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PDF FormatFurther evidence of the measures taken by the IDF to protect the safety of civilians in Jenin is seen in the very limited use it made of the deadlier weapons at its disposal. While the army deployed tanks, infantry, and attack helicopters, its artillery was silent. The division commander refused to shell the refugee camp for fear of injuring civilians: “I could have finished it all in a whistle,” he said. “Full-corps fire on the center of the camp, and the whole thing would have been over. But we behave differently.”72 The same is true for Israel’s fighter planes, which remained grounded throughout Operation Defensive Shield. OC Central Command Major-General Yitzhak Eitan refused his subordinates’ requests for air cover in Jenin, “apart from the carefully controlled use of helicopters.” As he put it, “there are innocent civilians involved… if we act aggressively, many of them could be injured.”73 This policy was followed even though aerial bombings would certainly have ended the fighting more quickly, and with less risk to Israeli soldiers.
Even tanks were brought in only at a relatively late stage in the operation, though the infantry sorely needed their help. Army commanders apparently feared that using heavy weapons in the camp’s narrow alleyways would result in considerable property damage, and preferred to postpone their use.74 Moreover, the tanks that were finally introduced into the battle were primarily used as armed bases for machine guns, as the tanks “were not allowed to use their main gun for fear of uncontrolled damage.”75
These constraints prevented far more significant harm to the camp’s civilian population. But they also put IDF soldiers at clear risk. “We could have finished it much faster,” admitted a reservist, “but we have strict orders not to throw a grenade into a house without first making sure there are no civilians in it.” Many soldiers complained that these orders had made them especially vulnerable. “In Jenin we’re like pizza delivery boys who have to come right to the door of the terrorists’ houses,” complained one soldier. Even the Palestinians had to admit that the IDF exercised remarkable restraint: Thabet Mardawi told CNN how he and other Palestinian fighters “had expected Israel to attack with planes and tanks.” Yet this did not happen. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw the soldiers” walking into the camp without armor or air cover, he said. “The Israelis knew that any soldier who went into the camp like that was going to get killed.”76
The IDF’s worst fears were finally realized on April 9, when a force of reservists stumbled into an ambush in one of the camp’s courtyards. Thirteen soldiers were killed—convincing army commanders to change their tactics. That evening, the IDF began using D-9 armored bulldozers, which are almost impervious to sniper fire and explosives. They began clearing wide paths for other armored vehicles and systematically destroying the buildings from which heavy fire had been directed at soldiers.77 While the bulldozers did indeed cause considerable damage to property—about 150 homes were razed78—their use does not appear to have taken a significant toll in lives. In fact, it greatly speeded up the surrender of militants sheltered in the buildings, and brought the fighting to a rapid close. Time described a typical scene in the last few days of the fighting in Jenin: “A D-9 had sliced the wall off a house; dazed fighters came out with their hands in the air.” Helpless in the face of the crushing power of the heavy vehicles, most of the Palestinian fighters chose to give themselves up rather than be buried alive.79
The operation in the Jenin camp was not, of course, flawless. Indeed, the criticism of groups like Amnesty International and B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, deserves serious examination. Testimony by both Palestinians and Israelis raises the possibility that some of the damage caused by bulldozers was the result of carelessness or lack of concern, and had no real military justification.80 There also may well be grounds for the claim by the UN and humanitarian organizations that there were unnecessary delays in allowing medical aid to reach the sick and injured after the camp had been occupied.
