The Jenin fact-finding committee of former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, former UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata and former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Cornelio Sommaruga, are in Geneva, awaiting an agreement on the terms of reference between the UN and the State of Israel.
Analysis: While the political wrangling continues in New York and the three-person commission of inquiry waits in Geneva, the UN is already at work assessing the situation in Jenin.
On April 29, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released a report entitled, “Jenin camp statistics and information.” The report confirms 53 fatalities between 4 April, when the Israeli military operation began, and 20 April. Forty four Palestinians were killed in the Jenin camp and nine were killed in the town of Jenin. Two hundred and sixty nine were injured. The UN’s source? The Jenin Governor’s office. If the local Palestinian government is not claiming that a massacre took place and a UN agency on the ground confirms this account, why give credence to the accusation of Yasser Arafat and his cronies about mass killings?
But what about the Palestinian accusation that hundreds of persons are missing and buried in secret mass graves? OCHA’s report states that there are eight people missing from the camp and 17 from the town. Their source? UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and UNRWA interviewed 150 families in the Jenin camp. Not one additional person was missing.
The UN now has evidence of humanitarian law violations by the Palestinian combatants in Jenin, specifically the use of mines and explosive booby traps in civilian areas. OCHA has just documented the facts: “There are many Unexploded Ordinance (UXOs) and Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) in the camp (example: in four days, 285 items were found in the camp) needing to be removed as a matter of urgency. Some international teams had done assessments but there has been no clearance yet. UNRWA requested OCHA’s assistance in providing expertise on demining coordination for Jenin refugee camp. OCHA liaised with the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) to obtain immediate deployment of an expert (already arrived) to look into demining issues in Jenin, particularly with expertise on Improvised Explosive Devices.” Imagine how densely the camp was mined, if the UN has already found 285 explosive devices and requested an expert on “Improvised Explosive Devices.”
The UN’s children agency, UNICEF, is also on the ground. They had the distasteful duty to report to OCHA that a child was killed by one of the abovementioned explosive devices. Another five children (and eight adults) were “injured by UXOs,” according to the report.
Also inventoried are destroyed and dangerous buildings, water, electricity and sewage services.
In summary, UN agencies on the ground have confirmed the number of dead, injured and missing, officially exposing the Palestinian myths of a massacre and mass graves. The battle site has been examined and Israeli allegations of extensive mining by Palestinians have been confirmed. While the mandate is being debated, the fact-finding is already underway.
