Remind you of Nazi Ghettos?

'They Forced Me to Hate'
Conflict: Residents of the Jenin refugee camp speak of the viciousness of the Israeli attack.


By T. CHRISTIAN MILLER, L.A. TIMES STAFF WRITER


JENIN, West Bank -- Lukea Tomei could only watch through a peephole as one neighbor was shot, his arms in the air. She cried out when she saw an elderly woman blasted by a sniper.

But she could stay still no longer when she saw a little girl wandering through a mine-filled street.

"The soldiers told me not to go out, but I didn't listen to them," said Tomei, a Palestinian nurse who rushed outside to snatch the girl to safety. "I could not sit by any longer." Nearly two weeks after the Israeli army launched the bloodiest battle in the West Bank since the 1967 Middle East War, there is growing testimony that its victory at the Jenin refugee camp was marred by human rights violations.

Israeli soldiers shot unarmed civilians, bulldozed people alive and blocked access to medical care, according to more than a dozen witnesses who spoke Sunday in a temporary shelter just outside the smoldering camp.

Their accounts, which could not be independently confirmed, painted a picture of a vicious house-to-house battle in which Israeli soldiers faced Palestinian gunmen intermixed with the camp's civilian population.

Israeli forces escorted a group of reporters into the blasted camp Sunday for the first time since the start of the offensive. The body of one bearded Palestinian gunman lay in the street, covered with flies. Homes and other buildings were flattened. Israeli soldiers said they had found booby traps throughout the camp.

Israeli officers said they had almost achieved their objective of ridding the camp of militants, noting that half the suicide bombers who have killed scores of Israelis during the last 18 months came from the Jenin camp, which was established in 1953.

But late in the day, after the group of reporters had left this city, fighting flared anew. Explosions that locals said were charges designed to blow down doors could be heard. Machine-gun fire rattled, and tank fire boomed. Black smoke billowed from one side of the camp, once home to 13,000 refugees.

A local man, speaking by telephone, said that few people remained in the camp, which lacked water and telephone service, though power was restored late Sunday.

"We are in despair," said the man, who identified himself as Waleed Zagha, a father of three. "We can smell the rotting bodies."

The Israeli officials put the number of dead at 23 Israeli soldiers and about 70 Palestinians, though they said more bodies might be found under 25-foot-high piles of rubble. Palestinians have insisted that between 300 and 500 people were killed in almost two weeks of fighting.

The final toll may remain controversial. On Sunday, Israel's Supreme Court denied a bid by Israeli Arab politicians and human rights groups to block the burial of bodies by the army. It said the army was entitled to bury the dead if Palestinian authorities failed to do so, although it recommended that the International Committee of the Red Cross be involved.

Military officials denied that any massacres or human rights violations had taken place.

"Most of the houses we approached on entering the camp were empty [of civilians]. The camp was ready for war," Lt. Yoni Wolff, commander of a platoon involved in the battle, told reporters. "We saw very few civilians. Some old ladies and children were made to hold a gun in front of terrorists to make it hard for us to fight back."

Many of those who fled the camp in the last few days have wound up at the headquarters of the local Muslim charity and school, where about 2,000 people were packed into two buildings without running water.

There, as tanks rumbled through the city's deserted and devastated streets, more than a dozen witnesses independently described a pattern of attacks against civilian targets that began April 3, the first day of the Israeli assault, and continued until Saturday, when the camp was nearly vacated.

Many of those interviewed said they had seen Israeli soldiers shoot at unarmed civilians or bulldoze occupied houses. Others said Israeli soldiers had prevented wounded people from seeking medical treatment.

Still others said Israeli soldiers had detained them and threatened them with death before releasing them.

On the first night of the invasion, Tomei ran from a United Nations clinic in the camp to seek shelter in the nearby home of a cousin. Later, as she watched through a peephole, she saw a man walk into the street, holding his stomach, she said.

"He had no guns. He said: 'I want a doctor. I want to go to the hospital,' " Tomei said. "They shot him."

Tomei and a second witness, Baha Awad, 20, a worker for the Palestinian ambulance service, also described an incident in the early days of the invasion when Israeli soldiers ordered a family out of a house with loudspeakers, then proceeded to bulldoze it.

The family ran out, screaming that they had been forced to leave behind their mentally handicapped son. Army officials denied that they had buried civilians alive.

"We never bulldozed houses if we knew civilians were inside, only when firing persisted despite our repeated calls for surrender," Wolff told reporters.

