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CNN Saturday Morning News

An Inside Look at the Attack on Jenin

Aired May 04, 2002 - 09:30   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A compelling story now in two parts from our Sheila MacVicar. We're about to show you the beginning of what -- of that report on what happened in Jenin in the month during which so much of that place was reduced to rubble.

But we want to make one point first. To put it bluntly, we have no way of ascertaining, any more than Sheilah MacVicar herself had any way of ascertaining, whether or not the people she -- who she talked to were telling the truth absent independent verification, and that has been impossible to come by.

The statements you're going to hear ought to be taken as charges, allegations awaiting proof, if there ever can be proof. We can't keep interrupting to remind you of that, but just keep it in mind.

That said, here is Sheilah MacVicar on what happened in Jenin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHEILAH MACVICAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It had become intolerable, the horror of suicide bombings day after day, the Israelis dying, wounded, a nation terrified, unable to live a normal life.

RON: It was very clear to us that the reality that we were living in is -- we can't -- we can't continue with it, and...

MACVICAR: Lieutenant "Ron" is a student and a reservist in the Israeli Defense Forces, called up to serve in Jenin. He contacted us without military permission because he wanted to talk.

RON: None of us had any doubts as for the cause.

MACVICAR: When this round of Israeli military incursions began, it was always clear they would come again to the refugee camp at Jenin. The Israeli government calls it a fortress of terror, the place where 28 suicide bombers in 18 months had received their instructions and sometimes their bombs.

At an Israeli prison, in an interview offered by Israel's government, Thabet Nardawi openly acknowledged he was a senior member of Islamic Jihad in Jenin. He surrendered there. He admitted planning terrorist bombings and shootings.

THABET NARDAWI, ISLAMIC JIHAD (through translator): I see myself as a fighter trying to restore my rights.

MACVICAR: The militants in the camp were a small group, he said, armed with guns and homemade bombs.

NARDAWI: We were about 60 to 70 fighters from those who were in the camp. And then there were maybe another 30 from the Palestinian security forces, about 100 fighters in all.

MACVICAR: They laid booby traps and gathered their weapons. And the camp, home to 14,000 people and 100, perhaps a few more, fighters waited.

By April 2, the camp was silent, tense, braced.

It began on Wednesday, April 3, at 2:00 a.m. Kamal Tawalbi was hiding in his house with his family.

KAMAL TAWALBI, JENIN RESIDENT (through translator): The Israelis stormed the camp from three different sides. They came in with tanks. We could hear them rolling through the streets. There was heavy shooting.

MACVICAR: The Palestinian militants were waiting.

NARDAWI: We were spread out at the entrances to the camp, at all the small alleyways, so when the Israelis came, we would be waiting for them.

MACVICAR: Within two hours, the first casualties were brought into the hospital at the edge of the camp.

DR. MOHAMMED ABU-GHALI, DIRECTOR, JENIN HOSPITAL: At 3:50, we saw the first victim. She was a nurse, 27 years old, going to his job in the camp. She was died there just with one bullet directly in the heart.

MACVICAR: Dr. Abu-Ghali would spend the next nine days in the hospital or trying to retrieve the wounded and dead. He showed me some of the damage.

ABU-GHALI: (UNINTELLIGIBLE), she was arrive from (UNINTELLIGIBLE) up on the (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

MACVICAR: Damage done to the hospital by Israeli tank shelling.

By first light, Lieutenant "Ron" and his platoon were making their way on foot down from Antenna Hill.

RON: We still didn't anticipate any resistance. It actually happened very quickly, in the first hour and a half or two hours, literally when we just started to walk in during daylight. My commander was shot dead.

NARDAWI: I don't know why they brought in soldiers like that. 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'd been looking for that for years.

MACVICAR: The Israeli military describes the fighting here, nine days of fighting, as "the fiercest urban warfare in more than 30 years."

Twenty-three Israeli soldiers died, 13 in one single booby- trapped courtyard. Seventy more were injured.

To defeat 100 or so fighters, they called in Apache helicopters, tanks, and finally the bulldozers.

RON: This was no, I don't know, summer camp. This was an act of war. But this was done in the most sensitive way to human lives as possible.

MACVICAR: By now we all know what it looks like. Israel has been left on the defensive.

