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| Author: | William L. Nash, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Military Affairs and Director of the Military Fellows Program |
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May 10, 2002
International Herald Tribune
GENEVA: The first call came during a Saturday morning drive in the Virginia countryside. It was the chief of staff to the secretary-general of the United Nations. Would I serve as the senior military member of a fact-finding team reviewing the events in Jenin?
By Wednesday, I was on my way to Geneva with a ticket to fly to Tel Aviv on Thursday. It felt like the army again. And like the army, it was "hurry up and wait."
The first day or two in Geneva were useful. Within days my military team added British and French officers with experience in Northern Ireland, the Balkans and Africa. The Irish police team had counterterrorist and investigative experts who had worked in Cambodia, Namibia and Yugoslavia. Our Finnish forensic pathologist was renowned for her work in Bosnia and Kosovo. This was a collection of seasoned veterans who had seen war as well as ethnic and civil conflicts throughout the world.
We began an extensive review of published accounts to develop a thorough understanding of the larger war as it applied to Jenin. We also received briefings from representatives of the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations who had been on the ground in Jenin before, during and after the fighting. We developed a comprehensive plan for collecting information in the field that was designed to avoid the possibility of preconceived conclusions.
However, by the end of the first week, the stall by Israel was in the process of turning from clarification to obstruction to blockage. Our mood shifted from bemusement to frustration to anger. There was so much misinformation about our intentions, about who we were and whether our backgrounds predisposed us to misunderstand military necessities or the tragic circumstances of urban war.
From time to time we were consulted on how to deal with the Israeli concerns about procedures and the substance of our mission. The replies given by our team leader, former President Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, were always balanced and intended to resolve the confrontation. But it soon became clear that the Israeli arguments were fundamentally hostile to the very concept of finding out what happened in Jenin. The Israeli process seemed designed to stop our mission.
The UN Security Council could not or would not help the secretary-general fulfill its resolution on finding the facts of Jenin. The role of the U.S. government in not supporting the resolution it sponsored was a disappointment to me.
What is most interesting is that when the ongoing public debate in Israel is added to reports from the international media and nongovernmental organizations, a fairly consistent picture begins to emerge. It appears that the leadership of the Israeli Defense Forces is concerned that the conduct of the battle of Jenin is being questioned on both professional and legal grounds. This seems to make sense for two reasons.
First, there are many indications that the units sent into battle were hastily assembled and given little time to plan, prepare and rehearse for their attack. Their intelligence about the Jenin refugee camp was insufficient to support the deliberate, measured attack that the circumstances required. Inadequate measures were established to handle the 13,000 persons living in the camp, some armed and dangerous; some unarmed, but sympathetic to and supportive of the fighters; and some true noncombatants. The IDF seems also to have underestimated the intensity of the resistance that they would face.
Second, I believe from the multiple sources I have read and listened to in the last two weeks that there is reasonable cause to pursue a thorough examination of the facts concerning a number of alleged violations of the laws of war, as provided in the Hague Convention of 1907, the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the 1977 Protocols to those Geneva Conventions.
These serious concerns about war crimes apply to both the armed Palestinians and the Israeli forces.
For the Palestinians, indicators of violations include placing armed forces and facilities within densely populated areas, the use of noncombatants to render specific locations or areas immune from military attack, the use of indiscriminate booby-traps and, of course, the earlier terrorist attacks on civilian targets throughout Israel.
On the Israeli side, there are questions as to the adequacy of warnings the noncombatant population of Jenin and measures taken to facilitate their evacuation and protection, the excessive use of force, the use of noncombatants as shields, the failure to facilitate the search for dead and wounded and to allow free passage of medical personnel and vehicles, and deliberate attacks on civilian property.
All of the above needs to be studied and the truth revealed for better or worse. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians need more unfounded charges added to their already heavy burden of history.
As I sat at Geneva airport waiting to return to Washington, the overwhelming feeling among our team was deep frustration. We believed that an unencumbered factual account of "the recent events in the Jenin refugee camp" would cause some degree of introspection by the Israelis and Palestinians and maybe prevent another tragedy.
Instead, we left Geneva still unsure what happened in Jenin. Worse, rather than contribute to finding the facts that could dampen emotions, our thwarted mission only added to the controversy.
The writer, a retired U.S. Army major general, is the director of the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.
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