What happened in Jennin?

RE: The UN

The point with Syria was that a country which is known for actively supporting terrorism, can be a temporary member in the Security Council, and can influence decisions there. UN regulations do not allow nations involved in acts of aggression to take a temprorary seat in the Council. And then in the newspapers it’s always reported that a UN Security Council resolution ‘calling on Israel yada yada yada …’ was blocked by a US veto, as if the US is wrong when taking such a measure. When you look at which countries actually preside in the Council, one can only laugh. Did you know Israel is the only country in the UN that can’t get a temporary seat in the Security Council?

As for the UN after 1956: the mandate was something like preventing the two sides from fighting. Well, when one side chose it wanted to fight, the UN immedtiately pulled back it’s troops to make room for the Egyptian troops. But when Israel defended itself with a pre-emptive strike, guess who was condemned for aggression?

RE: The UN

Yeah, it’s true, the UN is not Israel’s saviour. But that’s not the first priority of the UN, to support countries in their military actions. When Belgian paratroopers landed in Congo in 1956, we were also condemned by the UN. So it’s not just an anti-Israel thing.

Also, who backed you guys in the 1956 Suez Crisis? The Americans, no, Brits and French. The same guys that are now critisizing you.

Talking about the UN, JJ is right. It’s not democratic, and the UN safety council doesn’t work at all. Instead of France or UK, give one vote to the EU (which already works together closely with the UN) and give the other one to Iran or India, two nations which diserve to get more input in world peace, as they represent millions of people. Syria can’t do much against a US-veto, JJ, if it wasn’t of the US, sanctions would already be reality (even the Brits agree with the other 7).

China is not the world champion of human rights (death penalty … 🙂 sorry), but they should be represented at all costs. Or do you think giving your vote to Taiwan (= vote to the US) would be better again, like before 1971???

The UN

Actually i would see the UN as the guardian of the Isreali state
This was actually tried after the Sinai Campaign of 1956. The UN was supposed to safeguard Israel from Egyptian aggression. But when push came to shove, and Nasser wanted the UN out of the Sinai, the UN left. IMO, not a viable option. A more recent expample is the Sebrenica affair. You don’t seriously expect other nations to send their boys and girls to defend another state?

It just that the recent brutal action of the Israelis forced them to act against you guys.
Back this up with facts, instead of generalizing statements like this. And, for the record, the UN has been anit-Israel for a long time.

Beside the UN is the most prominent world body and any action should reflect the world views as a whole.
Sure, champions of human rights like Cuba, China and Syria are free to criticize Israel’s brutal behaviour against the Palestinians. What a joke. Syria is in the Security Council, even though UN regulations prohibits aggressors to take a seat in the Council as temporary member. The world is not necessarlily right, Tomel.

At the moment the Israelis does not get the backing it used to get.
Israel never got world backing, even not after 1948, when numerous Arab states set out to destroy the Jewish State, or in 1973, when Syria and Egypt once again tried to destroy Israel. Once again, the wordl is not neceesarily right.

Djcross, you’re right on top. This certainly wouldn’t be the first UN investigation in which facts are covered up, and not the last either.

Shalom,

Jonathan

RE: Israel’s troubled UN relations

Was not the Jenin camp administered by the UN? If so, why did the UN allow numerous suicide bomb-making factories within the camp? Either the UN is incompetent by not knowing about the factories or complicit in the suicide bombings. Could the UN “investigation” be part of a cover-up of incompetence or complicity? Inquiring minds want to know.

RE: After learning more about West Beirut..

Actually i would see the UN as the guardian of the Isreali state and the people of Israel should thanks the world body for all the efforts in creating Israel.It just that the recent brutal action of the Israelis forced them to act against you guys.Beside the UN is the most prominent world body and any action should reflect the world views as a whole.At the moment the Israelis does not get the backing it used to get.

RE: After learning more about West Beirut..

