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Posted on 07/14/2003 6:56:25 PM PDT by anotherview
Palestinians confirm no massacre in Jenin - study
Joel Leyden
Jul. 15, 2003
In a study to be released next month by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and provided exclusively to The Jerusalem Post, Palestinian sources confirm that at least 34 Palestinian armed terrorists were killed fighting in the battle for the Jenin Refugee Camp.
The total number of Palestinian causalities in the battle was 52, a sharp contrast from the claims of Palestinian propaganda professionals who have openly stated that thousands had died.
The battle, which was a part of Israel's Defensive Shield Operation against terrorism, took place between April 4 and April 11 of 2002.
The research was conducted by Jonathan D. HaLevi and the JCPA utilizing a wide and comprehensive variety of Palestinian written testimony and material which was recently published in Palestinian newspapers, books and Websites.
The study reveals that for the first time that Palestinian terror organizations saw themselves as "armed combatants" and not as civilians who died in a deadly massacre.
The 35 page study, which is based on primary sources, clearly illustrates that Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas prepared themselves thoroughly with automatic weapons, grenades, anti-tank missiles and explosives and perceived the confrontation with IDF troops as nothing less than a "military to military battle."
The study refutes claims by PA leaders at the time that IDF forces were attacking innocent civilians and that the only Palestinians who had perished in the battle of Jenin were innocent, unarmed Palestinian men, women and children.
"The study directly contradicts the baseless charges made by PA leaders including Saeb Erekat, that Israel had massacred 500 Palestinians in Jenin," former UN Ambassador and JCPA director Dore Gold told The Jerusalem Post. "That blatant lie made its way from the screens of CNN to the UN security council".
Among other revelations that the study illustrates is that a joint military operations room had been established by Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in preparation for the battle of Jenin.
In addition the research indicates that Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas had created a joint bomb making facility in Jenin which produced over two tons of explosives.
The JCPA paper states that civilians were intentionally used as human shields and that both women and children were deployed by Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad to divert IDF troops into ambushes and booby-trapped areas.
The Jenin Refugee Camp was prepared as a "reinforced fortress" where nearly 200 Palestinian terrorists had gathered for the battle, the JCPA research states.
Israel was effectively cleared of charges that it committed a massacre in the Jenin refugee camp in a UN report submitted last year.
The 42-page report, half of which was made up of submissions from Arab representatives seeking to prove that Israel's actions in Jenin constituted war crimes, also blasted Palestinian 'militants' for operating inside civilian refugee camps and termed their methods 'breaches of international law that have been and continue to be condemned by the United Nations.'
The report was handed to the UN by Secretary-General Kofi Annan more than two months after the General Assembly passed a resolution requesting documentation on what transpired in the Jenin camp and other West Bank cities during Israel's military operation to root out terror.
In May 2002, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations submitted a 150-page report to Annan, and the Anti-Defamation League submitted a shorter report refuting allegations that a massacre took place in Jenin.
"The myth of a massacre at Jenin was the 'crown jewel' of a sophisticated effort to delegitimize the State of Israel," Gold said.
So... Israel told the truth all along. Imagine that! Israelis don't deliberately go around killing Palestinian civillians.
Will this get ANY press outside of Israel? Fox News, maybe. Certainly nobody in Europe or the mainstream US media will cover it.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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