Rights Group Finds No Massacre, But War Crimes Likely

by Jim Lobe

However, Human Rights Watch (HRW) investigators said they found no evidence that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) committed massacres there.

Based on a week-long on-site investigation at the end of last month, the 48-page report, "Jenin: IDF Military Operations," concluded that at least 22 civilians were killed during the operation, many them willfully or unlawfully. It cautioned that a comprehensive tally will not be available until relief workers have cleared away collapsed buildings and rubble under which more bodies may be found.

The report also found many examples of indiscriminate and excessive force used by the IDF in the densely populated camp, which housed some 14,000 people before the offensive began Apr. 3. It said the IDF used Palestinians as human shields in violation of international humanitarian law.

"The abuses we documented in Jenin are extremely serious, and in some cases appear to be war crimes," said Peter Bouckaert, head of the three-person investigative team that first entered the camp Apr. 19. "Criminal investigations are first and foremost the duty of the Israeli government, but the international community needs to ensure that meaningful accountability occurs."

Even as the report was released, it appeared the possibility for a formal international investigation was fading. The United Nations Security Council, which had authorized an international fact-finding mission to Jenin, was expected to bow to Secretary-General Kofi Annan's recommendation that it be disbanded in the face of Israeli objections, at least for the time being.

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which had initially backed the delegation, abruptly changed its mind late last week. It also demanded the right to withhold witnesses and documents from the delegation and assurances that evidence it uncovered would not be used to prosecute IDF personnel at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Sharon also wanted the mission to investigate how Jenin had become a stronghold for Palestinian terrorists.

Amnesty International, which also had fielded a team to Jenin, strongly denounced the demands yesterday. "Failure by any party to cooperate with a UN fact-finding mission should never be a cause to abandon an investigation the UN has established and the international community is continuing to call for," the London-based group said.

Other human rights groups expressed concern that Israel's effective veto of the mission could set a precedent for other countries wishing to avoid scrutiny by Security Council-authorized fact-finding missions.

The HRW report, which had findings similar to those of Amnesty's recent mission, said it could confirm only 52 Palestinian dead, not the hundreds the Palestinians claimed had died in the offensive. It acknowledged, however, that more bodies might be found in the rubble of the more than 340 buildings that were either completely leveled or severely damaged by Israeli bulldozers, tanks, and rockets.

Of the 52 confirmed dead, 27 were members of a resistance force that HRW estimated at between 80 and 100 fighters. Three of the bodies could not be identified. Israel had claimed that 47 Palestinian fighters were killed.

Israel has said it lost 23 soldiers in the fighting, 13 of them in an ambush in the Hawashin district in the middle of the camp.

Contrary to Israeli reports, HRW said it found no evidence that Palestinian fighters had used civilians as shields or had tried to prevent the civilian population in the camp from fleeing, although it noted that they used indiscriminate tactics that endangered civilians, such as planting booby traps and intermingling with the civilian population during the conflict to avoid capture.

On the other hand, the report, which was based on interviews of more than 100 camp residents, as well as victims, eyewitnesses, international aid and medical workers, found that IDF soldiers did use Palestinian civilians as shields, a serious violation of international humanitarian law.

IDF troops forced Palestinians, sometimes at gunpoint, to accompany IDF troops during their searches of homes, to enter homes, open doors, and perform other dangerous tasks. Soldiers ordered Palestinians to stand in front of exposed IDF positions and, in one case, used the shoulders of a 14-year-old boy and his father to rest their rifles as they fired at targets for several hours.

IDF soldiers also converted civilian houses into military positions and confined residents to a single room. On other occasions, civilians who were trying to flee the camp were ordered by IDF troops to return to their homes, according to the report.

The report also found that the IDF blocked the passage of ambulances and medical personnel for 11 days, making it impossible for the injured and the sick to receive medical treatment. In one case, a uniformed nurse, Farwa Jammal, was killed by IDF fire while treating an injured civilian.

While the investigators found no evidence to sustain claims of massacres or large-scale executions in the camp, many deaths amounted to unlawful or willful killings. Kamal Zgheir, a 57-year-old wheelchair-bound man, was shot and run over by a tank on a major road outside the camp even though he had a white flag attached to his wheelchair.

In another case, 14-year-old Faris Zaiban was killed by fire from an IDF armored car as he went to buy groceries when the IDF-imposed curfew was lifted temporarily on Apr. 11.

In yet another case, a 37-year-old paralytic, Jamal Fayid, was crushed to death in the rubble of his home despite his family's pleas with IDF troops that they be allowed to remove him.

HRW also documented several summary executions, a clear war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Jamal Al-Sabbagh, for example, was shot to death while obeying orders to strip off his clothes. In at least one case, IDF soldiers killed a wounded Palestinian, Munthir al-Haj, who had been disarmed and whose arms had been broken.

At times, Israeli attacks were indiscriminate, in the sense that they failed to distinguish between civilians and military targets. This was particularly true in rocket attacks by helicopters some of which were directed against buildings in which only civilians were present.

The report charged that the destruction, primarily through the use of armored bulldozers, of the Hawashin district, where more than 100 buildings were completely razed, "extended well beyond any conceivable purpose of gaining access to fighters and was vastly disproportionate to the military objectives pursued."

Evidence that most of the destruction took place after the fatal ambush of the 13 Israelis suggested that it was carried out as a reprisal, which is strictly banned under the laws of war. Establishing whether this extensive destruction constituted wanton destruction -- or a war crime -- should be one of the highest priorities for the UN fact-finding mission, the report said.

"Israel should cooperate fully with whatever new UN fact-finding mission might be established," said Bouckaert, who has headed up earlier HRW investigations into wartime abuses in Chechnya, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. "There should be no immunity for persons implicated in the most serious violations of the laws of war."