But on the whole, Israeli forces did take remarkable care to avoid endangering the lives of the camp’s residents. It is useful to contrast this with the lack of parallel concern shown by the Palestinian fighters in Jenin, who made little effort to distinguish between combatants and civilians; on the contrary, an Israeli source relates that “in many cases, they [women and children] took an active part in the combat, helping to prepare—or even detonate—bombs or explosive traps. In others, terrorists holed up in a house would have a woman or even a child open the door to the approaching Israeli soldiers, forcing them to hesitate just long enough to allow the terrorists to shoot first.” Foreign sources confirmed these reports. The Los Angeles Times, for example, quotes camp residents who said that the Palestinian fighters in Jenin “intermixed with the camp’s civilian population,” and a report by Amnesty International notes that women and children helped keep the fighters supplied and relayed messages for them. These tactics were not just employed by Palestinians in Jenin: IDF paratroopers operating earlier in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus reported that civilians were fully involved in the fighting. “The entire refugee camp has been called on to serve in this war. Old men on the rooftops report with walkie-talkies. Fifteen-year-olds with binoculars jump on top of tin huts… armed Palestinians run back and forth on the approach road. Some of them are holding little children. There are even women standing in the middle of the road, keeping a lookout for soldiers and then running away. An ambulance approaches and drops off five armed men in a nearby street….”81
In a similar situation in Mogadishu, UN troops fired indiscriminately on women and on armed men carrying children. The IDF, however, behaved otherwise. Its insistence on protecting Palestinian non-combatants—even to the extent of putting its own soldiers at risk—resulted in a remarkably small number of civilian casualties. Thus, according to the report by Human Rights Watch, which usually adopts an extremely critical attitude toward Israel, only 22 civilians were killed in Jenin. Given the report’s shortcomings, the real number may be even smaller.82 The number of lives lost among Palestinian civilians in Jenin, then, was actually smaller than the number of losses among the Israeli force that moved into the camp—a ratio unprecedented in modern urban combat, reflecting an unparalleled policy of self-restraint in hostile territory.
VI
The dust has not fully settled on the battle of Jenin. Some of the facts came to light only months after the fighting ended, while others are still in dispute. Even where the facts are clear, controversy over their interpretation continues, both among those involved in the fighting and among foreign observers who visited the battle scene. Yet at this point it can be said with a high level of certainty that not only was the IDF not guilty of massacring Palestinians in Jenin, but in fact it made a supreme effort to spare them the fate of other civilian populations caught in an urban battlefield.
The IDF’s actions in Operation Defensive Shield were not flawless, and well-substantiated claims should be investigated thoroughly. Nevertheless, the comparison with other armies, including those with the best of intentions, provides a jarring sense of perspective. The horrors of the Russian campaign in Chechnya, the NATO operation in Kosovo, and the UN intervention in Somalia show just how unusual the behavior of Israeli soldiers in Jenin really was. The facts speak for themselves: It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find similar instances of urban combat that resulted in so few civilian losses.
Throughout its actions in Palestinian Authority territory, and in particular during the fighting in Jenin, the IDF proved that it operates according to standards unequaled among the world’s armies. Civilian casualties, of course, are a horrible consequence of war, even when they are few in number. Yet we must bear in mind the truth of what NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said when asked to explain the civilian losses in Kosovo: “There is always a cost to defeat an evil. It never comes free, unfortunately. But the cost of failure to defeat a great evil is far higher.”83
Yagil Henkin is a graduate student in military history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Notes
1. Of the 52 Palestinians killed, the IDF reported that at least 38 were armed fighters. Ha’aretz, August 2, 2002.
2. The Jerusalem Post, April 14, 2002; The Financial Times, April 17, 2002; Courier Mail, April 20, 2002.
3. Justin Huggler and Phil Reeves, “Palestine Under Attack,” The Independent, April 25, 2002.
4. The Guardian, April 17, 2002.
5. Evening Standard, April 15, 2002. It should be noted that these claims were also echoed in the Israeli press: Six months after Operation Defensive Shield, journalist Gidon Levi wrote that the Jenin refugee camp was “hell” from the time Israeli forces entered to “sow death and destruction there.” Gidon Levi, “Death Here, Destruction There,” Ha’aretz supplement, October 25, 2002. Ma’ariv columnist Meir Schnitzer described the actions of the Israeli soldiers in the camp as “a profanity, a desecration of the dead, a contempt for the lives of those left alive… abuse, deliberate starvation, death and destruction… something for the International Court of Justice in The Hague to think about.” Meir Schnitzer, “Haven’t We Been Here Before?” Ma’ariv, October 29, 2002.
6. “Jenin Camp: ‘Horrific Beyond Belief,’” BBC News, April 18, 2002.