This wouldn’t be the first UN team who’se only mission is to blaim Israel. Just remember that the UN rights commission already called Jenin a massacre. I just can’t see how the outcome of this ‘investigation’ can differ much from that. At best the commission says that no evidence of a massacre was discovered, but that the ‘large scale demolition was unjustified’. The UN has a very bad record vis-a-vis Israel.

RE: After learning more about West Beirut..

That kind of team should be called an investigation team under a different mandate,BUT the Israeli/US do not want such team.So UN created another less formal fact finding team,read carefully FACT FINDING.Their main job is to interview refugees,victims,soldiers and so on.Clearly to me the Israeli got something to hide.

RE: After learning more about West Beirut..

Because the original planed group of investigators seemed very doubtfull even to me. If you take no military specialists and ordonance people with it, how would you decide if these house were booby trapped ??

RE: After learning more about West Beirut..

We believe you,but the Israelis govt got to let this UN inspector do their job.If there is no act of mass murder then there is no reason whatsoever for the Israeli govt to play chicken.There is nothing to be hide in Jenin cause the IDF conducted a clean ops.Why the delay in getting the proof to support the IDF claim??????

RE: After learning more about West Beirut..

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 29-04-02 AT 06:57 PM (GMT)]What’s the problem, those cars are most likely Israeli cars anyway. Besides, I didn’t know cars could be bulldozed.

As for AI: I have lost my faith in the fairness organization. It fails to condemn terrorist activity carried out by the Palestinians, yet screams of human right abuses by Israel, with no evidence whatsoever. Once again, look to what Skythe and I posted, and you understand why Israel bulldozed those houses, not for revenge, but out of military considerations. Have you read how many Palestinian booby-traps were found in the rubble? Do you know how these 13 soldiers died? Is there a bell ringing now? Ding-dong!

RE: After learning more about West Beirut..

I heard a report from a British worker at Amnesty International who said no massacres took place, but that the IDF devestated whole blocks to revenge the death of 13 soldiers.

Today, I saw pictures on TV of IDF bulldozers destroying cars in front of Arafat’s HQ. What’s the use of destroying cars? CARS, for the love of god. Aren’t those soldiers disciplined or is that their training? If you suspect that there’s a bomb in that car, the last thing you’ll do is driving over them with bulldozers, so it’s just sweet revenge.

RE: After learning more about West Beirut..

Just look into the history of the UN, especially the history concerning Israel, and you’ll find out why Israel isn’t ‘helping istelf’, as you put it.

RE: After learning more about West Beirut..

I think we should stop make any more comments till the Israeli govt agree to help themselves by allowing the UN fact finding team to start their mission.I still could not understand the rational of their action not granting the team a green light.Only time will tell.

RE: After learning more about West Beirut..

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 29-04-02 AT 01:38 PM (GMT)]http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/119/nation/Claims_of_massacre_go_unsu…

Claims of massacre go unsupported by Palestinian fighters

By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff and Dan Ephron, Globe Correspondent, 4/29/2002

ENIN, West Bank – Palestinian Authority allegations that a large-scale massacre of civilians was committed by Israeli troops during their invasion of the refugee camp here appear to be crumbling under the weight of eyewitness accounts from Palestinian fighters who participated in the battle and camp residents who remained in their homes until the final hours of the fighting.

In interviews yesterday with teenage fighters, a leader of Islamic Jihad, an elderly man whose home was at the center of the fighting, and other Palestinian residents, all of whom were in the camp during the battle, none reported seeing large numbers of civilians killed. All said they were allowed to surrender or evacuate when they were ready to do so, though some reported being mistreated while in Israeli detention.

Palestinian Authority leaders have asserted that more than 500 people, mostly women and children, were killed in the camp and that many of the dead were buried by Israeli forces in mass graves. Investigators for Amnesty International said that Israel failed to provide safe passage from the camp to noncombatants.