COL. MIRI EISEN, ISRAELI MILITARY INTELLIGENCE: Israel is not here standing and saying, Whoa, everything hunky-dory. Everything's not hunky-dory. Bad things happened.

MACVICAR: And in briefing after briefing, refuting Palestinian claims during the attack of a massacre with 500 killed.

EISEN: There was not a massacre, period, in any way whatsoever.

MACVICAR: After a week in the camp and interviews with dozens of people, New York-based Human Rights Watch agrees. There was no massacre here.

But its report concludes there were "serious violations of international and humanitarian law" that in some cases, it says, may amount to war crimes.

PETER BOUCKAERT, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: When the Israeli army decided to go into this densely populated refugee camp, they had a obligation under international law to take all possible precautions to protect the civilian population during the attack. Clearly the Israeli army failed to take the necessary precautions during its attack.

CAPT. SHARON FEINGOLD, ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCES: Well, we could have done what other people might have done, other nations, that's bomb from the air or go in with the bulldozers right away without risking our soldiers' life.

MACVICAR (on camera): Israeli officials have insisted that almost all of those who died here in the camp were fighters. But Human Rights Watch has documented 52 deaths, a number that they think will be very close to the final total. And of those 52 people killed, they say 21 -- that's nearly half -- were civilians.

(voice-over): Human Rights Watch says the deaths of people it has identified as civilians requires thorough and transparent investigation. The Israeli Defense Forces issued a written response to the Human Rights Watch report. It said, quote, "The extent of Israeli casualties and the duration of the combat are proof of the great effort made by the IDF to conduct the operation carefully in an effort to bring to an absolute minimum the number of Palestinian civilian casualties."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Now to the conclusion of Sheilah MacVicar's report on what may have happened at Jenin as events there were recounted to her separately by Palestinian and Israeli participants.

We began by asking you to bear in mind the claims and counterclaims of the two sides are nearly impossible to verify, but they've been -- there have been efforts to get at the truth.

As you heard earlier in Sheilah's report, the organization called Human Rights Watch has said to far preliminarily, there does not seem to be any evidence of what Palestinians have called a massacre in Jenin.

But Human Rights Watch also said it has concerns about other possible violations of the rules of war, among them the endangerment of civilians.

Back now to Sheilah MacVicar.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MACVICAR: On the morning of April the 6th, Saturday morning, the fighting was intense. Israelis soldiers in the camp were going door to door, searching for gunmen and weapons. An Israeli platoon arrived here in this relatively quiet corner of the camp.

(voice-over): An hour after they arrived, says Kamal Tawaldi, Israelis began shooting at his house. There were no fighters there, he says, just his family. He says he tried to get the Israelis to stop. That's when the house got hit.

(on camera): This is while you and all of your family were here in the house.

TAWALDI: Yes, we were all downstairs.

MACVICAR (voice-over): The house was on fire. The family went into the street where the soldiers were.

TAWALDI: They took me and my 13-year-old boy. They tied our hands with handcuffs and blindfolded us. See? You can still see the marks.

MACVICAR: They were taken to another house in the neighborhood, and the boy, Rawad (ph), was taken away.

TAWALDI: They took him to look for the clothes and belongings of one of the neighbors.

MACVICAR (on camera): And they took the 13-year-old boy to do this.

TAWALDI: Yes, this is his photo.

MACVICAR (voice-over): We found Rawad Tawaldi in another village dozens of miles away, staying with family. They say he has been greatly disturbed by what happened.

RAWAD TAWALDI: I was with another kid a year older. We went through the apartments opening up school bags and things like that.

MACVICAR: In another corner of the Jenin camp, we found Faisal Abu Sariya, a school teacher, who says he had also been taken from his house by Israeli soldiers to help search.

FAISAL ABU SARIYA (through translator): 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. While we were moving from one house to another, he would hold me by the neck, like that. In case we were shot at, he wouldn't be harmed.

MACVICAR: Faisal Abu Sariya says he was held with a neighbor.

ABU SARIYA: Abu Riyadh (ph), my neighbor, asked the soldier in Hebrew, "Why are you doing this to us? You always say you don't expose civilians to danger."

The soldier said, "You are working for us in order for your friends not to shoot."

MACVICAR: Abu Sariya says he was used for three days and two nights, released only when another group of Israeli soldiers shot him in the knee.

ABU SARIYA: The soldiers all started shouting at each other, "Why did you shoot him?" One of them took a bag off his back and tied up my knee.

