gelatik
16.04.02, 00:51
JENIN, April 15 – A few weeks ago, it was a camp where 15,000 Palestinians
lived. Today, the streets of Jenin have witnessed crimes against humanity so
severe that it will forever remain in the pages of Israel’s dark history.
No one can really know the extent of the atrocities that were committed in that
camp, as the Israeli occupation army made sure that no media organization would
be allowed access before they cleaned up their act.
But those who miraculously managed to make it out had horrific stories to tell
the world, stories that, like so many told before, they fear are going to fall
on the international community’s deaf ears.
Some of these stories were published on the pages of UK daily newspaper, The
Independent.
Some described how camp residents leaped from window to window to escape the
advancing bulldozers; how some, equipped with mobile phones, had survived
beneath the rubble; how some people had been cut in half by tanks, the paper
reported.
In one story, the paper describes the trauma of a woman who arrived to find
that her house had been destroyed. “We had arrived in time to see 65-year-old
Rashida Raji Ahmed's trauma as she examined what was left of her house after an
11-day invasion by the Israeli army into Jenin, which has left hundreds dead
and injured.
“She was crying uncontrollably when we arrived at her door. The upper floor of
her home had been destroyed by a rocket, and chewed up by machine-gun bullets,
like many other homes in the area. The house had then been taken over by the
armed forces as a sniper's nest.”
In another story Mai Ziyad, 21, speaks about military-style mass
executions. “One week ago, nine Palestinian policemen had been bound hand and
foot, stripped to their underpants, and executed against a wall, said Mai
Ziyad, a 21-year-old student. The relatives, who had been forced to watch, had
come to her house deeply distraught. She could remember several names, the Abu
Jamda and Abu Hjab families had both lost men.
"The wives and children of those who were killed were here. They told us all
about it," she said.
Adanan Al-Sabah, a spokesman from Jenin municipality spoke about a woman who
cradled her dead son in her arms all night. “Their children kept on coming up
to their father and trying to wake him up, asking for food and milk."
In Al-Razi Hospital, Dr. Mahmoud Abu Eslieh said the staff had taken about 15
calls from worried mothers saying that they had been feeding their babies
powdered milk mixed with sewage water.
Inside his hospital, Ali Abu Sariah, 42, who said he was a teacher, was lying
in bed with a bullet in his left leg, reported The Independent.
He said the Israeli forces used him as a human shield to go house-to-house
through the camp, ahead of an Israeli patrol. They ran into another patrol,
which shot him in the leg, he said. "They left me on the ground, bleeding."
Munir Washashi bled to death over several hours after a helicopter round came
through the wall of his home. When an ambulance came for him, Israeli soldiers
shot at it.
Munir's mother, Maryam, ran into the street screaming for help for her son and
was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers. Abdullah, her other son, told The
Independent on Sunday he saw it all happen.
Fikri Abu Al-Heija, a survivor of the camp, also told his story to The
Independent:
"At the beginning the soldiers came and surrounded the camp with tanks," he
says. "There were two Apache helicopters. A rocket hit our house – they were
concentrating the rockets on the houses. All the windows were broken by the
explosions. All you could hear was explosions. When the rocket hit the house,
everybody gathered together on the lower floors. A woman was with us from the
second floor who had had her leg almost cut off by the rocket. It was just
hanging on by a little piece of skin. We saw the ambulance coming for her but
the soldiers stopped it."
The Palestinian News Agency (WAFA) reported that the Israeli tanks demolish
thehomes without evening asking the residents to leave. Many end up dead in the
rubble.
Speaking to WAFA from inside Jenin, Jamal Al Zubaidi said that he and people
with him found the bodies of five martyrs. The bodies had started to decompose,
producing a potent smell and birds were pecking them. He said that the features
of the martyrs had started to change and that it is difficult to recognize who
they were.
Umm Musaab said that the Israeli soldiers forcefully entered the house of her
brother in law in which she was staying with her children and forced them to
stay in a small room over broken glass and they were not allowed to leave. “We
stayed without food or drink. The soldiers did not even care for the screams of
my 9-month daughter who was crying from thirst and hunger,” she said.
On Friday, April 12, Israel’s Supreme Court ordered the army not to bury the
dead from the Jenin refugee camp amid Palestinian charges that a massacre had
been perpetrated amid heavy fighting there.
That court decision was made after Arab Israeli MPs Ahmed Tibi and Mohammed
Barakeh and the Arab human rights group Adalah filed a petition with Israel’s
highest judicial body.
However, Israel's Supreme Court gave the army permission Sunday, April 14, to
bury Palestinians killed in vicious fighting in the Jenin refugee camp,
throwing out a suit brought by two Arab Israeli members of parliament, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
But Jenin is not the only place in Palestine that suffers. Hakam Kanafani, the
general manager of the Palestinian mobile phone company Jawwal, wrote in The
Independent about a scene in Ramallah in the few hours in which the curfew was
lifted.
“The freedom bells ring over Ramallah. The army decides to "let us out". This
time we get four full hours. Praise the Lord. It takes me about 15 seconds to
get in my car and drive out of my garage.
“Across the street from my company's showroom there is a supermarket with at
least 10 cars parked outside. There is a truck unloading milk cartons. I step
outside to get some drinks. As I am about to cross the street I see an Israeli
tank approaching at about 20 miles per hour. To see a tank going that fast is a
chilling sight. To see a tank going that fast on a busy street is nerve-
racking. The tank is headed towards the supermarket. Silence.
“Everyone on the street is watching helplessly. There is no way the tank can
fit between the cars parked outside. There are children in some of these cars
waiting for their parents. Thank God for the huge milk truck. It took the first
impact. The tank crushed half of the truck. The street turns white with wasted
milk. The tank shifts gear, hits two trees and speeds away.
“A man runs to his car that is two yards in front of the truck. His two girls
are inside. He holds them. The girls are crying. The father is almost in
control. "It's OK girls, it's OK," he says softly.
Israel tells the world that its incursions are aimed at rooting
out “terrorists”. However, according to a report produced by Beir Zeit
University in Palestine “mostly women and children and older people, as those
constitute roughly 67% of the population living there.”
(Click here for full report -
electronicintifada.net/forreference/briefings/jenincamp.html)
As Peter Beaumont from the UK daily newspaper, The Observer put it, “what we
could see was a long-range assault, unequal in every part.”