The Palestinian allegations led to the creation of a UN fact-finding team for Jenin, but Israel yesterday barred the team from arriving amid allegations of an anti-Israel bias.

Israel says that those Palestinians killed in the Jenin battle were almost all fighters, that none were buried in mass graves, and that ample chance was given to fighters to surrender and for civilians to leave. It initially estimated the death toll at 100 to 200, and has since revised that toll downward to 50.

Meanwhile, a British military adviser to Amnesty, Reserve Major David Holley, was quoted yesterday by Reuters news service as dismissing the Palestinian allegations of a massacre and predicting that no evidence would be found to substantiate them.

Jamal al-Shati, who was appointed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to document events at the camp, said last night that 52 deaths have been documented, including those of three women and five children under 14. He asserts that the Israelis secretly removed bodies from the battleground.

Munir Arsam, 15, a member of Islamic Jihad, said that during the siege, which began April 3 and ended around April 11, he did scouting work for older militants, threw homemade pipe bombs, and helped with ambushes of Israeli troops. He said he was one of 50 boys, divided into groups of 10 by militant leaders, who were assigned these tasks.

In contrast with allegations by some Palestinians and Amnesty investigators, Arsam said women and children were able to evacuate the camp before the climactic battle began. Even at the height of the struggle, fighters were able to put down their weapons and surrender, he said, though he also said, as did the Amnesty investigators, that those who surrendered were beaten and otherwise mistreated while in detention.

Arsam said he knew of five fighters in houses bulldozed by the Israelis, at least two of whom were wounded and screaming for help when the bulldozers came. ”The men in the tanks and bulldozers could not hear them,” he said.

He said he saw Sheik Ri’ad Abu Abd, 57, of Tulkarem, one of the Palestinian heroes of the battle, wounded with a bullet in the leg near the end of the fighting, and asked him if he wanted to surrender.

”He said `No, I want to die, I want to fight and die,’ and a while later that house was bulldozed,” Arsam said. On the last day of the battle, with no ammunition left, Arsam buried the weapon he had acquired during the fighting and surrendered.

”They destroyed all the houses in Hawashin,” he said, describing a now-demolished neighborhood in the camp. ”I was in the last house, and they called out, `Surrender or we will fire at you.’ There were only two of us, so we left, and they destroyed the house.” He said the Israeli soldiers held him for four days, frequently beating and kicking him to make him confess to membership in Hamas or Islamic Jihad, then released him.

Asked if he felt any massacre had occurred, Arsam said: ”We killed them and they killed us, but we were victorious.”

Abdel Rahman Sa’adi, 14, another Islamic Jihad grenade-thrower, said he was one of a group of 11 adults and seven young men who surrendered upon Israeli demand. He said they were confined in a courtyard near the camp to which the Israeli troops brought dozens of other men and women.

”They told all the small kids to just leave, and they let all the women go after they checked their bags,” said Sa’adi, who has braces and was wearing a baseball cap. ”None of them were kept for questioning.”

”Of course the Palestinians won” this battle, he said, because ”they did not shake our morale. This was a massacre of the Jews, not of us.”

Prompted by bystanders, he revised his statement. ”I think there was a massacre here – maybe 100 people,” he said.

Khalid Mohammed Taleb, 70, lay on a concrete slab from his ruined house, shaded by a makeshift plastic awning, watching with a blank expression as people clambered over the rubble yesterday and buried mines and grenades occasionally exploded.

”I come every day,” he said. ”I lived here 50 years.”

Taleb and his extended family of 11 people stayed in the camp rather than evacuating because ”we thought it would be like the first invasion, they would make an incursion and leave. I used to say I wouldn’t leave even if they buried me in this house, but I saw the bulldozers killing people and I left.”

That was around midnight, on the day before the battle ended.

Taleb said he raised a white flag and walked at the front of a group of 20 people – his own family and those of two neighbors. The destruction of his house and the surrounding buildings occurred after the civilians left, he said, when only fighters remained.

