Human Rights Watch says war crimes committed in Jenin camp

By JUSTIN HUGGLER and PHIL REEVES

The truth about Jenin is coming out, despite a concerted campaign by Israel to cover it up and the United Nations decision this week to abandon a fact-finding mission in the face of Israeli refusal to cooperate.

In a report published today (FRI), the Human Rights Watch organisation (HRW) says it has found prima facie evidence that the Israeli army committed war crimes in Jenin refugee camp, and calls for criminal investigations of those responsible.

Today's detailed 48-page report is proof that the details of Israel's wholesale violations of the Geneva conventions in Jenin are slowly emerging, despite Israel's efforts to conceal them.

The Independent revealed last week that almost half the Palestinian deads identified so far in Jenin were civilians. Today's HRW report contains detailed accounts of those killings, and says several of them should be investigated as possible war crimes. It identifies 22 civilians among the Palestinian dead identified so far – three times the number Israel is claiming.

The report contains disturbing new evidence of the extrajudicial execution of a civilian by Israeli soldiers – a war crime -- and horrifying new accounts from Palestinian civilians forced to act as human shields by Israeli soldiers.

The report raises serious questions over the Israeli army's bulldozing of an entire district of the refugee camp, containing many scores of civilian homes, and whether it constituted the war crime of "wanton destruction" under the Geneva conventions.

HRW spent seven days inside Jenin refugee camp and interviewed more than 100 residents. The report says several of the killings reported last week by The Independent, which accompanied HRW for five of those days, should be investigated as war crimes. There is 14-year-old Faris Zeben, who was shot by an Israeli tank when he went shopping for groceries when a curfew was lifted in Jenin; Fadwa Jamma, a nurse in uniform shot dead by Israeli soldiers as she tried to treat a wounded civilian; and Afaf Desuqi, who was killed when Israeli soldiers blew open the door of her house as she tried to open it.

The most serious evidence in the report is the testimony of a 16-year-old identified as Ibrahim Z, who says he witnessed Israeli soldiers execute Jamal al-Sabbagh, an unarmed civilian. Ibrahim told HRW he was in a group of Palestinian men detained by Israeli soldiers. The soldiers ordered Mr al-Sabbagh to put his bag on the ground. The report quotes Ibrahim: "They wanted him to put it on the ground. He did. They told us to take off our trousers. While we were taking our trousers off, they shot him."

According to the witness, the soldiers fired two bullets, one at him and one at Mr al-Sabbagh. They missed Ibrahim, who says Palestinians were then ordered to take Mr al-Sabbagh's body to the hospital.

Among the most horrifying new accounts in the report is that of Kamal Tawalbi, who along with his 14-year-old son was forced to act as a human shield for Israeli soldiers firing from the balcony of a civilian house.

"The soldier put his gun on my shoulder," Mr Tawalbi is quoted as saying. "I was facing the soldier, we were face to face, with my back to the street. Then he started shooting. This situation lasted for three hours. My son was in the same position – he was facing the soldier, the soldier had his gun on his shoulder, and was shooting."

The report contains extensive evidence, from many witnesses, that Israeli soldiers used civilians as human shields, a clear breach of the Geneva conventions, and a practice that has caused international revulsion when used in other conflicts.

Another account comes from Faisal abu Sariya. He told HRW's investigators that when Israeli soldiers came to his house they made his 12-year-old son go from room to room opening dressers for them. Then they ordered him to go ahead of them as they went from house to house.

"They pointed a house out to me…They ordered me to go inside. I checked and found no one inside. Then they asked me to go out and sent in the dog. Then, when the dog came back, they went inside."

Mr abu Sariya told HRW he was shot and wounded while acting as a human shield. But it was not the Palestinian militants the Israelis feared who shot at him – it was another group of Israeli soldiers who saw him coming and shot him on sight. Mr abu Sariya was seriously wounded. "The two groups of IDF soldiers began arguing," the report reads. "Rather than taking the seriously wounded abu Sariya to the hospital, the soldiers provided him with some first aid – bandaging the wound – then ordered four Palestinian youngsters to carry him away." They were unable to reach the hospital and had to leave Mr abu Sariya at a private home.

"The abuses we documented in Jenin are extremely serious, and in some cases appear to be war crimes," said Peter Bouckaert, a senior researcher at HRW and one of the authors of today's report. "Criminal investigations are needed to ascertain individual responsibility for the most serious violations."

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