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PDF FormatFor their part, the Palestinians were determined to inflict heavy damage on any Israeli forces entering Arab population centers. Local armed groups were readied, and almost every major town and refugee camp in Judea and Samaria was extensively booby-trapped, with hundreds of explosive charges in Jenin and Bethlehem alone. These ranged in size from small anti-personnel charges to explosives weighing 250 pounds or more, capable of blowing up a tank or turning a building into a pile of rubble.61 Statements by leading figures in the PA and various terror groups made it clear they had no intention of giving up without a fight: The day after Israel began operating inside the refugee camps, PA leaders announced that “the Palestinians will not kneel to the tanks and planes of the Israeli occupation and will continue to defend their lives and freedom.” Fatah’s secretary general in the West Bank, Marwan Barghouti, likewise declared, “We know the terror government in Tel Aviv has decided to commit a massacre against our people, but we will remain steadfast.”62
The real test came at the end of March 2002, when, in response to the Passover massacre of 29 Jews at the Park Hotel in the seaside town of Netanya, the IDF embarked on a massive campaign known as Operation Defensive Shield. Within about a week—a remarkably short time by all accounts—the IDF had successfully taken control of the cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin, Hebron, Tulkarm, and Kalkilya. The losses suffered by both sides were far smaller than anyone had expected: According to the IDF, 29 Israeli soldiers were killed (23 of them in Jenin) and 127 wounded. Palestinian losses were heavier, including 130 killed in Nablus and Jenin, according to IDF figures. More than 4,000 Palestinians were arrested, some 2,800 of whom were on Israel’s wanted list. In West Bank cities, Israeli security forces uncovered vast arms and ammunition caches, explosive-manufacturing laboratories, and documents proving the extent of PA-sponsored terrorist activity. The principal success of Operation Defensive Shield, however, lay in its swift neutralization of Palestinian defenses. With the notable exception of Jenin, the IDF advance was met with surprisingly little resistance.63
But the numbers alone are not sufficient to describe the true scope of the IDF’s achievement. Operation Defensive Shield involved 30,000 Israeli troops, both regular and reserve forces, along with tanks, heavy armored vehicles, helicopters, surveillance equipment, and sophisticated weaponry. A casual observer, unfamiliar with the nature and history of urban combat, might conclude that their success was a foregone conclusion. Reporters like Gidon Levi of Ha’aretz, for example, averred that “the IDF invaded West Bank cities to carry out police operations…. Most of the West Bank fell to the IDF without a battle. Some pockets of resistance, particularly the Jenin camp, led to painful casualties; but even in these locales, the fighting was between an army and some individuals. It was not a war.”64 Yet the operational success that Levi portrays as inevitable was nothing of the sort. As we have seen, combat in a built-up area can frequently neutralize the quantitative and technological advantages of the attacking side, making it easy prey for ambushes and booby traps. In urban fighting, a relatively small number of defenders can waylay even the largest and best equipped of armies. The Palestinian forces, moreover, were not small in number: In March 2000, six months before the outbreak of the current war, the combined branches of the Palestinian security forces numbered at least 40,000—more than all the IDF soldiers involved in Operation Defensive Shield—while the militias of Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad fielded thousands more.65
Although the operation did not completely stamp out Palestinian terrorism, it did demonstrate the IDF’s ability to act effectively inside PA territory. Yet this was not the only criterion for success. Many people, in Israel and abroad, judged the operation by a strict moral standard concerning treatment of civilians. Most of the focus was on the heavy fighting in Jenin, and particularly in its refugee camp, where PA spokesmen and the international media alike were claiming that a massacre had taken place. In hindsight, and with a clear perspective on the reality of urban combat, we are in a far better position today to assess what really took place in the Jenin refugee camp.
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The battle of Jenin in early April 2002 was, from a military standpoint, the most difficult campaign in the current conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The intense fighting cost the lives of 23 IDF soldiers—far more than in all the other battles of Operation Defensive Shield combined—and tested the IDF’s capacity to function in conditions that have spelled disaster for other armies. The biggest challenge, however, concerned the prevention of harm to non-combatants. In this regard, the IDF set a remarkable standard that other armies will be hard-pressed to match.