The battle grew heated in the center of the camp, in two neighborhoods known as Al Damaj and Al Hawashin.

There, Israeli and Palestinian sources said, about 200 Palestinian fighters holed up in various homes, vowing to fight to the end. At least 13 Israeli soldiers were killed by an explosion in the area Tuesday. That represented the Israel Defense Forces' heaviest loss in a single incident since 1997.

Gasan Haija, 22, who identified himself as a Palestinian fighter, said the Palestinians managed to get into positions all around the Israelis in the two neighborhoods, which are filled with winding alleys only a few feet wide.

Haija, who said he was throwing pipe bombs from a home, was shot by a sniper. On Sunday, he lay in a bed in the temporary shelter, a metal bolt protruding from his shattered leg and a bullet wound in his side.

"They got stuck in the middle of the camp. That was where they ran into trouble," he said.

In the confusing days at the beginning of the battle, camp residents said, the Israelis brought in helicopter gunships to provide cover for bulldozers to knock down buildings and clear out the warren of alleyways in the camp's center.

Kamel Ali, 48, said his son and a friend, both 20, were fleeing from one home to another April 5 when a rocket struck, killing both young men. Ali said neither was armed.

A few days later, on April 8, Ali and four other men were rounded up by Israeli soldiers, taken outside and made to strip. One man who said he spoke Hebrew said he heard the soldiers discussing whether to execute the men in a store or beside a car. The men, frightened, wrote their names on a nearby wall as a memorial to their killings.

Then, after three hours, the Israelis handed the men white T-shirts and told them to leave the camp.

"Such acts only solidify hatred in our children, when they see such humiliating things," said one of the men, Mohammed Hamed, 52.

Not far away that same day at the camp clinic, said Awad, the emergency worker, Israeli soldiers entered the facility, hit and slapped several people, including himself, and told them to leave.

"They said: 'You'll take out explosives in your ambulances. You're just treating terrorists,' " Awad said.

Tomei, meanwhile, remained locked in her cousin's house, terrified of leaving. One day, she said, an elderly woman who was staying with the family went to the bathroom to wash herself for prayers.

As she came out, a soldier in an apartment across the street heard the noise of the door opening and fired several shots through it, killing the old woman.

But the final straw for her, Tomei said, came when she looked out the window and saw the little girl, who seemed as if she had only just learned to walk, tottering alone through the streets.

Tomei rushed out and scooped her up despite soldiers' protests. Family friends now have the child, but Tomei said several people have told her that the girl's parents were killed during the invasion.

"I believe in peace and harmony. I have never hated the Jews," Tomei said. "But now, they have forced me to hate them."

 

Not allowing people to collect their dead for days and not recieve medical treatment is a disgusting and is murder.

Whether you call it a Governmental Assult or Terrorism it is horrible. People are in their homes and they are bulldozed, snipered and killed.

Please Rocket Man Tex, I know you are jewish, how can you justify this? Do you justfy the massacre of close to 2000 civilians including women and children in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps under the watch of Ariel Sharon? Please put aside your blind commitment to your country and say that burying people in unmarked mass graves is wrong.

If you don't think there is anything wrong with that, than you truly cannot believe in any of the teachings of the Old Testament. These are people that believe in the same God as you, they believe in Abraham and Moses.

I have stated in the past and I will state right now that the terrorist suicides against Israeli citizens is a horrible deplorable act, but do you not feel that the recent actions simply perpetuated the problem and created a whole new generation of people whose families are dead, homes are destroyed and all they have is the seed of hate that will make them insane enough to be a suicide bomber.

All we have done is watch Israel create another generation of people with a much higher propensity to be suicidebombers/fighters.

Sweeping through towns and placing over 4,000 people under arrest and killing between 100 to 500 (depending on source)
people and burying them in unmarked mass graves is something more reminiscient of Hitler, Rommel and Gerbles (sp?)

 

And your talking about the Refugees killing innocent civilians.

Does the actions of 20 or 30 people (suicide bombers) justify the killing of hundreds and the arrest of over 4,000 people??

The Nazi's argued that the Jewish Banking Groups in Germany Post WWI forced high interest rates on society forcing inflation to horrible levels and collapsing the economy creating starvation, but I don't believe that and your justification is just as short-sighted.

 

Good Point Davo.

I just find it strange that after the Plight of the Jewish people over centuries, they would back a regime that is creating the same scenario by for the Palestinians.