7. Human Rights Watch, Palestinian Authority Territories—Jenin: IDF Military Operations, vol. 14, no. 3, May 2002.
8. Amnesty International, “Shielded from Scrutiny: IDF Violations in Jenin and Nablus,” November 2002.
9. George J. Mordica II, “It’s a Dirty Business, But Somebody Has to Do It” (Urban Combat), U.S. Army Center for Army Lessons Learned, call.army.mil/products/trngqtr/tq4-99/mordica2.htm.
10. Mordica, “Dirty Business.”
11. For example, if several forces from the same army are inside one building or in adjacent buildings and they come under fire from different directions, they may incorrectly identify the source of the fire and hit each other.
12. Field Manual (FM) 3-06.11 (FM 90-10-1), Combined Arms Operations in Urban Terrain, Washington, D.C. Headquarters, Department of the Army, February 28, 2002, www.adtdl.army.mil/cgi-bin/atdl.dll/fm/3-06.11/toc.htm.
13. Suppose, for example, that an attacking force is advancing along a main street with houses two to three stories high, each of which is secured by a squad of only 12 soldiers (four guarding the entrance to the house and eight on the second floor, facing in all four directions). A simple calculation shows that after advancing only a few hundred yards the invading force will have left behind many hundreds of soldiers whose sole duty is security. Moreover, high buildings are liable to allow the enemy to cross from roof to roof. The occupation of a residential district with 200 four- to six-story buildings may require an entire division.
14. At Stalingrad, for example, bloody, drawn-out battles were fought inside individual buildings. Whole divisions occupied fairly small areas, because the need to defend buildings and streets that had been occupied swallowed up vast forces. More than fifty-five years later, the Russians fought to take the town of Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, in conditions that recalled the famous World War II battle. In Grozny, though the two sides fought for days to capture positions in a single twelve-story building with 500 apartments, they never succeeded in gaining complete control of the building. See also Olga Oliker, Russia’s Chechen Wars 1994-2000: Lessons from Urban Combat (Santa Monica: rand, 2001).
15. Timothy L. Thomas, “The Battle of Grozny: Deadly Classroom for Urban Combat,” Parameters, Summer 1999, p. 89.
16. The historian John Ellis stresses this in his discussion of the urban battles of the Second World War: “The sniper’s other natural habitat was any built-up area, and even where a village or town had been pounded with bombs and shells the heaps of rubble still offered excellent cover. More in fact, for while a building is still standing it is possible to collapse it on the men within, but once it has been demolished even artillery can rarely make much impression.” See John Ellis, The Sharp End of War: The Fighting Man in WWII (London: David and Charles, 1980), p. 90.
17. Marshal Chuikov, the Russian commander at Stalingrad, was well aware of the dilemma: “Our storm groups, coming up to within a grenade’s throw of the enemy, presented the German airmen with a dilemma—could they bomb the Russians without hitting their own men? And whenever they tried to bomb our storm groups they hit Germans.” Vasili I. Chuikov, The Beginning of the Road,trans. Harold Silver (London: Macgibon and Kee, 1963), p. 283. Some fifty years later, these same tactics, nicknamed “the embrace” by observers, were employed most effectively by the Chechens, who fought so close to the Russians that the latter could use only light weapons and hand grenades. Even the Russians’ laser-guided munitions could not be operated in such close proximity to the target.
18. Such was the case, for instance, in Nagorno-Karabakh, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in several other places in Eastern Europe. See, for example, Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars—Organized Violence in a Global Era (Stanford: Stanford, 1999).
