Grief combines with dread for Palestinians of Jenin

[AP photo] Rubble is visible in the center of the Jenin refugee camp on Friday. Many of the camp's 14,000 people fled during the eight days of fighting, especially those whose homes were in its center.

©Associated Press
April 13, 2002

JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank -- They know enough of what happened here to grieve, but not enough to say for whom.

In the chaotic aftermath of the worst fighting of a 2-week-old Israeli military offensive, wives are searching for husbands, fathers for sons, cousins for cousins. A full day after Israel said it subdued the last resistance by Palestinian gunmen inside the Jenin refugee camp, no one -- Palestinians, Israelis or aid workers -- can say with certainty how many people died in the rubble of this bleak and blasted enclave in the northern West Bank.

Israeli army officials have estimated that 100 Palestinians were killed in the camp during eight days of fighting. Palestinians say the toll in Jenin camp is far higher and accuse Israel of trying to cover up what went on here.

On Friday, the army kept journalists at bay, turning them away at roadblocks set up on approaching dirt roads, or at the rough, irregular treeline that marks the western edge of the camp. A wide area surrounding the camp and the adjoining town of Jenin has been declared a closed military zone.

The camp's people, too, were unable to move about freely, even though the fighting had all but halted. An occasional burst of machine-gun fire rattled from the camp's interior, and at one point black smoke rose into the clear sky. Tanks and armored personnel carriers rumbled along the camp's perimeter roads.

Many of the camp's 14,000 people fled during the fighting, especially those whose homes were in its center, which took the heaviest pounding from Israeli tanks and attack helicopters. Then, they said, troops prevented them from returning to their homes, rendering them refugees from their refugee camp.

"I think the people who lived in the heart of the camp are dead," said Thawer Ahmed, a 17-year-old who was lingering on the camp's outskirts Friday, unable to make his way back to the wrecked home he had left four days earlier. Soldiers had fired warning shots at groups of residents who had tried to make their way to the center a short time earlier.

"We thought we were in hell," said Ahmed, describing repeated rocketing and shelling attacks that shattered windows and sent terrifyingly loud explosions echoing through the camp during the battle. He and others described seeing homes collapsed either by shellfire or huge Israeli military bulldozers, with the stench of decomposing corpses emanating from the rubble.

In one home, he said, he saw the limbs of what appeared to be five separate bodies protruding from the wreckage. A neighbor, 20-year-old Rabi Amar, said he saw the corpses of entire families in their ruined homes. But the part of the camp where they said this happened could not be approached.

With the camp effectively closed to outsiders, Israelis and Palestinians traded bitter accusations over the number and nature of the casualties. Israel suggests that many of the dead were gunmen; the camp's people acknowledge that gunmen were among the fatalities, but say many civilians were killed as well.

"I saw many people die -- some of them in the street, some of them in their homes, some of them in fire from tanks and helicopters, and some underneath their homes when they fell down," said 22-year-old camp resident Rami Rateh. "Not just men, but women and children."

He said he had more than a dozen relatives with whom he had not been able to make contact since the fighting ended.

An Israeli army spokesman, Brig. Gen. Ron Kitrey, said collection and burial of the bodies in Jenin refugee camp would begin Friday. Rateh and several others said they saw dozens of bodies being carried away early in the morning in military trucks, but the army would not confirm whether any bodies had been removed and whether burials had taken place.

Kitrey said the bodies of gunmen from the camp would be buried at a special cemetery in the Jordan Valley, a field where Lebanese fighters killed in cross-border clashes have been buried in graves marked only by numbers.

"The terrorists we found with guns we are going to bury in what we call the enemy cemetery site," Kitrey said. "The civilians we will try to give back to the Palestinians."

Word that Israel was going to remove some of the bodies immediately prompted Palestinian accusations of a coverup, but Kitrey denied Israel was trying to keep secret what had gone on inside the camp.

Late Friday, Israel's Supreme Court ordered that the bodies of dead Palestinians not be removed, pending an appeal by Israeli Arab lawmakers.

Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said Israel was trying to cover up the killing of civilians. "They want to hide their crimes, the bodies of the little children and women," Erekat said.

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