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'''Jenin''' (&#1580;&#1606;&#1610;&#1606;) is a [[Palestinian]] city in the occupied [[West Bank]], which is divided between Israeli and Palestinian control (see [[Oslo Accords]]).

== Overview ==

Jenin is a Palestinian city with a [[refugee camp]] in the northern part of the West Bank. It overlooks both the Jordan Valley to the east, and the Jezreel Valley to the north. Jenin is neither an ancient town (''See also:'' [[Anem]])  nor a big one, and has a population of a few tens of thousands. In particular, one of the city's quarters is a refugee camp housing the Arab refugees from the [[1948 Arab-Israeli War]], and their descendants. It has long been a center of [[Israeli-Palestinian conflict]]

Jenin was the center of civil unrest during the [[Great Uprising]] of Palestinians in the years [[1936]]-[[1939]]; in particular, it was the base of the pioneer of [[Arab]] resitence, [[Sheikh Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam]] (the [[Hamas]] military wing is named after him). It was also used by Qawquji's partizans, before they were pushed away by the British.

In the [[1948 Arab-Israeli War]], the city was captured briefly by forces of [[Israel]]i Karmeli Brigade during the "10 Days' fighting" following the cancelation of the first cease-fire. For 19 years, the city was under [[Jordan]]ian control; it was then captured by the Peled division of the [[IDF]] on the first day of the [[Six-Day War]] of [[1967]].

The city was handed over by Israel to the control of the [[Palestinian Authority]] in [[1996]]; as it turned out, however, radical Islamist elements began to assemble in the city almost immediately. For a while they were silenced by the Palestinian authority, but they were never openly acted against. At the start of the Second [[Intifada]], the city has allegedly become a central source for the dispatching of [[suicide bombing|suicide bomber]] to Israel's North and Center. According to Israeli sources, a quarter of all [[terrorism against Israel|suicide bombings]] carried out in Israel during the [[Intifada]] ''(which one?)'' originated in Jenin. See [[Palestinian terrorism]] for an in-depth discussion of this broader issue.

==Jenin Massacre==
{{Main|Jenin Massacre}}
Jenin and, in particular, it's refugee camp, became the most noted target of an Israeli operation during the Al-Aqsa Intifada known as [[Operation Defensive Shield]]. Observers and journalists were in place outside the camp to observe "indiscriminate" rocketing of the camp by helicopter gunships in preparation for an infantry assault. When the latter failed with significant Israeli casualties, armoured bulldozers were brought in and these quickly subdued the last fighters. With access denied to everyone (including the Red Cross) by the Israeli Army between 2nd April 2002 and the 14th, and limited access thereafter, sections of the world media were exceptionally critical of what they believed was going on.

Resistance to the operation ceased on the 10th or 11th of April but most of the bulldozer destruction, amounting to around 10% of the camp occured after this.
=== The battle ===

Jenin was entered by Israeli forces in early April [[2002]], as part of Israel's [[Operation Defensive Shield]]. A battle took place there, about which conflicting reports were relayed. According to the [[Israeli Defence Forces]], Israel chose not to bomb the spots of resistance using aircraft as it entered in order to minimize civilian losses [http://www.idf.il/newsite/english/amnesty0407-2.htm], but rather to take hold of the city using infantry. 23 Israeli soldiers were killed in the street fighting, 14 of them in a single day from a charge carried by a suicide bomber that triggered the collapse of a building and shooting done by his accomplices. Overall, Israel said that its forces had killed 47 militants and 7 civilians. The walls of many buildings were covered with posters hailing the suicide bomber "martyrs".

In October 2002, the Walla news agency has reported Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas websites reported that their forces in Jenin before the Israeli entry included 250 armed militants. The official Kol Yisrael radio station reported 15,000 explosive charges were at the militants' disposal, as well as a large number of handguns. The militants were well-organized and had an extensive system of communications. Walla also mentions sources that claim that Palestinians youngsters participated in the fighting, sometimes even carrying explosive charges in their schoolbags. 

Time Magazine also write about the heavily wired refugee camp. It states, for example, that at the outskirts of Jenin, an [[IDF]] armoured [[Caterpillar D9]] detonated 124 explosive-charges. Time also quotes a Palestinian gunmen admiting that the terrorists' own booby-traps caused some of the civilian deaths.

According to Israel's forces numerous buildings, passages and even bodies were booby-trapped, often prompting the use of bulldozers. They also claimed to have found more than a dozen explosive-making labs, as well as bodies of foreign citizens, most of whom were operatives of [[Yasser Arafat]]'s [[Fatah]] movement that were brought over from Jordan.  

=== False Allegations of a Massacre ===

Initially, officials of the [[Palestinian Authority]] claimed that the Israelis had deliberately massacred 3,000 people, and were burying them in mass-graves. Some advocates of Palestinian nationalism claimed that "the Jews" were starting a "Holocaust" against Arabs.  Many Western news agencies reported these claims uncritically and without confirmation. However, on [[April 30]], Kadoura Mousa Kadoura, the director of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement for the northern [[West Bank]] dropped the death toll to 56 people, including armed combatants.  Further investigation by the United Nations and international reporters cconfirmed that only 52 Palestinians where killed in the opperation, 22 of whom were civilians.  

