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Culled from CNN
One wonders if without the use of Jet Fighters and modern pro cons of
military
hardware/warfare if the IDF pigs can defeat the Palestinians.
The guys in Jenin gave them more than a "proper hiding" as we say in
England. Gun for gun, bayonet for bayonet
I truly think the Israelis would be singing a different tune, as the IDF has
shown yet again
that they have an inert fear of the Palestinians. The Israelis and their US
backers constantly moan about the use of martyrs and yet when the IDF were
faced with guns they cowered behind civilians.
IDF your cover is blown, this initifada has really shown you up for what you
really are, a bunch of trigger-happy racist cowards,who shit themselves when
faced with men. Shame on you(chemm waay!!).
Regards
Manneh
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Jenin combat began with gunfire, ended by bulldozers
May 4, 2002 Posted: 11:02 PM EDT (0302 GMT)
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Intense fighting followed Israel's entry into the Palestinian
refugee camp at Jenin. Israelis and Palestinians disagree bitterly about
what happened during the battle. CNN's Sheila MacVicar talks with human
rights observers and Israelis and Palestinians who were there. The two
sides' claims have not been independently corroborated.
JENIN, West Bank (CNN) -- For an Israeli reserve lieutenant, the battle at
the Jenin refugee camp began with the sudden death of his commander.
The officer, identified only as "Lt. Ron," said his platoon entered Jenin on
foot, walking downhill into the refugee camp.
"We still didn't anticipate any resistance," he said. "It actually happened
very quickly, in the first two and a half hours. Literally, when we just
started to walk in, during daylight, my commander was shot dead."
Inside the refugee camp, about 100 armed Palestinians -- both Islamic
militants and Palestinian Authority security officers -- waited for the
expected Israeli assault. For Thabet Mardawi, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad
fighter in Jenin, "It was like hunting."
"I don't know why they brought in soldiers like that," said Mardawi, who was
captured by Israeli troops near the end of the battle. "They knew that any
soldier who goes into the camp on foot is going to get killed. It baffles me
to see a soldier walking in front of me. I've been looking for that for
years."
It was April 3, six days into an Israeli offensive against terrorism in the
West Bank that followed a series of Palestinian suicide bombings and other
attacks on Israeli civilians that killed more than 50 people.
Kamal Tawalbi, a Jenin resident, was hiding in his house as the Israelis
moved in.
"From three different sides, they came in with tanks," he said. "We could
hear them rolling through the streets. There was heavy shooting."
The Israeli government called Jenin a "fortress of terror," saying 28
suicide bombings had been planned and sometimes bombers equipped there in
the previous 18 months. The Jenin camp houses about 14,000 people in a
square mile. The U.N. administered Jenin refugee camp was established in
1953 to house Palestinians displaced after Israel was created in 1948. The
Oslo agreement, signed September 28, 1995, required all Palestinian
territories to be demilitarized except for a police presence.
Eight days later, at least 50 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers were
dead -- 13 Israeli soldiers killed in a single ambush in a booby-trapped
courtyard. The Israeli military described fighting in Jenin as the fiercest
urban warfare in more than 30 years.
Palestinians accuse the Israel Defense Forces of a massacre in Jenin, saying
Israeli troops killed 500 Palestinians. The Israelis deny that claim. They
say that their attempts to limit civilian casualties included the IDF's
decision not to use air power and artillery in the operation's early
stages -- even at the risk of increased Israeli casualties.
The Israeli assertion was buttressed by the humanitarian watchdog group
Human Rights Watch, which investigated what happened at the Jenin camp and
said this week that there was no evidence of a massacre by the IDF. Their
report concluded that 52 Palestinians were killed in the operation.
"This was no summer camp," said Lt. Ron, who spoke to CNN without Israeli
military permission. "This was an act of war, and it was done in the most
sensitive way to human life as possible."
Israeli troops entered "basically as evens," Ron said. "We were infantry
against armed men."
In a prison interview arranged by Israel's government, Mardawi acknowledged
he was a member of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad and admitted
planning terrorist bombings and shootings.
"I see myself as a fighter trying to restore my rights," he said.
As Israeli troops moved into Jenin, the Palestinian fighters armed with guns
and homemade bombs were waiting for them. They included about 30 members of
the Palestinian Authority security forces, Mardawi said.
"We were spread out at the entrances to the camp, at all the small
alleyways," he said. "So when the Israelis came, we would be waiting for
them."
