Dear Friends.

I just got off the phone with my friend Amos who is a major in the Israeli Army. Yesterday, he returned from Jenin where he spent the past three weeks at the command center, a few kilometers from the town. I spoke with him about some of the stories that are circulating in the media and asked him to tell me his story. Here it is. I hope that your will share it with those around you who are interested in the truth.

The Jenin refugee camp is a very small and crowded place. Houses back onto other houses, walls attach to walls. Alleyways are narrow. Armored vehicles like tanks cannot get through the alleys. So the soldiers went in without the protection of tanks and other armor, with express orders to minimize damage.

The Palestinians were prepared. Every second house and street was boobytrapped with explosives. Threads strung across entrances would trigger explosions on contact. Eventually the soldiers learned to recognize the
presence of these devices and detonate them remotely. The exception of course was the death of 13 soldiers in an elaborate ambush that consisted of exploding a wired building combined with sniper fire. After this point the Israelis decided to bring in bulldozers to end the conflict without further risk to their soldiers.

The damage that you are seeing is to one small section of the refugee camp. About 100 out of 1100-1200 buildings have been destroyed and this is a product not only of the Israeli offensive but also of the explosives used by the Palestinian gunmen. When you see the rubble remember that most of the camp does not look like this. This area is a 100m by 100 m area at the heart of the camp where the Palestinian gunmen eventually concentrated.

The vast majority of residents departed the refugee camp before the Israelis entered. The soldiers rarely encountered civilians; the place was virtually empty except for the Palestinian gunmen. The people that stayed behind were a small minority and many of them aided the gunmen.

Today's Haaretz quotes one of these people saying: "But everyone who helped them [the gunmen] saw himself as active in the resistance: those who signaled from afar that soldiers were approaching, those who hid them, those who made tea for them." According to him, no door in the camp was closed to them when they fled from the soldiers who were looking for them, the people of the camp, he said, decided not to abandon him, not to leave the fighters to their own devices. This was the decision of the majority, taken individually by each person.

Loudspeaker announcements in Arabic calling for surrender were repeated before buildings were demolished. The vast majority of the civilians surrendered and were not harmed. To date 25-30 bodies have been found, the
bulk of them being gunmen. With respect to claims of a massacre. Please remember that this is a very
small area. The Israelis could have achieved a massacre with one or two bombs of the size used by the US in Afghanistan, without the loss of one Israeli life. They could have destroyed the camp and crushed resistance
with armored tanks and the like.

With respect to the ambulances. There have been many instances when ambulances have been used to smuggle wanted men and explosives. Amos dealt personally with the Palestinians regarding the ambulances. The Israelis were willing to let the ambulances in under one condition: that they allow the Israelis to search them on the way out. The Palestinians refused. At one point a fire truck was allowed in and not searched. It is known that this vehicle smuggled out at least one wanted individual. The Palestinians also refused to remove their dead. When the Israeli Army started doing this, a challenge was issued in the Israeli High Court which further delayed the removal of the bodies.

With respect to the water supply. Amos tells the story of how, when the Palestinians were repairing the water supply, pipes were deliberately left in the road to disrupt the passage of Israeli vehicles. Yes, some pipes did
get damaged because of this.

With respect to the journalists. Letting the journalists in would have been extremely problematic for the operation because the Israelis would have had to worry about the journalists' safety in addition to trying to avoid
harming any remaining Palestinian civilians. Journalists were let in after the battle. Re: Israelis harassing journalists: there are many journalists there. Amos said he heard one story of a journalist's camera being broken by an Israeli; this is being investigated.

I have tried to tell you these facts as I heard them without superimposing my dismay at the coverage of these events in the media. Given these facts,
I
expect that the number of civilians killed will probably end up being fewer than Israelis killed by suicide bombers since the Passover massacre. And I don't use that word lightly.

Sincerely,

Ruth Etzioni

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