19. Appendix 1 to the Hague Convention—“Laws and Customs of War on Land: Section 2—On Hostilities,” clauses 25, 27. The IDF’s rules of engagement obviously adopted this principle: “The legal responsibility for the death of civilians in the case of a strike against a civilian target that was being used for military purposes will be that of the party that made the improper use of the civilian target, and not of the party that responded to the attack…. Even when there is no possibility of isolating the civilians during the attack, and there is no alternative but to attack, this does not give a green light to causing unfettered damage to civilians. The commander is required to abstain from any attack that can be expected to cause injury to the civilian population that is not in proportion to the anticipated military gain.” Erez Hason and Michael Ben-David, Laws of Warfare on the Battlefield (IDF—Military Law School, 1998), pp. 42, 44. [Hebrew]
20. An example is the bombing of the French town of Saint Lo by the Allies on D-Day, June 6, 1944, which cost the lives of some 800 local residents, who were not enemy civilians, but French citizens under German rule. The battle for the town began only a month later and it, too, caused many deaths among the civilian population, although no precise figures are available. By the end of the battle, the town had been almost completely destroyed. On the battle of Saint Lo see, for example, Martin Blumenson, United States Army in World War II—The European Theater of Operations: Breakout and Pursuit (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1961), pp. 146-182.
21. John F. Antal, “A Glimpse of Wars to Come: The Battle for Grozny,” Army, June 1999, p. 34; Timothy L. Thomas, “The Caucasus Conflict and Russian Security: The Russian Armed Forces Confront Chechnya: Part III: The Battle for Grozny, 1-26 January 1995,” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, March 1997, p. 59; Yagil Henkin, Grozny, Chechnya: Combat in Urban Terrain (Tel Aviv: Tora V’hadracha, 2000). [Hebrew]
22. Most sources rely on the estimates of Sergei Kovalev, the Russian human rights activist who lived in Grozny in January 1995. He claims that there were 25,000 civilian dead in the town at the end of January. According to John Wright, Suzanne Goldenberg, and Richard Schofield, 20,000 civilians were killed. Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal put the number at 27,000, while other sources put it even higher. John Dunlop estimates that during 1994-1996, 35,000 people were killed in the war. See John F.R. Wright, Suzanne Goldenberg, and Richard Schofield, eds., Transcaucasian Boundaries (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996), p. 11; Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus (New York: New York University, 1998), p. 217; John Dunlop, “How Many Soldiers and Civilians Died During the Russo-Chechen War of 1994-1996?” Central Asian Survey 19:3/4 (2000), pp. 329-339.
23. This was reported in The Washington Post of May 8, 1995, for example. The information can be crosschecked in the British Ministry of Defense publication on combat rules in urban terrain, Army Code No. 71346 (pt. 5), Army Field Manual Volume IV—Operations in Special Environments: Part 5—Operations in Built-Up Areas (OBUA) (London: Ministry of Defense, 1998).
24. Gall and de Waal, Chechnya, p. 220; ANATOl Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven: Yale, 1999), p. 50.
25. Arthur L. Speyer, The Two Sides of Grozny (rand CF-162), app. C, p. 81, www.rand.org/publications/CF/CF162/CF162.appc.pdf. For Russian tactics in the occupation of Grozny during the second war, see, for example, Oliker, Russia’s Chechen Wars, chapter 3; Tim Leaf, Marine Corps Study Group, “Thermobaric Weapons: A Weapon of Choice for Urban Warfare,” call website: call.army.mil; Timothy L. Thomas, “A Tale of Two Theaters: Russian Actions in Chechnya in 1994 and 1999,” call.army.mil/fmso/fmsopubs/issues/chechtale.html; Robert Seely, Russo-Chechen Conflict, 1800-2000: A Deadly Embrace (London: Frank Cass, 2001); Lester W. Grau, “A ‘Crushing’ Victory: Fuel-Air Explosives and Grozny 2000,” Marine Corps Gazette, August 2000, p. 31.
26. Evidence found in the area showed that at most 26 tanks and mobile cannons were destroyed, which contradicted NATO’s earlier announcements of hits on “more than 400 Serb artillery pieces, some 270 armored personnel carriers, 150 tanks.” NATO later adjusted its estimates, and the new tally was two-thirds of the original number. A special team appointed by the allies to investigate the matter later discovered that the number of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and cannons that retreated from Kosovo was greater than the number supposedly still in the possession of the Serbians, according to NATO’s estimate at the end of the bombing. See Nick Cook, “War of Extremes,” Jane’s Defense Weekly Online, July 7, 1999, www.janes.com/defence/news/kosovo/jdw990707_01_n.shtml; a U.S. Department of Defense news briefing in May 2000: DoD News Briefing, May 8, 2000; John Barry and Evan Thomas, “The Kosovo Cover-Up,” Newsweek, May 15, 2000, p. 22; Stephen P. Aubin, “Newsweek and the 14 Tanks,” Air Force Magazine, July 2000, www.afa.org/magazine/july2000/0700kosovo.html.
