UNITED
NATIONS - Many of the 22 civilians among the estimated
52 Palestinians who lost their lives in the Jenin
refugee camp were killed willfully or unlawfully
and Israeli troops who invaded the area used indiscriminate,
excessive force, which suggests that war crimes
were committed, Human Rights Watch said Friday.
The
respected international watchdog group's investigators
found no evidence, however, to support charges
of a massacre by the Israelis during their occupation
of the UN-run camp.
Human Rights Watch
is preparing a separate
report on Palestinian
suicide attacks on
Israeli civilians --
which preceded Israel's
military move into
the West Bank.
A week-long investigation
at Jenin, summarized
in a 48-page report,
found that the Israeli
campaign caused extensive
and disproportionate
destruction of the
camp's civilian infrastructure.
The entire Hawashin
district was said to
have been razed.
Throughout the camp,
at least 140 buildings
were completely leveled,
the report said, and
more than 200 others
were severely damaged,
leaving 4,000 people
homeless -- more than
a fourth of the population.
More than 100 of the
homes were in Hawashin.
Peter
Bouckaert, one of
three Human Rights
Watch investigators
who visited the camp
and gathered eye-witness
accounts of the events
during the Israeli
military occupation,
said some of the abuses
they uncovered amounted
to war crimes. "Criminal
investigatiions are
needed to ascertain
individual responsibility
for the most serious
viiolations," he
said, adding that this
was, first and foremost,
a duty of the Israeli
government.
The Israeli military
declined repeated requests
by the rights group
for information about
the incursions. After
agreeing at first to
a UN inquiry and saying
it had nothing to hide,
Israel set impossible
conditions for a UN
investigative mission,
causing Secretary General
Kofi Annan to call
off the proposed probe,
which the Security
Council authorized
at the behest of the
US. Human Rights Watch
said there should be
a UN inquiry.
Foreign friends of
Israel have had a hard
time explaining and
defending what went
on at Jenin and some
have flatly refused
to believe previous
accounts paralleling
this one from Human
Rights Watch -- insisting
that Israeli soldiers
could never perpetrate
the kind of atrocities
alleged to have occurred.
For its part, Human
Rights Watch said it
obtained corroboration
and independently crosschecked
the evidence in order
to reconstruct a detailed
picture of events.
Bouckaert observed
that the hallmark of
a professional army
was to take seriously
a need to establish
accountability for
violations of the laws
of war. Some of the
more harrowing data
from the report follows.
- Kamal Zghair, 57,
shot and then run
over by Israeli tanks
as he traveled down
a major road in a
wheelchair flying
a white flag.
- Jamal Fayid, 37,
paralyzed, crushed
in the rubble of
his bulldozed home
afte the Israelis
refused to give his
family time to get
him to safety.
- Faris Zaiben, 14,
killed by armored
car fire as he
went to buy groceries
when a curfew was
finally lifted
on
April 11.
Afaf Disuqi, 52,
killed by an explosive
charge at her front
door when she went
to open it for
Israeli soldiers.
- A wounded, unarmed
Palestinian militant
denied medical
aid and then
killed.
- Kamal Tawalba,
father of 14,
shot at as
he and his
family tried
to leave
their home,
which had been
hit by a tank
shell and missiles.
- A 60-year-old
woman killed
by helicopter
fire that
targeted her
top-floor
apartment,
although
there were no
armed
Palestinians
in the area.
Human Rights
Watch said it had documented cases in which
Israeli troops
used civilians as human shields. The above-mentioned
Kamal Tawalba and his 14-year-old son, who
were among them, said the soldiers rested their
rifles on their shoulders as they fired.. "Even accepting the Israeli charge that Palestinian groups who used the refugee camp as a base were responsible for attacking Israeli civilians, this does not excuse the IDF violations documented in this report," Bouckaert
said.
He said there was no evidence that Palestinian gunmen used civilians as human
shields during battles in the camp and no indication
that they prevented civilians leaving the camp.
But civilians were forced to carry out some
of the most dangerous tasks as the Israelis
searched the camp.
Israeli soldiers fired repeatedly on Red Crescent ambulances and in one case
shot and killed a uniformed nurse, Farwa Jammal,
27, who had gone to help a wounded man, the
investigators stated. Soldiers stopped ambulances
trying to reach the home of Mariam Mishahi,
58, who was wounded by shrapnel; she died..
During the period the IDF had control of the camp, humanitarian organizations
were denied access and this bar remained even
after operations ceased, despite great need,
the report said. |
