No Israeli massacre in Jenin, says UN report

11.00am

UNITED NATIONS - Israel and the Palestinians both put civilians in harm's way during Israel's assault on the Jenin refugee camp, a UN report said on Thursday, but it dismissed Palestinian charges that a massacre had taken place.

The cautious report, based on second-hand information rather than an original UN investigation which Israel rejected, makes few judgments. It avoids use of the word massacre but disputes high death tolls given by Palestinian officials that prompted calls for probes.

It lists more Israeli than Palestinian abuses, especially Israel's refusal to let humanitarian workers enter the camp and its use of heavy weaponry. But the report also says Palestinian fighters were lodged in civilian homes.

Israeli forces went into the Palestinian West Bank on March 29, two days after a suicide bombing in the seaside town of Netanya that killed 29 Israelis. The heaviest fighting was in the Jenin camp during Israel's "Operation Defensive Shield."

The report was based accounts from Palestinians, the European Union, aid groups and UN agencies, with Israel not contributing and refusing an on-site investigation.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry praised the report and said it cleared up a "misconception" there had been a massacre. A Palestinian minister said the report identified what happened in Jenin as a war crime. And the United States drew a balance, criticising both sides.

The report never used the word "massacre," but disputed a claim by Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat in mid-April that 500 people had been killed in Jenin.

"We don't say there was a massacre. We don't say there wasn't a massacre," said a senior UN official briefing reporters. "We deliberately avoid using words like massacre, which have a high emotional charge but no agreed definition. In any case we have not been in a position to make judgments."

The report, however, in an apparent reference to Erekat, said, "A senior Palestinian Authority official alleged in mid-April that some 500 were killed, a figure that has not been substantiated in light of the evidence that has emerged."

It said 52 Palestinians died in Jenin, as many as half of them civilians, while Israel lost 23 soldiers there. But 497 Palestinians died between March 1 and May 7 in the course of the Israeli incursion into Palestinian cities and towns, including Jenin, the report said, citing UN figures.

The United States said the "report indicates that the original claims of hundreds of deaths were overstated."

"However, we are always concerned when there are any casualties and accusations that humanitarian assistance is thwarted," said Richard Grenell, spokesman for US Ambassador John Negroponte.

"Civilians on both sides have suffered too much and we encourage both parties to take concrete steps to prevent terrorism."

The report dwells on Israel's arbitrary arrests and detentions, possible use of civilians as human shields, disproportionate destruction of Palestinian property, curfews and closures and especially attacking ambulances and denying humanitarian access for long periods of time.

Many of those acts were a violation of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention on the treatment of civilians in war, the report said.

Militant Palestinian groups reportedly booby-trapped homes, and some 200 fighters were lodged in civilian areas, abuses the United Nations said violated international humanitarian law.

Pleading for an end to violence, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who issued the report, said that "while some of the facts may be in dispute, I think it is clear that the Palestinian population have suffered and are suffering the humanitarian consequences, which are very severe."

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Daniel Taub said the report was initiated because of allegations of a "shocking massacre" that were supposed to take place in Jenin. But the report "negates this Palestinian fabrication and repudiates the malicious lies spread regarding this issue."

"The report clearly establishes that the Palestinian Authority did nothing to prevent terrorism," Taub said.

Palestinian Cabinet Minister Nabil Shaath called the survey an important step. "I know it doesn't satisfy everybody and it wasn't done in the way it should have done. But still it identified what happened in Jenin as a war crime."

- REUTERS

Feature: Middle East

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