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CNN Live Today
Palestinian Fighter Who Surrendered Telling His Story of What Happened in Jenin
Aired April 23, 2002 - 11:14 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Both the Israelis and the Palestinians are waiting for an international fact-finding panel to arrive and to sort out what really happened in the devastated Jenin refugee camp. This was the scene of Israel's most fierce offensive.
Now, a Palestinian fighter who surrendered is telling his story and he spoke with CNN's Sheila MacVicar from an Israeli prison.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SHEILA MACVICAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Israel Defense Force helicopters offered an aerial view of the Jenin camp. You can see the camp's destroyed heart. From the sky, the damage appears to be localized. What you cannot see beneath the roofs still standing, the heavily damaged buildings below.
As it waits for the arrival of the U.N. fact-finding mission, Israel is deeply stung by the international criticism of its tactics here and allegations of a massacre. The Israeli government is considering declaring the U.N. envoy who toured the camp last week persona non grata, and expelling him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are shocked. This is horrifying beyond belief.
MACVICAR: Because, they say, his criticism was unacceptable.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There was not a massacre, period, in any way whatsoever.
MACVICAR: At every Israeli military briefing, officers now emphasize over and over that Israeli troops did not commit a massacre, they say, and that Jenin, they say, was a center of terrorism.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Israel is fighting a legitimate fight.
MACVICAR: The battle for Jenin is finished. The war of words continues. The latest and unlikely venue for that war an Israeli prison, and an unusual interview offered by Israeli officials with this Palestinian fighter, a senior member of Islamic Jihad, who surrendered in Jenin.
(on camera): How many fighters were you? TABAAT MARDWAI, ISLAMIC JIHAD (through translator): There were 60 or 70 fighters from those in the camp, and then another 20 or 30 from Palestinian security forces. Altogether, about 100.
MACVICAR (voice-over): Tabaat Mardawi's estimate is not that far from the Israeli military estimate of 200 fighters.
He drew a map of the camp and talked about the course of the battle. Their weapons, he said, were guns and locally made bombs, and booby traps.
MARDWAI (through translator): There were different sizes, big ones for tanks -- a few dozen of those -- and others the size of a water bottle, antipersonnel bombs, maybe 1,000, 2,000 spread throughout the camp.
MACVICAR: But they thought the Israelis would attack with planes and tanks, not foot soldiers.
(on camera): You did not expect Israeli forces to come into the camp using infantry?
MARDWAI (through translator): It was like hunting, like being given a prize. I couldn't believe it when I saw the soldiers. The Israelis knew that any soldier who went into the camp like that was going to get killed. I've been waiting for a moment like that for years.
MACVICAR (voice-over): Like the Israeli soldiers, he said the fighting was fierce.
MARDWAI (through translator): It was a very hard fight. We fought at close quarters, sometimes just a matter of a few meters between us, sometimes even in the same house.
MACVICAR: We asked the question we had been brought to the prison to ask.
(on camera): Did you see anything that in the conventional sense of the term could be defined as a massacre?
MARDWAI (through translator): By my own standard, what happened there was a massacre. But if you are asking, did I see tens of people killed, frankly, no. In my group, we were in an area with no other people. Three fighters with me were killed. Later, when we started to move from place to place, we saw destroyed houses and could smell bodies.
MACVICAR (voice-over): Mardawi and the others had vowed to fight until death. In the end, what defeated them was the armored bulldozer.
MARDWAI (through translator): The huge bulldozer came in, and we were in destroyed houses. There were no soldiers or tanks. There was nothing I could do against that bulldozer. I had a gun. The driver probably wouldn't have even heard the shooting. What could I do? I either surrendered, or stayed to be buried under the rubble.
MACVICAR: And that is Israel's argument: With Israeli soldiers dying, a bulldozer was a tactical necessity to end the fighting, they say, and the devastation of the camp, unfortunate collateral damage.
The question for U.N. fact-finders: was such devastation necessary to deal with 100-200 fighters? In the war of public opinion, Israel is using whatever weapons it can find. As for Tabaat Mardawi, he saw our TV crew before he was allowed to see a lawyer.
Sheila MacVicar, CNN, Kishon (ph) Prison, Israel.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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