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WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East
Bush defends Sharon as Jenin massacre provokes international condemnation
By Chris Marsden
20 April 2002
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Denunciations of Israeli brutality in Jenin have been voiced throughout the world, with
just one notable exception. The Bush administration has not only maintained its
steadfast support for the government of Ariel Sharon, but has all but abandoned the
pretence that it is seeking an Israeli military withdrawal from the West Bank.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office as he met with Secretary of State Colin
Powell on his return from Israel, Bush praised Sharon as a �man of peace�, while
criticising Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat for not bringing an end to
�terrorism.�
Most significant of all, when asked if he was troubled that there was still a major
Israeli military presence on the West Bank two weeks after he had called for an
immediate withdrawal, Bush declared, �History will show that they responded�.
Sharon, he added, �gave me a timetable and he�s met the timetable.�
Bush�s reference to an agreed timetable between himself and Sharon is proof of
direct US complicity in the ongoing war-crimes being perpetrated on the West Bank
and Gaza Strip. They confirm the analysis of the real purpose of Powell�s trip made
by the World Socialist Web Site on April 6, �Bush �peace initiative� prepares ground
for wider war against Arab masses�.
We insisted that Powell�s dispatch to the Middle East, �in no way represents a shift in
the basic policy of the United States in the Middle East.� Its primary purpose was, �to
buy time for the Israeli regime and provide it with a political cover to intensify its
assault on the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people.�
This is now so apparent on its face that Bush�s spokesman Ari Fleischer was
reduced to making the ludicrous claim that the president did not intend to signal to
the Israelis that he was backing away from his demand for immediate withdrawal.
But nothing can now disguise the fact that the US has given the Israeli Defence
Force (IDF) a license to terrorise thousands of innocent civilians trapped in the
Palestinian refugee camps throughout the West Bank.
The worst atrocities have occurred in Jenin. Bulldozers were sent in to flatten
inhabited houses to prepare the way for tanks and armoured cars. The army then
proceeded to indiscriminately target and destroy homes, factories, essential facilities
and other buildings by using fighter jets and helicopter gunships
After the loss of 13 soldiers to Palestinian snipers, the IDF began utilising
anti-aircraft
weapons that fire 3,000 20-millimetre rounds a minute to destroy houses in which
Palestinian fighters were said to be sheltering. In order to conceal its military
operations from any prying journalists, the army produced a cordon of smoke to
screen off the areas of fighting. A report appeared that one pilot of a helicopter
gunship hovering above Jenin last week repeatedly refused to fire on a building said
to contain �terrorist suspects�, for fear of killing civilians. The pilot has not been
named, and it is not yet known if action will be taken against him.
Even the most conservative estimates of those left dead after the Israeli pull-out of
Jenin are in the hundreds. There have been reports of unretrieved bodies, some in a
state of decomposition and of the victims of Israeli terror being concealed in mass
graves. A senior Palestinian spokesman, Nabil Shaath, has accused Israel of
carrying out between 60 and 70 summary executions and removing corpses in
refrigerated trucks: �The Israeli army took six days to complete its massacre in Jenin
and six days to clean it up.� Up to 500 people had been killed, he claimed.
On entering the camp, observers have described scenes of total devastation��a
lunar landscape� is how one reporter described what he saw.
The United Nations envoy to the Middle East, Terje Roed-Larsen, described Jenin
as, �shocking and horrifying beyond belief.� Roed-Larsen said 300 buildings were
destroyed and 2,000 people were left homeless: �I�ve just been witnessing two
brothers digging out of the rubble their father and five other family members. I
witnessed a family digging out their about 12-year-old son from beneath the rubble.
There�s a stench of decaying corpses all over the place here, the scene is absolutely
unbelievable ... No military operation could justify the suffering we are seeing here.�
British forensic expert Professor Derrick Pounder of Dundee University, part of an
Amnesty International team granted access to Jenin, said that the evidence points to
large numbers of civilian dead. Regarding the numerous eyewitness accounts of
civilian deaths, he said, �I must say that the evidence before us at the moment
doesn�t lead us to believe that the allegations are anything other than truthful and
that
therefore there are large numbers of civilian dead underneath these bulldozed and
bombed ruins that we see.�
He added that post mortems on two bodies had �given cause for suspicion�. The
autopsy carried out on a 38-year-old Palestinian revealed that �he was either shot in
the foot, and then in the back, or shot in the back first�receiving a fatal wound�and
his corpse was for some reason shot in the foot.�
The Mirror�s David Pilditch said of Jenin, �It was like the aftermath of some huge
earthquake. Steep alleyways filled with rubble, not one single home left intact and the
corrosive, suffocating smell of rotting corpses. But this was no natural catastrophe.
This was a grim, man-made scene of absolute destruction in the Jenin refugee camp
yesterday, a grotesque theatre of hatred and savage epicentre of Israel�s Operation
Defensive Wall campaign.�
He interviewed Jumana Hassan, 24, who told him that soldiers had gathered bodies
together and blew them up to hide the evidence. Jumana said: �There were six men
whose bodies were lying in the street. They were left for days. They threw them into a
pile. There was an explosion and there was nothing left of their bodies.�
In the face of these reports, even the most ardent defenders of Israeli actions in
Europe have been forced to issue protests.
Britain�s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Israel should accept an outside
investigation of its actions in Jenin, possibly by the International Committee of the
Red Cross (ICRC). He believed that �all available evidence� indicates that Israeli
forces in Jenin used �disproportionate and excessive force� and criticised Israel�s
reticence to accept outside scrutiny as being, �distressing above all to Israel�s
friends.�
Chris Patten, the EU�s external relations commissioner, told the Guardian
newspaper, �It is in Israel�s interest to behave like a democracy that believes in the
rule of law. There has to be movement, and movement fast, to enable the
international community to deal with this calamity.�
He also made clear that he was speaking as a friend of Israel, in order to head off
any genuine demand for the Sharon government to be brought to book for its war
crimes. �If Israel simply refuses all the genuine calls for humanitarian assistance;
if it
resists any attempt by the international media to cover what is going on, then
inevitably it is going to provide oxygen for all those who will be making more extreme
demands,� Patten warned [emphasis added].
In a parliamentary debate in Britain, prominent Jewish Labour MP Gerald Kaufman
denounced Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a war criminal and said, �His
actions are staining the Star of David with blood.�
In an April 19 op-ed piece for the Mirror newspaper, Kaufman also made clear that
the motivation for his attack was concern for the survival of Israel: �In the wider
world, the devastation in Jenin and Bethlehem is turning countless fair-minded
people into harsh critics of the Israelis... Far from protecting the Jewish state, the
policies being followed by Prime Minister Sharon are undermining not only its
international reputation, but its very existence.�
The actions of the IDF in Jenin has indeed gravely undermined the standing of Israel
on a world scale and threatened its very survival. But in doing so, they will by
extension provoke a growing wave of political hostility towards its US backers. The
Bush administration�s claim to be conducting a �war against terrorism� cannot be
sustained while it continues to act as the main sponsor and apologist for Sharon�s
murderous regime. The angry protests throughout both the Arab regimes and within
Europe itself will continue to escalate. It is this that accounts for the growing
nervousness of the European political elite regarding both Sharon�s actions and the
nakedly pro-Israeli stance of the US. Kaufman, previously a shadow foreign
secretary, made his own concerns clear, warning that Sharon had �made it
impossible� for the US to take action against Iraq: �To do so would be to unite the
whole Muslim world against the United States.�
Copyright 1998-2002
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
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