Israelis trained US troops in Jenin-style urban warfare

 by Justin Huggler, The Independent - March 29, 2003

 The American military has been asking the Israeli army for advice on
 fighting inside cities, and studying fighting in the West Bank city
 of Jenin last April, unnamed United States and Israeli sources have
 confirmed. Reports that US troops trained with Israeli forces for
 street-to-street fighting have been denied.

 If the US army believes the road to Baghdad lies through Jenin, there
 is reason for Iraqi civilians to be concerned. During fighting in the
 Jenin refugee camp last April, more than half the Palestinian dead
 were civilians. There was compelling evidence that Israeli soldiers
 targeted civilians, including Fadwa Jamma, a Palestinian nurse shot
 dead as she tried to treat a wounded man. A 14-year-old boy was killed
 by Israeli tank-fire in a crowded street after the curfew was lifted.
 A Palestinian in a wheelchair was shot dead, and his body was crushed
 by an Israeli tank.

 Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded
 and refused the Red Cross access. Using bulldozers, the Israeli
 army demolished an entire neighbourhood - home to 800 Palestinian
 families - reducing it to dust and rubble.

 Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history and strategy at
 Jerusalem's internationally respected Hebrew University, has told
 reporters that, following his advice to US Marines, the American
 military bought nine of the converted bulldozers used in the Jenin
 demolitions from Israel.

 Professor van Creveld said he gave advice to marines last year in
 Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He said he was questioned about Israeli
 tactics in Jenin, and told them the giant D9 bulldozers, manufactured
 for civilian use in the US but fitted with armour-plating in Israel,
 were among the most useful weapons.

 Israeli troops at first found they could not get their tanks and
 armoured vehicles into the narrow alleys of the refugee camp, so
 they bulldozed wide swaths through houses to get them in.

 If the US military intends to use converted D9 bulldozers in Iraqi
 cities, there is cause for concern. When reporters got into the Jenin
 refugee camp, we found the fronts of houses neatly scythed off so
 the insides of the houses were visible from the street, with personal
 belongings, sofas, beds, children's toys, hanging precariously from
 half-collapsed floors.

 Israeli use of the bulldozers has not been limited to clearing the way
 for tanks. They have also been used in collective punishment, such as
 the destruction of an entire neighbourhood in Jenin after the fighting
 ended.

 In Nablus last April, eight members of the al-Shubi family were killed
 when an Israeli soldier bulldozed their home, burying them alive,
 despite shouted warnings from neighbours that they were still inside.
 The Israeli military has supplied US forces with video of incursions
 by Israeli soldiers into Palestinian cities, said unnamed "security
 sources". They added that Israeli officers have given their American
 counterparts extensive briefings on Israeli tactics.

 One of the tactics identified was the Israeli army's practice of
 moving from house to house by knocking holes in connecting walls
 to avoid being exposed in the streets, a practice that has wrecked
 the homes of thousands of Palestinians.

 The Israeli army has also routinely used Palestinian civilians as
 human shields to protect them as they advance, a practice that has
 continued despite Israeli court rulings forbidding it. There was
 no word on whether Israeli officers had briefed American troops on
 this tactic.

 There were reports in the US and Israel media last November that
 American troops had been trained by Israeli instructors in a mock-
 up of a Palestinian city inside an army base in Israel. Those reports
 have been denied, but an unnamed Israeli source told the Associated
 Press that US officers did visit the mocked-up Palestinian city and
 attended a briefing on Israeli training methods.

 There have also been reports that Palestinians who have fought against
 Israeli forces in Jenin and other Palestinian cities during Israeli
 offensives last year have telephoned friends and acquaintances in Iraq
 to advise them on tactics to use against American and British forces
 if street-to-street fighting begins.

 There is another lesson to drawn from Jenin. The Palestinians who
 defended the city were armed only with assault rifles and crude,
 home-made booby-traps and pipe-bombs, against the massively better-
 equipped Israeli army.

 But they held out for 11 days, and managed to kill 23 Israeli
 soldiers, 13 of them in a single ambush. When the Palestinians
 ran out of ammunition, they kept fighting and started throwing
 stones at the Israeli soldiers. If the much better-equipped Iraqi
 forces take the same attitude to defending Baghdad and other
 cities the battles could be bloody.

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