He said several times that no civilians were killed, but after repeated questioning from reporters and bystanders, he said: ”Well, maybe one or two. It was a big battle.” Was it a massacre? ”Perhaps,” he said. ”Both sides lost.”

An Islamic Jihad leader, who insisted on anonymity, said he was wounded as the battle drew to a close, and crawled 300 yards to where other fighters were gathered.

”There were 35 of us, and they were bringing down houses on us, so we surrendered,” he said. Israeli soldiers ”threw me on the garbage near the hospital at noon” on the last day of the battle, ”and I remained there until 1 a.m.” The Israelis did not attempt to confine or question him, and he returned to the camp Saturday, he said.

All the fighters said that the Israelis failed to wipe out the militant leadership in the camp, which long has been known as an Islamic Jihad stronghold.

”Of course we are reorganizing,” said the Islamic Jihad leader, who walked with a cane and was thronged by comrades near the wreckage. ”I don’t know what is the plan, what is the strategy, but people are full of hatred.”

Arsam, the 15-year-old fighter, said leaders of Islamic Jihad and other factions were taking new groups of youngsters to a hill near Jenin every day for military training, teaching them to fire automatic weapons and to make bombs.

A spokesman for the Israeli army asserted, meanwhile, that Palestinians were moving bodies of people not killed in the Jenin fighting into graveyards around the camp ”to score points with the UN committee due to arrive to investigate the happenings in the Jenin refugee camp.” The military said this charge was based on information received from Israeli intelligence agencies, and refused to elaborate.

This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 4/29/2002.

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U.N. Representative: So, Mr. Evil –
Dr. Evil: It’s Dr. Evil, I didn’t spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called “mister,” thank you very much.

RE: After learning more about West Beirut..

Glenn ,
You’re right, I’m afraid.
Sharon has to deal with the far-right wing in his gouvernement and this guys have a vision based on destruction of the palestinians.

Radical palestinians have a common point of view concerning the state of Israel. Good luck !!!!

After learning more about West Beirut..

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 29-04-02 AT 11:33 AM (GMT)]..in 1982 and the Phalangists that Sharon let into those refugee camps, I think another attrocity in Jennin is very good possibility, indeed some witnesses have reported indiscriminate shootings by Israeli soldiers there. Ariel Sharon I think has a lot to answer for.

Read more on the Sabra and Shatilla Massacre of 1982;

http://www.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/general/2001/sab&shat.htm

Israel’s troubled UN relations

By Barnaby Mason
BBC diplomatic correspondent

After at first agreeing to a United Nations mission to find out what happened in the Jenin refugee camp, Israel has now put forward several objections.
One is to the composition of the team, another – perhaps more fundamental – has to do with exactly what it will investigate.

Israel says it has nothing to hide in Jenin

To understand the nature of the argument, you have to look not only at the specifics but also at the long history of friction and tension between Israel and the UN.

For many years, Israel has seen the UN as a cockpit of hostility towards it.

That does not apply so much in the Security Council, where the Israelis’ main backer the United States has habitually vetoed critical resolutions.

General Assembly support

But the General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, has produced a stream of condemnation, especially during the 1970s and 1980s.

For many years, until it was revoked, one General Assembly resolution held that Zionism was a form of racism.

Israelis believe UN hostility in New York is transferred to aid workers on the ground

The Arab states might have been defeated by Israel on the battlefield, but they were able to mobilise the rhetoric of the Third World and others against the Israeli occupation of Arab territory.

In the minds of many Israelis, the hostility they perceived at UN headquarters in New York was transferred to UN workers on the ground.

The UN refugee agency in the occupied territories may tend to see things from a Palestinian point of view; the whole reason for its existence, after all, is to help Palestinian refugees.

But there have been more particular quarrels with the UN in recent years.

In April 1996, Israeli artillery killed more than 100 Lebanese civilians who were sheltering in a compound of the UN observer force in southern Lebanon, near the village of Qana.