27. Human Rights Watch, “Under Orders—War Crimes in Kosovo,” chapter 16, 2001, www.hrw.org/reports/2001/kosovo/undword2b.html; “Operation Allied Force, Operation Noble Anvil,” Federation of American Scientists (FAS), www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/allied_force.htm. The last article includes a short list of incidents involving harm to civilians in the NATO bombings, as well as responses.
28. See, for example, “NATO Hit Old People’s Home,” BBC News, May 31, 1999; Jim Randle, “Kosovo Bridge,” FAS, April 12, 1999, www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/docs99/990412-kosovo29.htm.
29. “Village ‘Legitimate Target’—NATO,” BBC News, May 15, 1999.
30. “When War Goes Wrong,” BBC News, April 15, 1999.
31. “NATO Pilot Bombed Refugees,” BBC News, April 15, 1999.
32. Amnesty International, “NATO/Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, ‘Collateral Damage’ or Unlawful Killings? Violations of the Laws of War by NATO During Operation Allied Force,” June 2000, pp. 56, 57.
33. “NATO Says Bomb May Have Hit Serb Civilians,” CNN, April 27, 1999, www.cnn.com/world/europe/9904/27/kosovo.03/index.html.
34. Amnesty International, “NATO/Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, ‘Collateral Damage’ or Unlawful Killings?” pp. 69, 70.
35. “Amnesty Accuses NATO of War Crimes,” Guardian Unlimited, June 7, 2000, www.guardian.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,2763,329232,00.html.
36. Philip S. Meilinger, “Gradual Escalation,” Armed Forces Journal International 137, October 1999. See also Merrill A. McPeak, “The Kosovo Result,” Armed Forces Journal International 138, September 1999; Cook, “War of Extremes”; BBC Online, July 8, 14, 1999, September 6, 1999; the impressive FAS information bank, www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/kosovo.htm, and Report to Congress: Kosovo/Operation Allied Forces After-Action Report, www.defenselink.mil/pubs/kaar02072000.pdf.
37. Norman L. Cooling, “Operation ‘Restore Hope’ in Somalia: A Tactical Action Turned Strategic Defeat,” Marine Corps Gazette, September 2001, pp. 92-106.
38. The UN forces were compelled to take this action in response to attempts by the Somali militias to appropriate the aid packages by force. Following the new deployment of March-April 1993, the commanders of the international force decided to break off talks with the leaders of the various Somali clans and militias. Cooling, “Operation ‘Restore Hope,’” p. 95.
39. Cooling, “Operation ‘Restore Hope,’” p. 95.
40. The New York Times, June 8, 1993.
41. “U.S. Planes Slam Somali Capital, Home of Warlord Apparently Hit,” Miami Herald,June 13, 1993.
42. Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (New York: Penguin, 2000).
43. Bowden, Black Hawk Down, p. 365.
44. Bowden, Black Hawk Down, p. 365.
45. Bowden, Black Hawk Down, p. 95.
46. The New York Times, June 18, 1993.
47. Detroit Free Press, June 13, 1993.
48. Bowden, Black Hawk Down, p. 366.
49. “U.S. Copters Fire on Somali Women, Kids,” Wichita Eagle, September 10, 1993; The Los Angeles Times, September 10, 1993.
50. Manchester Guardian Weekly, September 18, 1993. Quoted also in Alexander Safian, “Is Israel Using ‘Excessive Force’ Against Palestinians?” camera Backgrounder, November 9, 2000 (revised December 19, 2000).
51. Cooling, “Operation ‘Restore Hope,’” p. 98.
52. Lawrence E. Casper, Falcon Brigade: Combat and Command in Somalia and Haiti (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001), pp. 68, 70.
