been detained by the Israelis? These crimes need to be documented. Also there is still no order. How can there be a central power in this city when every police officer carrying a gun fears that Israel will come and take him away.'
As opposed to the majority of Israelis who hear of only 53 dead and throw their hands in the air in exasperation at the mention of the word 'massacre,' Almanasreh sees it differently. For him it was a 'qualitative, if not quantitative massacre.'
IN THE army's ever-changing lexicon, Jenin of late came to be known as 'the launch pad of 23 suicide bombers.' But it was also the graveyard of 23 Israeli soldiers who died in operations in the camp.
The signs of the ferocity of people willing to blow themselves up, the intensity of the fighting and the bravery of IDF soldiers darting through tortuously narrow gauntlets in pursuit of people all too willing to die for their cause, are indelible. These signs are permanently tattooed in the refugee camp in blood-stained walls and in pock-marked buildings and in the countless homemade bombs littering the rubble.
In buildings at the western edge of the center pile of rubble at 'Ground Zero' are the remnants of one fierce exchange between IDF soldiers and Palestinian fighters. The final outcome of this small battle, pitting a squad of IDF soldiers against two Palestinian gunmen remains semi-attached to the ceiling of the room in which the fighters found themselves trapped: grisly remains as well as bloodstains splattered on the four walls of the room are all that is left of the fighters. Nevertheless the signs of the fight are clear.
The soldiers blew a hole through an adjacent room in their effort to locate the fighters. The hole, about a meter in diameter, opens into a hallway opposite the room holding the fighters; it goes through two rows of cinderblocks. Dozens of bullet holes pock the outer edges of the hole. Since the bullets had not pierced the wall through which the soldiers came, they were apparently fired by the fighters at the soldiers, as they blasted their way in.
But, just as the signs of a fight in this narrow room are clear, so, too, are the efforts of some Palestinians to paint even this skirmish as one pitting defenseless victims against the Israeli aggressors.
Hopping in and around the mess, Amr, a 23-year-old Palestinian man, begins to tell the German journalist that the two fighters were actually civilians, murdered in cold blood by the soldiers. Despite the clear evidence of the bullet holes, obviously fired from inside the room at the gaping hole in the wall, Amr insists that the men were unarmed.
Then, leading the small procession of translators, journalists and gaping children outside, Amr stops where buildings on both sides of the streets had collapsed onto the alley. It was there, he says, that 13 Israeli soldiers died when they were caught in an ambush between Palestinian gunmen with explosives strapped to their bodies.
But even this account is not acceptable to Amr. It was not Palestinian gunfire and explosives that killed the soldiers, but friendly fire from their own side. 'It was an Apache helicopter,' he insists, pointing up to the sky.
Revisionism, along with the elevation to martyrdom status of anyone who died in the incursion, appears one of the few things the wretched refugees can rally around. Already tents have sprouted atop the various mounds of rubble. Some are an effort by families to reclaim their land, lest someone else take squatting rights. Others are simply expressions of solidarity with fallen comrades or brothers.
Crudely painted likenesses of several martyrs adorn many of the tents pitched on the rubble. Posters glorifying martyrs are the only types of art or decoration found on any building left standing in the camp, and even in the city. They are pasted on monuments, houses, doors, shops and almost every public space available. One aid worker muses that 'had the Palestinians invested the money they spent on posters for rebuilding their homes, they'd be much better off.'
Regardless of what happened in the camp, the mood there is defiant. The green flag of Hamas, the black and yellow flag of Islamic Jihad, and the banner of the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade, were all unfurled last Friday on the only building left standing at 'Ground Zero's' center.
Kneeling on a foam pallet atop a flat concrete slab on the top of the rubble, 16-year-old Mahmud pointed to [a likeness of] his brother, Al Aksa militant Mustafa Abu Seria, assassinated by Israel in Ramallah. Puffing on an imitation Marlboro cigarette, his face turned sickly green from the light shed through the green section of the Palestinian flag used as a makeshift tent, Mahmud says that he will also be a martyr.
'This massacre,' says Mahmud, who looks very young for his age, 'only makes us stronger. If the soldiers come again, we will stay and fight to our very last breath.'
This defiant mood spurred by the 'massacre,' is not unique to the rubble heaps. It is pervasive throughout every alleyway and shop in Jenin. Spray-painted near Jewish stars left by the soldiers, are echoes of Mahmud's sentiments: 'The Martyrs return,' and 'We will never forget and never forgive.' Rather than having uprooted terror, what is overtly apparent in the camp is that in the next incursion, Israel will face an even tougher and more steadfast opponent.
Nearby, some Palestinian children play with a spent chain of machine gun bullets. Others wield AK-47s crudely fashioned out of sticks and wires. Each stick gun had the name of a shahid printed on the wooden barrel in red letters. Displaying their guns in mock-bravado the children begin yelling and giggling, 'I am Hamas, I am Jihad, I am Al-Aksa.'
NACHMANI believes that despite the use of the 'Jenin Massacre' as a Palestinian symbol, albeit a powerful one, it remains just another among many. He senses rumblings among Palestinians that they are fed up with symbols, that now they demand more concrete action towards building a Palestinian state.
Hebrew University sociologist Professor Baruch Kimmerling, co-author of Palestinians: The Making of a People, says the Palestinians will be forced to classify this conflict in one of two categories - regardless of how many bodies are discovered in the ruins of the camp.
The first model, says Kimmerling, is that of Deir Yasin, Kafr Kasim, Safed, the Baruch Goldstein/Cave of the Patriarchs massacre and Sabra and Shatila, where Palestinians solely played the role of victims.
'The alternative model,' adds Kimmerling, 'is the model of Karameh, a story of heroic battle across the Jordan River in which the Palestinians supposedly defeated the Israeli superpower immediately after all the Arab states suffered a shameful defeat following the 1967 war. I guess for external consumption they will stress the first model and for internal, the second one.'
The outcome of a commission, if there is one, is almost irrelevant, contends Kimmerling, a fierce critic of Israeli policy in the territories. For the damage to the Palestinians, Israeli morale, and Israel's image in the world - as that of an apartheid South Africa-like pariah state - have already been framed within the parameters of a 'massacre.'
But the adoption of the massacre into their national fiber has wider import than a simple weathervane gauging Palestinian morale. Daniel Bethlehem, an expert on international law from Cambridge University and Israel's external adviser on the UN inquiry, warns that should a fact-finding commission come to Israel and dub whatever happened in Jenin, 'a massacre,' the consequences would be grave for Israel.
'If the committee's findings uphold the allegations against Israel - even on poor reasoning,' he writes in a memorandum to the government, 'this will fundamentally alter the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship, and may make it impossible for Israel to resist calls for an international force, the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state and the prosecution of individuals said to have committed the alleged acts.'
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