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CNN Live Today

United Nations Investigators to Head to Jenin

Aired April 23, 2002 - 14:40   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: A United Nations fact-finding team is expected to be in the Middle East by the end of the week. It will investigate the battle of Jenin, a West Bank refugee camp that was part of Israel's military offensive. CNN's Christiane Amanpour reports from Jenin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Water tankers and utility workers replace Israeli tanks and troops trying to navigate Jenin's small streets and side alleys. Still no running water or electricity, but plenty of people coming from villages all around, drawn by a morbid fascination with what's been wrought.

Around this destroyed section of Jenin's refugee camp, groups here and there peer into deep holes an climb into recesses in the rubble. Still searching for relatives, dead or alive.

But many here are cynical about the U.N.'s new fact-finding mission. "They'll say we were fighting Israel," says Ahmed, who's missing two sons. "They won't say Israel was fighting us."

But Palestinian officials welcome the U.N. mission. They want it to prove their allegations of a massacre by Israeli forces. Israel categorically denies that. Only 40 bodies have so far been removed from here and Israel says they were mostly Palestinian fighters, not civilians.

(on camera): The Israeli government reluctantly bowed to international pressure for this fact-finding mission. But all along, the authorities have maintained they have nothing to hide and that any investigation will exonerate them.

(voice-over): Reserve soldier David Zangen was chief medical officer for the Jenin combat units. Like all Israeli soldiers, he could only talk to us with an IDF spokesman present.

MAJ. DAVID ZANGEN, ISRAELI RESERVIST: You have to remember, we could, in one hour, basically destroy the camp by air bombing or by artillery. And we didn't do it because we didn't want to harm any civilians.

AMANPOUR: The previous day, the IDF had made Tabaat Mardawi available to the press, a senior Islamic Jihad activist in Jenin, who is now in prison and, in the presence of his interrogators, confirmed the dead had fallen in fierce fighting.

"Of course, by my own standard, what happened there was a massacre," he says. "But if you want to ask whether I saw tens of people killed, I would say frankly, I did not."

The battle of Jenin remains a public relations nightmare for Israel, which is nonetheless convinced the truth will win in the end. For Palestinians, Jenin has already reached a place in the pantheon of national mythology. Christiane Amanpour, CNN, Jenin refugee camp.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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