International Activists Record Refugee Eyewitness Statements of Massive IDF Human Rights Violations
April 14, 2002
For Press Release and Contact Information go to: http://www.ccmep.org/hotnews2/american041402.html
[NOTE: Brian Wood, a member of the International Solidarity Movement, native from Denver Colorado, is currently in Taybeh, situated a few miles west of the Jenin refugee camp. With others internationals, he tried unsuccessfully to reach the camp. In the past days, he has been interviewing witnesses of the horrors that recently happened there. This camp was inhabited by 15,000 people and is currently, according to testimonies, occupied by 30,000 Israeli soldiers. The Israeli Army is now trying to hide the evidences of its war crimes. This report was written after a phone conversation with Brian at 9:00am (Palestine Time) Sunday April 14th.]
In Jenin refugee camp, people have been alive buried under their homes. This information has been confirmed by several testimonies from people who fled the Jenin camp to different towns all around Jenin. On Friday April 12th, a man named Hashem Natour was under the rubbles of his home when he called a friend of his: “Come help us!” Another man said on Saturday, April 13th that he was sure that his family was under the rubbles of his home, but was not allowed to approach them, and thus didn’t know if they were dead or alive.
If they are not shot at, international and local humanitarian aid workers have been detained, arrested, stripped down to their underwear, and interrogated. They are denied the right to enter the military “closed areas.” No journalists are allowed in Jenin nor at the Jenin refugee camp. Only the BBC was allowed to enter Jenin down town last Thursday for a few hours, but not the Jenin camp. They were then expelled from the area.
Some testimonies say that the Jenin refugee camp has been entirely destroyed, others say that a small section of the camp remains. After the camp was invaded by the Israeli army, all the houses, with any noticeable movement inside, were indiscriminately targeted by air strikes from Apaches helicopters. Then, bulldozers destroyed dozens of houses with their families inside. It is impossible to say how many people have died or are still alive under the rubble, maybe over a thousand (the Israeli army has acknowledged 200 hundred). Witnesses talk about mass graves being dug by the Israeli soldiers and other corpses put into trunks. According to rumors, the trunks are sent either to Haifa or to the Jordan Valley.
All the men between 7 and 90 years old have been arrested, blindfolded, and their hands cuffed behind their back, held this way for several days. They are sent to unknown locations and kept up to four days with almost no water nor food. They are systematically interrogated either by Israeli soldiers or by the Israeli Intelligence Service, and most of them are hit with plastic batons, punched and/or kicked. When they are released they are threatened with death if they try to reach a hospital or to go back to their homes. Palestinian identity cards have been stamped with the label “terrorist”.
The Israeli army is currently invading all the villages surrounding Jenin one after another. As Brian was talking on the phone, he could hear the shootings from a town named Silah five miles away. “We are expecting that this town, Taybeh, will be invaded tonight or tomorrow night”, he said. “When the media say that they the Israeli Army is backing off, it’s a big lie”, he concluded.
* Brian is one of four Coloradans in Palestine joining many internationals in solidarity with Palestinians trying to end the illegal Israeli military occupation of Palestine. More on their trip at: www.ccmep.org/Palestine.html