53. Gannett News Service, November 22, 1993, quoted by Safian, “Excessive Force.”
54. Rick Atkinson, “Night of a Thousand Casualties,” The Washington Post, January 31, 1994. In addition, more than 800 Somalis were wounded. Atkinson’s estimate is based on contacts with Somali National Front leaders. Most Western sources estimated the number to be between 500 and 1,000. See Bowden, Black Hawk Down, p. 310.
55. Bowden, Black Hawk Down, p. 328.
56. The pilot, Mike Durant, was captured on October 3 and released on October 14.
57. During the Iran-Iraq War, an Iraqi armored division attacked the town of Khorramshahr, which was defended by a makeshift force of 3,000 Iranians armed only with light weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. The Iraqis swiftly overran the Iranian army forces in the region, but the Revolutionary Guard continued to offer stiff resistance to the attacking force. Although the Iraqis had absolute superiority in firepower, and employed heavy artillery and aerial attacks, the defenders managed to hold them off long enough for a large body of Iranian reinforcements to come to their aid. In the end, after 27 days of fighting, the two sides suffered a total of 10,000 to 12,000 dead or injured. The Iranians lost around 2,000 soldiers, whereas the Iraqis counted their losses in hundreds and a large number of armored vehicles. Pesah Melubani, “The Iraqi Occupation of Khorramshahr,” Ma’arachot, July 2002, pp. 74-85; Anthony H. Cordesman and Abraham R. Wagner, Lessons of Modern War: The Iran-Iraq War (Boulder: Westview, 1990); Edgar O’Ballance, The Gulf War (London: Brassey’s, 1988); Sepher Zabih, The Iranian Military in Revolution and War (London: Routledge 1988).
In the American invasion of Panama, Americans enjoyed absolute qualitative superiority over the defending forces as well as a quantitative superiority of at least six to one. The 2,000 Panamanian soldiers were poorly equipped and trained. Nevertheless, the action, described as a “precision attack” on military targets, cost the lives of many civilians. The U.S. Army admitted responsibility for the deaths of 202 civilians and 314 Panamanian soldiers. In a report by Physicians for Human Rights, it was asserted that only about 50 Panamanian soldiers died in the operation, whereas there were more than 300 civilian dead. Others estimated the civilian deaths at between 500 and 1,000. It should be noted that U.S. losses were extremely low, a mere 24 soldiers. These figures can be explained by American tactics: For example, when American tanks and planes fired on General Manuel Noriega’s headquarters, they destroyed many buildings in neighboring residential areas. 60 Minutes, September 30, 1990, quoted in Safian, “Excessive Force”; Ronald H. Cole, Operation Just Cause: The Planning and Execution of Joint Operations in Panama, February 1988–January 1990 (Washington, D.C.: Joint History Office, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1995), p. 66; Edward M. Flanagan, Jr., Battle for Panama: Inside Operation Just Cause (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1993); Safian, “Excessive Force”; Panama: “Operation Just Cause”: The Human Cost of the U.S. Invasion (Boston: Physicians for Human Rights, 1991); Margaret E. Scranton, The Noriega Years: U.S.-Panamanian Relations, 1981-1990 (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1991).
58. A recently published book deals, among other things, with precisely this matter: Ronen Bergman, Authority Given (Tel Aviv: Yedi’ot Aharonot, 2002). [Hebrew]
59. Amir Oren, “Generals Make Mistakes, Soldiers Pay for Them,” Ha’aretz, April 12, 2002.
60. Ze’ev Schiff, “Going for the Snake’s Head,” Ha’aretz, March 1, 2002.
61. See, for example, Ha’aretz, April 5, 2002.
62. Amira Hass, “Palestinians Vow They ‘Will Not Kneel to the Tanks,’” Ha’aretz, March 1, 2002.
63. According to IDF reports, there were 29 dead and 127 injured. IDF spokesman, “Operation Defensive Shield: Consolidated Data 28.3-21.4,” www.idf.il/hebrew/news/netunim.stm. More than 130 Palestinians were killed in Nablus and Jenin according to IDF data. According to Amnesty International, “Shielded from Scrutiny,” p. 9, 80 Palestinians and 4 IDF soldiers were killed in the fighting in Nablus. According to a report by B’tselem, April 2002, more than 250 Palestinians were killed in Operation Defensive Shield. The report does not indicate how many of them were civilians. Cf. www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Fatalities_Lists/Pal_by_IsSec_april02_eng.asp.