Casualties began arriving at Jenin's hospital within two hours, said Dr.
Mohammed Abu Ghali, the hospital's director.
"At three o'clock fifteen, we received the first victim," he said. "She was
a nurse, 27 years old, going to (her) job in the camp. She died there, just
took one bullet directly in the heart."
Ghali would spend the next eight days in the hospital or outside trying to
retrieve the wounded and dead. As the fighting intensified, the hospital was
damaged by Israeli tank shells.
Palestinians say they were human shields
Palestinian women walk through the Jenin camp in the aftermath of the
Israeli incursion.
Israel insists almost all those killed at Jenin were combatants. Human
Rights Watch says 21 of the dead were civilians.
But the group also found instances of what it qualified as violations of
international and humanitarian law that it said might constitute war
crimes -- including many cases of Palestinian civilians reporting that they
had been used as human shields and explosives detectors.
Tawalbi spent three days hiding with his family inside his home as Israeli
troops searched for Palestinian fighters and explosives. Then, he says, a
platoon of Israeli troops began shooting at his house. Tawalbi said he was
trying to get the Israelis to stop shooting when the house was hit by a tank
shell and caught fire.
The Tawalbi family went into the street, where Tawalbi says the soldiers
handcuffed him and his 13-year-old son, Rawad. The boy was separated from
his family and was told to search through a neighbor's belongings.
"I was with another kid, a year older," Rawad said. "We went through the
apartments, opening up school bags and things like that."
Schoolteacher Fairsal abu Sariya told a similar story.
"The soldier told me to go and knock on the door and tell the people there
to move into one room. Then we moved to another house," abu Sariya said.
"While we were moving from one house to another, he would hold me by the
neck ... in case we were shot at he wouldn't be harmed."
Abu Sariya says he was used for three days and two nights. On at least one
occasion, he said, a senior Israeli officer ordered that he and his neighbor
be untied and given food. He says he was released only when another group of
Israeli soldiers shot him in the knee.
The kind of practices Tawalbi and abu Sariya described are "absolutely
outlawed under the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war," Human Rights
Watch spokesman Peter Bouckaert said. "It is one of the prohibited practices
the army should never engage in."
The Israeli Defense Forces initially and forcefully denied all use of human
shields. Capt. Sharon Feingold, an Israeli military spokeswoman, called the
charges "baseless." But on Thursday, the IDF said it had conducted an
investigation and acknowledged one case.
"A woman came out of a house and was asked to go back into her own house and
announce, to ask the people to come out," said Col. Miri Eisen, an Israeli
military intelligence officer. "That is the only instance of what we know of
as a human shield."
'Surrender or be buried'
Lt. Ron, the Israeli officer, said his unit didn't use Palestinians in such
a fashion, but said, "this was certainly a method that was acceptable. I
don't think there's anything wrong with it."
Kamal Tawalbi said men from his neighborhood were not only used to search
for explosives, but were handcuffed and blindfolded and used by a group of
Israeli soldiers as protection against Palestinian gunmen.
"They put each of us next to a window. The soldiers put the gun on my
shoulder," Tawalbi said. "We couldn't count the bullets. It was hellish.
What he was shooting at, I don't know."
Tawalbi's son and other Jenin residents described similar treatment.
"They made us go up to the third floor, and they started hiding behind us
and shooting," Iyad Gherayab said.
Human Rights Watch was critical of the Palestinians as well. Its report
concludes that Palestinian gunmen endangered civilians in the camp by using
it as a base for planning and launching suicide attacks and by mingling with
the civilian population to avoid apprehension -- a tactic the Israelis
describe as using civilians as human shields.
"We're talking about a terrorist camp in the center of a refugee camp," said
Eisen. "Maybe we should address the fact that in the center of the refugee
camp, a hundred or so terrorists built a booby-trapped minefield."
Eventually, Israeli troops had to call in bulldozers, tanks, helicopter
gunships to overwhelm Palestinian resistance, which by then had been limited
to a portion of the camp's center. For Mardawi, the Islamic Jihad fighter,
the battle ended when he found himself face-to-face with an armored
bulldozer.
Mardawi said he had planned to fight to the death, as long as there were
still targets to shoot at -- "when finally, I was standing in front of the
bulldozer. No soldiers, no tanks: me, with just a gun.
"There was nothing else to do -- surrender or be buried under the rubble,"
Mardawi said.
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