On May 2nd, [[Israel Defense Forces]] (IDF) filmed adult [[Palestinians]] carrying out a mock funeral procession. The funeral was fake and the "body" was able to get up and walk. This raises the question whether the Palestinians falsify other evidence as well. On May 8th, 2002, [http://www.lawsociety.org The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment] issued a press release [http://www.lawsociety.org/Press/Preleases/2002/May/may8.html] stating that it was only Palestinian children playing "funeral".  Israeli groups reject this claim outright.

=== Human Rights reports ===

In late April and on [[May 3]], [[2002]], [[Amnesty International]] and [[Human Rights Watch]] respectively released their reports about the IDF incursions into Jenin. The HRW report stated that it found "no evidence to sustain claims of massacres or large-scale extrajudicial executions by the IDF", and the Amnesty International report came to the same conclusion. They agreed with the total casualty figures provided by the IDF but claimed a higher proportion of the civilian casualties.  However the HRW report also stated that "Israeli forces committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, some amounting prima facie to war crimes", Amnesty International concurring. The HRW report concluded

:However, many of the civilian deaths documented by Human Rights Watch amounted to unlawful or willful killings by the IDF ... Some of the cases documented by Human Rights Watch amounted to summary executions ... Throughout the incursion, IDF soldiers used Palestinian civilians to protect them from danger, deploying them as "human shields" and forcing them to perform dangerous work ... the IDF prevented humanitarian organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, from gaining access to the camp and its civilian inhabitants-despite the great humanitarian need.

While focussing mainly on the actions of the IDF, it adds that:
:Palestinian gunmen did endanger Palestinian civilians in the camp by using it as a base for planning and launching attacks, using indiscriminate tactics such as planting improvised explosive devices within the camp, and intermingling with the civilian population during armed conflict, and, in some cases, to avoid apprehension by Israeli forces.

The report notes that:
:The presence of armed Palestinian militants inside Jenin refugee camp, and the preparations made by those armed Palestinian militants in anticipation of the IDF incursion, does not detract from the IDF's obligation under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid harm to civilians ... Unfortunately, these obligations were not met.

Israeli critics of the report pointed out that commissions included no urban or counter-terrorist warfare specialists, and therefore believe they were unable to assess the justifiability of the different actions of the IDF. They furthermore found that the humanitarian organizations were rash to jump into conclusions without investigating thoroughly the conduct of the Palestinain guerilla forces in the area. Moreover, they felt that although [[terrorist]]s are civilians by definition, they were still combatants, which made their status different from that of the unarmed civilians. Finally, the human rights bodies had not investigated the incidents in which ambulances of the Palestinian Red Crescent and equipment of other aid agencies were accused of being used by Palestinian militants to transport weapons and gunmen, thus allegedly voiding their nonbelligerent status as defined in the Geneva Convention.

To settle the contradictory claims, a fact finding mission, was proposed by the [[United Nations]] on [[April 19]] [[2002]]. Israel initially agreed to co-operate with the enquiry, but put up a set of conditions to do so. Among these were that the mission should include anti-terrorism experts, that UN desisted from its right to prosecute Israeli soldiers for potential violations of international law and limited its scope exclusively to events in Jenin. The UN refused to accept the last two conditions and ultimately disbanded its mission. Israel argued that the conditions on which the UN proposed the mission were unfair, as the UN never agreed to giving the anti-terrorism expert full membership, it had never given the mission a strict mandate, and neither did it declare the mission solely investigatory (as opposed to having a judicial purpose). All three stand in violation to the UN's own principles (as stated in the "Declaration on Fact-finding by the United Nations", A/RES/46/59 of December 9, 1991). In a subsequent report by the Secretary General, the UN has confirmed that no massacre took place.

=== External links ===
* [http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/46/a46r059.htm Declaration on Fact-finding by the United Nations]
* [http://www.un.org/peace/jenin/index.html Full Text of UN Report]
* [http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/05/jenin0503.htm Human Rights Watch: Jenin War Crimes Investigation Needed]
* [http://hrw.org/reports/2002/israel3/ Full Text of Human Rights Watch Report]
* [http://www.idf.il/newsite/english/amnesty0407-2.htm Executive Summary, The Battle in Jenin ? The Israel Defence Force?s ,  Response to the Report by Amnesty International] (IDF spokesman's official response to the report)
* [http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0llu0 List of suicide bombings originating in Jenin]
* [http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=2187 Palestinian view of UN report]
* [http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/israel3/ Human Rights Watch - Jenin: IDF Military Operations]
* [http://www.idf.il/english/news/jenin.stm Israel Defense Forces' briefing on terrorist activity in Jenin]
* [http://www.idf.il/english/news/funeral.stm Israel Defense Forces' footage of the allegedly fake burial in Jenin]
* [http://www.time.com/time/2002/jenin/story.html TIME magazine writeup on Jenin]
* [http://www.un.org/peace/jenin/ The Secretary General's report on Jenin]
* [http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=441 "Jenin Al Kassam" A Hothouse of Terrorism]
* [http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/12/12/104031/25 kuro5hin: Israel bans documentary about Jenin]
* [http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,858523,00.html The Guardian: Israeli censors ban film about battle of Jenin]
* [http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=239768&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y  Ha'aretz: Censor bans movie on Jenin offensive]
* [http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=1888373 Reuters: Israeli Film Board Bans Jenin Camp Documentary]

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====References====
* Adapted from the [[Wikipedia]] article, "Jenin" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenin], used under the [[GNU Free Documentation License]]