64. Gidon Levi, “Too Soon to Hand Out Medals,” Ha’aretz, June 9, 2002.
65. The agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority permitted the deployment of only 30,000 policemen. See Bergman, Authority Given, p. 41. On the structure of the Palestinian security apparatus, see Bergman, Authority Given, pp. 357-359. The IDF has four regular divisions and a number of battalions, which means no more than 15,000 soldiers. For data on Israel, see Jane’s World Armies.
66. Yoav Limor, “Operation Too Late and Too Costly,” Ma’ariv, Weekend supplement, April 12, 2002.
67. Bergman, Authority Given, p. 266.
68. Jonathan Cook, “The Engineer,” Al-Ahram Weekly Online, April 18-24, 2002, no. 582. The Palestinian fighter quoted by Cook claimed that everyone in the camp knew where the booby traps were. His claim does not square with the fact that some Palestinians living in the camp were killed by the booby traps; see, for example, Yoav Limor, “Explosives in Every House, Car, and Cart,” Ma’ariv, Today, April 8, 2002; Matt Rees, “The Battle of Jenin,” Time Magazine Online, www.time.com/time/2002/jenin/story.html. Setting traps and laying explosive charges in a residential area are a contravention of the international rules of war. The Geneva Conventions of 1977 state that it is prohibited to “direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.” The UN Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, which came into effect in 1983, expressly prohibits the use of booby traps against a civilian population. In a report on the events in Jenin by the UN secretary general, the Palestinians were sharply criticized for adopting “methods which constitute breaches of international law.” Report of the Secretary General Prepared Pursuant to General Assembly Resolution ES-10/10, www.un.org/peace/jenin/index.html; Roni Shaked and Amir Rappaport, “IDF Gains Control Over Most of Jenin Refugee Camp,” Yedi’ot Aharonot, April 8, 2002.
69. Ze’ev Schiff, “The IDF Will Carry Out Similar Raids in the Camps,” Ha’aretz, March 3, 2002. Ya’akov Erez mentions a similar figure, as reported by IDF Fifth Battalion Commander Didi Yedidya, who commanded the occupation of the refugee camp. Ya’akov Erez, “What We Proved in Jenin,” Ma’ariv, April 26, 2002. According to Amnesty International, there were only about 120-150 men, not all of whom were armed, but in the same report some Palestinian fighters are quoted as claiming that there were 400 of them in the camp. Amnesty International, “Shielded from Scrutiny,” p. 6. Journalists Amira Hass and Amos Harel reported that 1,000 men gave themselves up, but they did not indicate how many were armed or on the wanted list. Ha’aretz, April 11, 2002. The BBC reported on several “hundred” Palestinian fighters. BBC Online, April 12, 2002.
70. Schiff, “The IDF Will Carry Out Similar Raids.”
71. Rees, “The Battle of Jenin”; CNN, April 8, 2000; Gideon Avidor, “The Battle of Jenin: April 2002,” The Urban Operations Journal,www.urbanoperations. com/jenin.htm.
72. Ha’aretz, April 15, 2002.
73. Ze’ev Schiff, “The Battle of Jenin,” Ha’aretz, April 10, 2002.
74. It is possible that they were also concerned about the tanks’ ability to negotiate the narrow alleyways. Even if that had been the case, had the Israelis not cared about the consequences for Palestinian civilians, they could have used bulldozers from the outset to make way for the tanks, as they did several days after the battle began.
75. Avidor, “The Battle of Jenin.”
76. Guardian Unlimited, April 20, 2002, www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,687644,00.html; Yisrael Moskovitz and Tzadok Yehezkeli, “The Reservists’ Hell,” Yedi’ot Aharonot, April 10, 2002; CNN, May 4, 2002; Jerome Marcus, “Jenin’s War Criminals,” The Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2002.
