Buried alive

The battle and aftermath of Jenin and the attempts of human rights workers and the UN Human Rights Agency to gain access are in the news now (30 April 2002). There is a long history of soldiers trapping civilians in their houses, from Ariel Sharon’s own activities at Qibya, in the West Bank, in 1953 when a squad of soldiers led by him killed 69 Palestinians by dynamiting their homes down around them, to B’Tselem’s report (Excessive Force, testimony of Muhammad ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ‘Atallah, 84) of use of bulldozers in the Bethlehem district in October 2001.

This testimony comes from B’Tselem’s daily update for 18 April 2002 (www.btselem.org).

Yesterday morning, G.R. from Jenin refugee camp heard cries for help from the rubble of the Abu Zeineh home in Al-Hawashin neighborhood. Ten of the camp’s residents arrived at the place and began to clear the rubble in an attempt to reach those trapped. IDF soldiers who were near the hospital, about 150 meters from the Abu Zeineh house, shot at the rescuers and drove in their direction accompanied by a tank. The rescuers fled the area. HaMoked - Center for the Defence of the Individual contacted the IDF and gave the exact location of the survivors. However, despite the military’s pledge to rescue people about whom it received exact information, no military representative arrived at the place. In the evening, under the cover of darkness, residents of the camp returned to the Abu Zeineh home and rescued nine people alive.

Source: HaMoked - Center for the Defence of the Individual as found on the B’Tselem web site in the daily update for 18 April 2002.

It is important to realize that Israel’s High Court of Justice on April 14th recognized the necessity to provide aid for the people in Jenin (H.C. 3117/02) in a judgment against Center for the Defence of the Individual vs The Minister of Defense. HaMoked petitioned that the IDF Homefront Command send a rescue unit “to search for and rescue all persons buried alive under the ruins of the Jenin refugee camp, and rescue them.” The court found against HaMoked because the Minister of Defense’s council had stated that the rescue unit had “already entered the Jenin refugee camp, together with additional army forces, to the extent that security restrictions allowed. The unit will attempt to locate people.” The court found that “Law and morality both justify the entry of the rescue unit. The responsibility lays, of course, on the shoulders of the Military Commander on site. He will receive all information on possible locations of people, according to his judgment: information relayed by soldiers; information relayed by locals; information stemming from the experience of the unit itself; all subject to the judgment of the Military Commander and to security needs in the field.”

To the best of my knowledge, the rescue unit was never in Jenin.