Rights Group Doubts Mass Deaths in Jenin, but Sees Signs of War Crimes
…a weeklong investigation by an American rights group found that Palestinian claims of hundreds of civilian deaths are exaggerated.

But the report, the most authoritative to date, also contains conclusions beneficial to the Palestinians in the international furor surrounding just what occurred here.

For instance, it found what it described as evidence that Israeli forces used civilians to walk protectively in front of them throughout the incursion; destroyed more houses than needed for "any conceivable military purpose"; and blocked the passage of ambulances and relief groups to the camp for 11 days.

The document, based on more than 100 interviews and written by Human Rights Watch, a group that is generally considered fair-minded, concluded that those actions, among others, constituted "strong prima facie evidence" that Israeli soldiers "committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, or war crimes" and called for further investigation by Israeli or international bodies.

In interviews with The New York Times today, four Palestinian men featured in the report described being forced to walk down streets in front of Israeli soldiers as they advanced through the camp. They also said the soldiers, apparently fearing ambushes and booby traps, had sent them to enter houses and open closets and drawers inside.

Two other men interviewed today described being blindfolded and made to stand in a window while Israeli soldiers fired rifles over their shoulders.

"There was another guy who was standing beside me who was crying," said Kamal Tawalbi, whose 14-year-old son was also detained. "After I heard him, I recognized it was my son."

The Human Rights Watch senior researcher who led the project, Peter Bouckaert, said: "We have no doubt that extremely serious violations of the laws of war were committed. The evidence is certainly strong enough to warrant a war crimes investigation."

Yet the inquiry may well be the last of its kind — especially since Secretary General Kofi Annan's decision on Wednesday to disband the fact-finding team.

Mr. Bouckaert, the rights investigator, said that in 2001 and earlier this year, Human Rights Watch had found what he called evidence of Israeli forces' using Palestinians as shields.

He maintained that his group was not singling out the Israelis for criticism, and that it had also investigated the Palestinian Authority's failure to punish suspected terrorists and was now investigating suicide bombings. That practice, the group says, is a crime against humanity because it involves intentionally attacking civilians.

But he said Jenin was the scene of the most flagrant Israeli abuses in eighteen months of renewed violence.

The failure of the Israeli military "to instill discipline in its troops at a lesser level, at an earlier stage in the conflict," Mr. Bouckaert said, "has directly contributed to a culture where certain unlawful practices have become acceptable."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/03/international/middleeast/03JENI.html