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Briefing
with Colonel Hilik Sofer, Lieutenant-Colonel Itai Landsberg, and
Major Rafi Lederman
Major
Rafi Lederman, a brigade chief of staff
I’ll tell you a few words about my unit, all of which is made up
of reservists who represent a cross-section of the Israeli public,
in all of its factions and complexities: We were called to reserve
duty after the terror attack in the Park Hotel in Netanya on Passover
evening. We were called to serve in the refugee camp in Jenin. Why
Jenin? Jenin is the base for the terrorist infrastructure. We know
this to be a fact, because most of the suicide bombers were educated
in Jenin, worked in Jenin, trained in Jenin or passed through Jenin
in order to receive a blessing before going out to execute a bombing.
We arrested most of the leadership of the Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
Our goal is to protect our homes. As a military force, we were united
in the goals of the operation, to bring safety to our families.
We felt that terror jailed us in our homes, and the time had come
to neutralize the terrorist leaders. The
intelligence that the company commander in Jenin received is that
there aren’t that many civilians, but that most of them were terrorists.
In the Jenin refugee camp alone, 3.5 tons of terrorist weaponry
welcomed the IDF forces that entered. Many bombs exploded on our
forces. During my tour with journalists, I showed them bags of garbage
with bombs, refrigerators
that stood in the street and appeared innocent, but which were full
of explosives. The Palestinians drilled holes in the street and
buried mines there. All of the bombs were activated by electronic
means or by cellular telephones. There were also sniper’s posts
in the Jenin refugee camp. In order to give you a general idea about
the Jenin refugee camp, we’re speaking of an area 500 by 600 meters.
It’s a relatively small refugee camp. Nearly every point in the
camp was booby-trapped. Only in the center of the Jenin refugee
camp were we able to pass through with bulldozers, and relative
to the camp as a whole this was a very small area. As minister Sharansky
said (in a diplomatic briefing organized by the Foreign Ministry),
we restrained
ourselves, we didn’t use helicopters or missiles from the air, but
rather with accurate weapons to avoid injuring civilians.
The fighting itself was intensive but very slow; it took
us nine days. The type of warfare was an attack by the camp on all
sides with slow progress in the direction of the center of the camp.
Fighting by the terrorists was from within homes. There
were almost no innocent civilians. We called for
the civilians to leave their homes in order not to be hurt in the
crossfire. Civilians who left their homes were accompanied by the
IDF until they were outside of the camp, and were asked not to return
in order to avoid getting hurt. There were serious exchanges of
fire. The terrorists fired on wounded IDF soldiers in order to make
it difficult to rescue them. We estimate
that about 200 terrorists fought against us, the absolute majority
of them concentrated in the center of the camp. The
houses at the center of the camp were booby trapped, and thus we
used bulldozers to flatten them. There were homes whose foundations
were damaged from the bombs that exploded, and to avoid the danger
of collapse we were forced to flatten them as well. Medical aid:
We invited aid organizations to offer
help on one condition, that we would know where they were going
in order to check their vehicles when leaving the Jenin refugee
camp. I was present during our search of the aid organizations’
vehicles in which they tried to smuggle Palestinians posing as wounded.
The IDF moved medical equipment to the Jenin hospital as per the
request of the hospital manager. At no time did the IDF fire at
or enter the hospital. Water: We filled a well at our expense, so
that there would not be a lack of water. Electricity: The IDF brought
the Palestinians two generators to help them during blackouts, as
well as to avoid them. Blackouts: I know that this is the most interesting
subject. We gave the Palestinians 11
bodies. In homes in the refugee camp, we found 14 bodies and another
13 bodies were discovered by the Palestinians. In total, 38 bodies
were found. Among the dead, we found women’s bodies
with weapons on them, and I know of one boy who was killed. On the
personal level, I am a reserve soldier, 38
years old, married with children. I
know that the damage looks terrible, to us as well. The pain is
great when you consider the damage to the civilian population,
but I know that we did the maximum in order that as few innocent
people as possible will be hurt.
Questions
and answers
All of the questions were for the brigade’s chief of staff. Q:
Did your soldiers bury Palestinian bodies? Did you move Palestinian
bodies outside of Jenin for temporary burial in Israel? A:
There was no burial of terrorist bodies or of Palestinian civilians
in Jenin. All of the bodies that were discovered were given to the
hospital during the fighting. Afterwards we stopped this because
of the High Court ruling. Some of the corpses were booby trapped
in order to hurt our soldiers; after we took care of the bombs,
the bodies were brought to the hospital or the Red Cross. No bodies
were brought into Israel. As for Terje
Larsen’s accusations regarding food, the IDF provided food and water
to the Palestinian civilians. Q: What is your
reaction to the UN claims that the IDF did not allow them to enter
the Jenin refugee camp for six days? A: As I mentioned previously,
we allowed them to enter on condition that they allow us to check
their vehicles on the way out of Jenin. The decision was theirs
alone. Q: Do you feel that the IDF completed its mission
in Jenin? Or that you were forced to finish it hastily because of
international pressure? A: I feel that we dealt a heavy blow
to the terrorist infrastructure in Jenin that will neutralize them
for several months. To my dismay, we didn’t complete all of the
searches and thus didn’t capture all of the ammunition in the camp.
Q: Do you believe that the suicide bombers will return? A:
When we leave, we will not be able to control what happens in the
Jenin refugee camp. In the future, I assume that they will be able
to restore some of what was. Q: You said that soldiers passed
slowly from house to house, and that the combat was very slow in
order to avoid harming the civilian population. Did you see families
in the houses? How do you explain the UN’s claims that the place
looks like it was hit by an earthquake? A: The
houses were abandoned by the civilians. Families were in some of
the homes, we called their owners to exit, and
showed them the safest way to leave the refugee camp. The camp was
completely booby trapped, and despite the house-to-house combat,
the center of the camp was so completely booby trapped that we were
forced to use bulldozers. At times there were bombs that exploded
without damaging homes. But because their infrastructure was so
weak, and in order that they not collapse and endanger us or the
Palestinian population, we were forced to flatten them with bulldozers.
Q: The
IDF brought refrigerators to store the bodies, and
the Palestinians claimed that the IDF used these refrigerators
to move these bodies out of Jenin. What is your reaction? A:
The IDF did indeed bring refrigerators
to the refugee camp hoping to place found bodies in there to preserve
them. In the end, every body that was found was brought to the hospital
in Jenin. For this reason, the truck with a refrigerator
that entered the refugee camp empty, also exited empty!
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An
official IDF photograph from March 2000