‘Bias’

The Israelis described it as a tragic mistake, but a UN inquiry by a Dutch general concluded that the shelling was probably deliberate.

Then there was a row over a UN videotape related to the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers by Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas in October 2000.

Israel says Qana was a tragic mistake

The UN eventually admitted that it had misled the Israelis by denying that the tape existed, while continuing to argue that it contained no direct information about the kidnap.

All this helps to explain Israeli fury when the UN Middle East envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, described the scene in Jenin refugee camp as horrific beyond belief.

The reaction to UN criticism is especially vehement, although Israeli officials have recently accused several international organisations of being biased against them, including even the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Fact-finding

Their most basic objection to the UN fact-finding team is that the investigation is focusing only on what the Israeli military did in Jenin.

Last Friday’s Security Council resolution speaks simply of getting accurate information about recent events there.

Senior Israeli officials said the team should investigate, as they put it, the production line of Palestinian suicide bombers operating out of Jenin refugee camp.

The UN and the relief agencies, they said, had been blind to terrorist activities for years.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Yehuda Lancry, said it was the terrorist network in Jenin that had generated the Israeli military operation.

Mr Lancry also summarised the objection to the make-up of the UN mission when he said it should be more balanced and include military and counter-terrorist experts.

He said they would understand the difficulties facing the Israeli army.

In fact, the team contains a retired American general and an Irish police adviser. The Israelis are now arguing that they do not have a high enough status in the mission.

A third Israeli objection is that the team shows signs of wanting to extend its inquiry beyond events in Jenin.

The Palestinians and others say the Israelis violated the Geneva Conventions in other West Bank towns, too.

The Israeli Government continues to insist it has nothing to hide. But the effect of all the objections may be to reinforce the allegations that it does.

UN not welcome?

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 28-04-02 AT 04:32 PM (GMT)]Israeli minister of foreign affairs Shimon Perez has said that the UN-envoy is not welcome anymore in Israel (which means that they are allowed to go to Jenin, but Israel will not cooperate with the investigation). If they have nothing to hide from the outside world, why won’t they work together with the UN? Now, we will never know what really happened down there. JJ, you were right. What’s the use of an investigation if we already know who’s to blame. Now Israel just lost their last credibility towards the world. The international community has a right to know what really happened in Jenin. Israel is now in conflict with the UN, the EU, the Arab World … they really don’t give a ##### anymore what the rest of the world thinks about them. At least they should cooperate with the UN-team, to show that they have nothing to hide, maybe we were wrong and Israel should have got more support from the west, but the current situation only looks bad for Israel. If you are in conflict with so many parties, than you should do something about it. Not with Israel.

By Martin Asser
BBC News Online

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on 21 April that the current stage of his Operation Defensive Shield had ended, but the campaign to root out “terrorist infrastructure” from the Palestinian territories would continue.
The past few days have given a clue to what the next stage will be like – a return to targeted killings (aka assassinations) of Palestinian militants and lightning raids on their suspected hideouts.

The army remains in place around Palestinian towns

But these will take place in a different environment to when Mr Sharon launched his massive offensive on 29 March, amid Israeli outrage at a suicide bomb that killed more than two dozen people at a Passover meal.

Primarily, by plunging back into almost every Palestinian-ruled area in the West Bank, the Israeli military claims to have come close to eradicating – through arrests or deadly attacks – the entire leadership of all the main Palestinian militant groups: Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

The army also says it has dismantled two dozen bomb-making laboratories and seized 30 kilogrammes of explosives, as well as hundreds of illegal weapons and other militant paraphernalia, such as suicide bomb harnesses.

Present danger

But few people believe that the threat of Palestinian retaliation has been completely wiped out. The militants may be reeling now, but they are sure to regroup in time.

And if anything, the anger that fuels anti-Israeli attacks is stronger than ever, with allegations of a massacre in the Jenin refugee camp added to the long list of Palestinian grievances.