MACVICAR: In the time that he was held, Abu Sariya said that on at least one occasion, he saw a senior Israeli officer who ordered that he and his neighbor be untied and given food.

Human Rights Watch says it has documented many cases of human shields, civilian explosives detectors being used by the Israelis in the camp.

BOUCKAERT: It's absolutely outlawed under the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war. It is one of the prohibited practices the army should never engage in.

MACVICAR: The Israeli Defense Forces initially and forcefully denied all use of human shields.

FEINGOLD: It's groundless, it's baseless, it's something which we don't do and will never do.

MACVICAR: On Thursday, the IDF said it had conducted an investigation and acknowledged one case.

EISEN: A woman came out of a house and she was requested to go back into her own house to say -- to announce, to call out for the other people to come out. That is the only instance that we know of what's called a human shield.

MACVICAR: Human Rights Watch had also documented the practice in earlier Israeli military incursions. We asked Lieutenant Ron, the IDF reservist, about it.

(on camera): Was there ever a circumstance where you used Palestinians to open doors?

RON: Not us specifically. But this was certainly a method that was acceptable. I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

MACVICAR: Did your commanders tell you that that was acceptable?

RON: Yes. I'm as a commander felt that this was acceptable. You have to remember, the cause was the -- the goal was to search the house for explosives and weapons. Since most of the apartment were deserted, if you found an apartment that was -- that had people inside, yes, you would take one of the family members.

MACVICAR: Let's go back to Kamal Tawalbi's neighborhood and the afternoon of Saturday, April 6, where people told us not only were some of them asked to search for explosives, they say they were taken, handcuffed and blindfolded, and used by a group of Israeli soldiers as protection against Palestinian gunmen.

Kamal Tawalbi.

TAWALBI: They put each of us next to a window. The soldiers put the gun on my shoulder. We couldn't count the bullets. It was hellish.

MACVICAR: He took us around the corner to show us the house.

(on camera): It was that window there? That window there.

(voice-over): Interviewed separately, Jihad Hanoon.

JIHAD HANOON (through translator): They lined us up near the window so that if someone fired at them, we would be a human shield. They kept us here and fired from above our head and shot from behind.

MACVICAR: It was the same window.

The 13-year-old boy, Rawad, found in another village.

RAWAD TAWALBI: We were standing up, our hands tied behind our backs. The soldier put the rifle here while he was hiding behind me.

MACVICAR: Iyad Gherayab.

IYAD GHERAYAB (through translator): They made us go up to the third floor, and they started hiding behind us and shooting.

MACVICAR (on camera): And which window did they take you to? That window, that window, on Saturday afternoon.

BOUCKAERT: It's just a fundamental violation of the laws of war. The failure of the IDF to investigate and prosecute persons who engage in these kind of practices basically gives carte blanche to soldiers to violate the laws of war during military operation.

EISEN: I think I've answered the question extensively. It's a question of, I don't know exactly if you want your own answer, then say your own answer. I've been very clear. We are not talking about a playground.

MACVICAR (voice-over): It is clear that what finally ended the fighting, by the end concentrated in the center of the camp, was the bulldozers. Thabet Nardawi, the now-jailed Islamic Jihad leader, told us he had intended to fight until death as long as there was a target he could still shoot at.

NARDAWI: 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.

MACVICAR: Israel has justified its actions here by focusing on the terrorists and the militants, the suicide bombings they say they averted, the explosives seized, and by talking about their own casualties, the 23 dead Israelis.

There is no need for any investigation, they say.

EISEN: We're talking about a terrorist camp at the center of a refugee camp, and maybe we should address the fact that at the center of a refugee camp, 100 or terrorists built a booby-trap minefield, and not about the other issues.

MACVICAR: Human Rights Watch had sharp criticism of the Palestinians too, echoing the spokesperson for the IDF, saying Palestinian gunmen endangered civilians in the camp by using it as a base for planning and launching suicide attacks, and mingling with the civilian population to avoid apprehension, a tactic the Israelis describe as using civilians as human shields.

Sheilah MacVicar, CNN, Jenin refugee camp.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Human Rights Watch says it has also launched an investigation into the Palestinian suicide bomber attacks. The international terror attacks -- intentional terror attacks against Israeli civilians, says Human Rights Watch, are a crime against humanity.

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