I just find it Ironic that Rocketman Tex, who is Jewish, would not condemn actions that bear similarities to atrocities done by the Nazi party. The Palestinians are very much like the Jews in pre-wwII Germany before the final solution was created. Living in a land in which they had little to no rights, no voting power, having to keep their "Papers" to mark them at all times, the fear of disappearing due to "secret police" at any time.

When Iraeli forces attack a random home and bulldoze it killing those inside why is that different from someone blowing himself up in a bus? Maybe because the Israeli troops don't need to kill themselves to kill Palestinians, they just decide when and how and then bury the bodies themselves, case closed.

Welcome to the 21st century

 

If anyone actually read the Barak Peace Deal, the percentages of 95% of the land are skewed.

There are Israeli controlled roads throughout the Palestinian lands to the Settlements that strategically divide up the Palestinian populace.

Its would have been like living in separated camps with Israeli checkpoints. That is not self-determination.

So please don't make it sound like the Israeli's offered a viable peace plan.

 

YES RocketmanTex, Hamas is wrong, but how can you equate smaller groups to the overall populace. There are Jewish groups which call for the expulsion of the Palestinian population or Genocide, but do we extrapolate those opinions to the whole populace, no.

 

DaDakota,

I have gone into many rants about Arab Governements, but what does one have to do with this?? Just because people are the same religion doesn't mean they are going to just take them in.

We are talking about a country (Israel) that is militarily occupying a land of another people and forcing them into deplorable circumstances.

Is it so unreasonable to think that if you just leave a group of people alone and not have them under military rule that they will stop terrorizing you??

Why is that so impossible to understand.

 

Ok DaDakota,


You have 3.5 million Palestinians living there. Occupied Militarily and oppressed living in refugee camps and having their houses bulldozed.

What do you suggest to do with them, Kill them?

And for everyone that just doesn't care about what Israel is doing to those people, we supplied them the money and the weapons in 1967 like we are today, this is my damn tax money.

Israel recieves 3 billion cash not including weapons and other aid. Thats for about 3 million Israeli's, meaning its about a thousand dollars for everyone in Israel and they won't do what we tell them to?

Its our responsibility to see where our money is going. We are partially responsible for every killing that Israel does.

At least we don't support the suicide bombers financially, so we can't force their action.

 

Israel Blockade Causing Palestinian Food Crisis-UN
Mon Apr 15, 1:02 PM ET
By David Brough

ROME (Reuters) - Hunger and malnutrition among millions of Palestinians are on the rise because of an Israeli blockade of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (news - web sites), the United Nations (news - web sites) world food body said on Monday.


"The total blockade of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has paralyzed the Palestinian economy, which is so vulnerably dependent on Israel and already severely weakened by frequent border closures," the Food and Agriculture Organization (news - web sites) (FAO) said in a special alert.

"It is now in a deep recession, with millions of people severely impoverished and extremely food insecure," the Rome-based FAO added.

The Israelis have imposed tight roadblocks on various Palestinian controlled areas since a Palestinian revolt against Israeli occupation began in September 2000. At least 1,272 Palestinians and 452 Israelis have been killed in the uprising.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights condemned Israel on Monday for "mass killings" of Palestinians and demanded it end its recent military offensive in the occupied territories.

FAO economist Shukri Ahmed told Reuters that the conflict was depriving people of jobs, incomes and access to food, but said Israel was not deliberately starving Palestinians.

He also denied that the United Nations was conducting a concerted attack on Israel with the FAO alert and the Commission on Human Rights resolution coming out on the same day, saying the timing was coincidental.

The FAO alert said malnutrition was on the increase, reflected in recent estimates of a 10.4 percent rise in the incidence of low birth weights and a 52 percent jump in the still birth rate in the West Bank.

Citing humanitarian agencies operating in the territories, the FAO alert said many homes were now without water and electricity, and what little food they had was rotting. The U.N. food agency voiced "serious concern" about the large-scale destruction of important Palestinian infrastructure, including stores, irrigation systems, greenhouses, water facilities, orchards and even removal of topsoil from an estimated 80 sq km of land.

FAO said that by "severely restricting Palestinian access to international markets, Israel has become virtually the sole supplier of food to the West Bank and Gaza Strip" accounting for more than 95 percent of Gaza's total agricultural imports and almost 100 percent of its exports.

"Border closures have extreme consequences for the food security of the Palestinian people," the agency said.

The alert voiced concern also over confiscation of agricultural land and water resources by Israel and estimates that freshwater resources available to the West Bank and Gaza Strip amount to 112 cubic meters per person per year, compared to 377 cubic meters per person per year for Israel.