77. Erez, “What We Proved in Jenin”; Rees, “The Battle of Jenin”; Ha’aretz, April 12, 2002.
78. According to UN figures, about 150 houses were reduced to ruins and many others were badly damaged. Four hundred fifty families were left homeless. The damage to property was about 27 million dollars’ worth. Report of the Secretary General Prepared Pursuant to General Assembly Resolution ES-10/10.
79. Rees, “The Battle of Jenin”; a Human Rights Watch report was sharply critical of bulldozers being used in this way: “Particularly in the Hawashin district, the destruction extended well beyond any conceivable purpose of gaining access… and was vastly disproportionate to the military objectives pursued.” Unfortunately, the report does not take into account the damage caused to houses in the camp by the explosive charges placed in them, or the fact that these charges made progress through the camp by any means other than bulldozers virtually impossible. The international laws of war recognize this difficulty, and allow the use of bulldozers to open routes for armored vehicles, to deal with traps, and to damage buildings where there are enemy fighters. Human Rights Watch, Jenin, p. 3.
80. Tzadok Yehezkeli, “We Made Them a Stadium in the Middle of the Camp,” Yedi’ot Aharonot, 7 Days, May 31, 2002. A report by B’tselem, published with Ha’aretz on July 18, 2002, quotes an Israeli soldier as saying, “After the thirteen soldiers were killed, the bulldozers were employed much more aggressively… it continued even after the fighting—for about a day and a half after no more shots had been heard.” The report asserted, “Such destruction cannot be justified on grounds of military necessity. It was, therefore, illegal.” Eyal Raz and Yael Stein, Defensive Shield: Soldiers’ Testimony, Palestinians’ Testimony (Jerusalem: B’tselem, 2002), p. 13. [Hebrew] It should be noted that even IDF sources had confirmed as early as the middle of April (to Ma’ariv on April 4, and to Ha’aretz on April 15) that the demolition of buildings in the camp continued after the end of the fighting, but they said it was done to demolish booby-trapped houses.
81. Leiah Elbaum, “An Insider’s Perspective from the Jenin Camp,” April 25, 2002, www.israelinsider.com/views/articles/views_0359.htm#top. This and many other discrepancies between the British and American press led Tom Gross to comment that the British and the Americans apparently didn’t interview the same Palestinians. Tom Gross, “Jeningrad,” National Review Online, May 13, 2002, www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-gross051302.asp; Amnesty International, “Shielded from Scrutiny,” p. 6; Ron Leshem, “Paratroopers in the Balata Hell: Operations Log,” Yedi’ot Aharonot, April 2, 2002.
82. Human Rights Watch, Jenin, p. 12. In at least two instances, it is clear that whoever wrote the report had little understanding of what he was describing: Regarding the deaths of Ahmad Hamduni on April 3 (Human Rights Watch, Jenin, pp. 15-16) and of Abd al-Karim Sa’adi Wadah Shalabi on April 6 (Human Rights Watch, Jenin, p. 20, also cited by Rees), the IDF fired on Palestinians because suspicious bulges on their bodies looked like explosive belts. In one case it turned out to be a hump, and in the other a back brace. In both cases the soldiers’ reaction was not entirely unreasonable: They had been instructed to kill immediately anyone wearing an explosive belt by shooting him in the head, because shooting at the body was liable to detonate the explosives or give the wearer a chance to detonate them. Whatever the facts, this was not a case of cold-blooded murder of a civilian who had surrendered, but of a tragedy caused by prompt action in response to what seemed to be danger. A later report by the IDF determined that only three Palestinian non-combatants were killed in the fighting (Ada Ushpiz, “The Living Dead,” Ha’aretz, July 19, 2002); for some of the cases mentioned in the Human Rights Watch report, Israel has different versions and different data.
83. Quoted from a report, “Civilian Deaths ‘Necessary’ Price,” BBC Online, May 31, 1999.