The IDF’s achievement is particularly noteworthy considering that the Jenin refugee camp was not exactly an innocent residential area. Home to 14,000 people, the camp was a central pillar of the Palestinian terror infrastructure. Groups such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas had dispatched dozens of suicide bombers from the camp into Israel.66 A letter written by Fatah members in Jenin to Marwan Barghouti in September 2001 provides insight into the extent of terrorist activities there:
Of all the districts, Jenin boasts the greatest number and the highest quality of fighters from Fatah and the other Islamic national factions. The refugee camp is rightly considered to be the center of events and the operational headquarters of all the factions in the Jenin area—it is, as the other side calls it, a hornets’ nest. The Jenin refugee camp is remarkable for the large number of fighting men taking initiatives in the cause of our people. Nothing will defeat them, and nothing fazes them. They are prepared to fight with everything they have. It is little wonder, therefore, that Jenin is known as the capital of the suicide martyrs.67
Palestinian forces were thoroughly prepared for an Israeli operation in Jenin. The camp was booby-trapped from top to bottom. “From the very first moment that their tanks left Jenin last month [after an initial IDF raid], we began to work on the plan to draw the Israeli soldiers into a trap and then blow them up,” recounted a Palestinian fighter. Everyone, apparently, had a hand in these efforts: “The entire camp was busy preparing charges and explosives,” Mohammed Balas, an eyewitness, was quoted as saying in the Israeli newspaper Yedi’ot Aharonot. “Even women and small children openly laid explosives in the streets.” Jenin’s defenders did not hesitate to endanger their fellow Palestinians, nor did they think twice about planting bombs in houses—“inside cupboards, under sinks, inside sofas,” according to one resident. Cars and dumpsters were also booby-trapped. By the time Israeli forces arrived, the whole city had become a minefield. On one street alone, an Israeli armored bulldozer detonated 124 explosive charges, some weighing as much as 250 pounds. And this was in the city of Jenin; the refugee camp itself was even more thoroughly laden with explosives.68
Explosive booby traps, however, were only part of the challenge facing the IDF in Jenin. The greatest threat came from the Palestinian force that had holed itself up in the camp. A conservative estimate put the number of armed defenders at about 300, although some put this figure much higher.69 The Israeli troops numbered about 1,000—a ratio which, as we have seen from other armies’ urban combat doctrines, was far from ideal.
But while conditions in Jenin did not make the IDF’s task easy, its policy of restraint out of concern for the civilian population made its job even harder. The Israeli government, navigating between the needs of security and politics, took the lead in ordering restraint. As early as March, Ze’ev Schiff was reporting in Ha’aretz that the IDF had been told that “one of the criteria for judging the success of your operation in the refugee camps will be the lowest possible number of civilian casualties.”70 These guidelines set the tone for combat in Jenin.
In keeping with orders from the government and the military high command, Israeli soldiers issued warnings to the camp’s inhabitants before the battle began, and even tried to evacuate by force those who would not leave voluntarily. This, of course, hampered the operation by eliminating any element of surprise. On April 8, CNN quoted a Palestinian from Jenin who reported that the Israelis “used loudspeakers to call on residents to evacuate, saying they were preparing to strike the camp. Some residents refused to leave and were evacuated by force, but a majority were still in the camp when the strike began.” According to Time magazine, half the residents left the camp before the battle began, and 90 percent had left by the third day. Of approximately 14,000 residents, only about 1,300 remained. Even during the fierce house-to-house fighting, the warnings and announcements continued. Awad Masarweh, a resident of Jenin, recalled that an Israeli officer with a megaphone was calling out: “People in the house, get out. We don’t want you to be hurt…. Get out…. We are going to come in.” According to Israeli sources quoted by CNN, such warnings are standard practice for the IDF, even in the thick of battle: “The civilian population was asked to leave. Most of them did. When troops came close to a house, they checked to see if there were civilians inside. If so, they were asked to leave. If they refused, they were moved to one room and kept there for the rest of the fight.”71