More assassinations will mean more angry funerals

Meanwhile, the West Bank town of Hebron – which has provided many a willing suicide bomber in the past – was hardly touched by Defensive Shield. Nor was the Gaza Strip, another Palestinian-ruled area where militants enjoy wide support.

Israel may have opted not to re-occupy these places for fear of engagements that could make the battle at Jenin seem small by comparison.

And in Hebron’s case, it could have destabilised further a highly tense area where extremist Israeli settlers live under heavy military guard in the middle of the Palestinian population.

So a stepping up of incursions and targeted killings in Hebron and Gaza seems the most likely military option for Israel.

The way American Middle East diplomacy has been going recently, it seems unlikely Washington will mount a serious stand against the assassination of militants.

State Department officials have in the past criticised such killings, along with human rights groups and specialists in international law.

Palestinian discord?

Another dimension of the post-Defensive Shield environment is one which the Israeli Defence Forces may be less keen to trumpet – having insisted that their campaign was not intended to affect Palestinian civilians.

Now the wider Palestinian population no longer feels immune from direct Israeli punishment if a suicide bomb were to go off in an Israeli shopping mall or restaurant.

Civilians now feel they will suffer retribution

It is they who have borne the brunt of the curfews, the electricity cuts and shortages of food and medicine, with the danger of shoot-to-kill enforcement by the army if they left their homes.

Having until now broadly supported the militants’ right to resist Israeli occupation – if not always their methods – Palestinian civilians now fear an even harsher campaign on their towns if attacks on their Israeli counterparts continue.

It remains to be seen whether this will drive a wedge between Palestinian civilians and the militants, which would be a first during the current intifada.

That may be the hope of Mr Sharon, who has built a career on the use of military power to achieve what he sees as Israel’s political and security goals.

On the other hand, pressure is likely to start building on Mr Sharon to grasp the nettle of a political settlement with the Palestinian leadership in the aftermath of his offensive, something he has less experience in doing, and less inclination.

RE: Nobody wants the Palestinians

It sounds to me a bit ambitious to try to solve this HUGE problem in a forum.

Anyway it’s interesting to get such a spectrum of point of view.

I don’t want to criticize anybody’s opinion but just bring some facts.

1) We (western countries) have created this mess. I mean kicked the of WWII.

2) These guys if they want to live in peace will have to SHARE.
Share West bank , share Jerusalem, share the water. The actual logic on both sides is : I WANT EVERYTHING!
Peace will only come from negociation

3) USA should stop to support unconditionnaly Israel. Why don’t they allow an investigation in the Jennin slaughter case?
I’m affraid that the jewish lobbying in NY is too powerful !!

4) Why are we (EU , USA etc) so silent in this case? What’s the different between a murder in Jennin and a murder in Koweit? (Oil maybe)

5) Do those guys really want peace? I mean the politician and milices leaders. This war as many other wars is a business. Some guys are born in a state of war , grew up this way and only know to fight. Peace would be a disaster for them. Kids in Palestin are educated hatred for jewish. It’s almost in their genes.

6) Let’s help them to talk, this talk and only this will lead some day to peace. That is what population really want

RE: Nobody wants the Palestinians

Lucky you to be able to generalize like that. Do you know all the palestinians?. We don´t have to suppose that all palesnians suport the criminal attacks. It´s a really simplistic view. Rejecting car bombs, I have to say something to put an end to this topic, because we won´t get any compromise. We tend not be rational and usually talk without knowing the situation. But for me one thing is clear. Israelis need safety and recongnition, but whats is clear too that we are forgetting that they are being ocupied by others for generations. Of course they did a lot to have it but……should you live in the forties in the UK, how would feel if Hitler had invaded the UK?. Were the french resistence, terrorists or fighters for liverty?. Of course I don´t justify these Hamas and Jihad lunatics but I understand the degree of frustration of many palestinians.