Since there has been so much discussion of Jenin on this site, i thought some excerpts from the UN Report might be useful to everyone.
18. From the beginning of March until 7 May, Israel endured approximately 16 bombings, the large majority of which were suicide attacks. More than 100 persons were killed and scores more wounded. Throughout this period, the Government of Israel, and the international community, reiterated previous calls on the Palestinian Authority to take steps to stop terrorist attacks and to arrest the perpetrators of such attacks.
20. Over the course of two days, 8 and 9 March, 18 Israelis were killed in two separate Palestinian attacks and 48 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli raids that followed.
22. It was against this backdrop that the most extensive Israeli military incursions in a decade, Operation Defensive Shield, were carried out. The proximate cause of the operation was a terrorist attack committed on 27 March in the Israeli city of Netanya, in which 28 people were killed and 140 injured. I condemned the terrorist attack from the Beirut Summit of the League of Arab States as morally repugnant and later described it to the Security Council as a blow against the very possibility of coexistence. On 29 March 2002, the Cabinet of the Government of Israel issued a communiqué approving "a wide-ranging operational action plan against Palestinian terror" and, to that end, "the mobilization of reserves as per operational need". The objective was to "defeat the Palestinian terror infrastructure and to prevent the recurrence of the multiple terrorist attacks which have plagued Israel".
43. In the early hours of 3 April 2002, as part of Operation Defensive Shield, the Israeli Defence Forces entered the city of Jenin and the refugee camp adjacent to it, declared them a closed military area, prevented all access, and imposed a round-the-clock curfew. By the time of the IDF withdrawal and the lifting of the curfew on 18 April, at least 52 Palestinians, of whom up to half may have been civilians, and 23 Israeli soldiers were dead. Many more were injured. Approximately 150 buildings had been destroyed and many others were rendered structurally unsound. Four hundred and fifty families were rendered homeless. The cost of the destruction of property is estimated at approximately $27 million.
45. According to both Palestinian and Israeli observers, the Jenin camp had, by April 2002, some 200 armed men from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Tanzim, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas who operated from the camp. The Government of Israel has charged that, from October 2000 to April 2002, 28 suicide attacks were planned and launched from the Jenin camp.
46. The Government of Israel has published information regarding infrastructure within the Jenin camp for the carrying out of attacks. The Israeli Defence Forces point to their discovery in the camp of arms caches and explosive laboratories and the numbers of Palestinian militants killed or arrested there during Operation Defensive Shield. They cite posters glorifying suicide bombers and documents describing Jenin as a "martyr's capital" reportedly found by Israeli soldiers in the camp during the incursion.
47. The Government of Israel and IDF have acknowledged that their soldiers were unprepared for the level of resistance they encountered in Jenin camp, noting that it was "probably the most bitter and harsh" that they had faced. The IDF soldiers who took part in the operation were, for the most part, reservists who had been mobilized only on or after 17 March. Many were called up only after the Passover bombing in Netanya (27 March).
51. Using loudspeakers, IDF urged civilians in Arabic to evacuate the camp. Some reports, including of interviews with IDF soldiers, suggest that those warnings were not adequate and were ignored by many residents. Many of the inhabitants of the Jenin camp fled the camp before or at the beginning of the IDF incursion. Others left after 9 April. Estimates vary on how many civilians remained in the camp throughout but there may have been as many as 4,000.
52. As described by the Government of Israel, "a heavy battle took place in Jenin, during which IDF soldiers were forced to fight among booby-trapped houses and bomb fields throughout the camp, which were prepared in advance as a booby-trapped battlefield". The Palestinian Authority acknowledges that "a number of Palestinian fighters resisted the Israeli military assault and were armed only with rifles and … crude explosives". An IDF spokesman offered a slightly different portrayal of the resistance, stating that the soldiers had faced "more than a thousand explosive charges, live explosive charges and some more sophisticated ones, … hundreds of hand grenades … [and] hundreds of gunmen". Human rights reports support the assertions that some buildings had been booby-trapped by the Palestinian combatants.
53. That the Israeli Defence Forces encountered heavy Palestinian resistance is not in question. Nor is the fact that Palestinian militants in the camp, as elsewhere, adopted methods which constitute breaches of international law that have been and continue to be condemned by the United Nations. Clarity and certainty remain elusive, however, on the policy and facts of the IDF response to that resistance. The Government of Israel maintains that IDF "clearly took all possible measures not to hurt civilian life" but were confronted with "armed terrorists who purposely concealed themselves among the civilian population". However, some human rights groups and Palestinian eyewitnesses assert that IDF soldiers did not take all possible measures to avoid hurting civilians, and even used some as human shields.
54. As IDF penetrated the camp, the Palestinian militants reportedly moved further into its centre. The heaviest fighting reportedly occurred between 5 and 9 April, resulting in the largest death tolls on both sides. There are reports that during this period IDF increased missile strikes from helicopters and the use of bulldozers - including their use to demolish homes and allegedly bury beneath them those who refused to surrender - and engaged in "indiscriminate" firing. IDF lost 14 soldiers, 13 in a single engagement on 9 April. IDF incurred no further fatalities in Jenin after 9 April.
55. Press reports from the days in question and subsequent interviews by representatives of non-governmental organizations with camp residents suggest that an average of five Palestinians per day died in the first three days of the incursion and that there was a sharp increase in deaths on 6 April.
56. Fifty-two Palestinian deaths had been confirmed by the hospital in Jenin by the end of May 2002. IDF also place the death toll at approximately 52. A senior Palestinian Authority official alleged in mid-April that some 500 were killed, a figure that has not been substantiated in the light of the evidence that has emerged.
57. It is impossible to determine with precision how many civilians were among the Palestinian dead. The Government of Israel estimated during the incursion that there were "only dozens killed in Jenin … and the vast majority of them bore arms and fired upon [IDF] forces". Israeli officials informed United Nations personnel that they believed that, of the 52 dead, 38 were armed men and 14 were civilians. The Palestinian Authority has acknowledged that combatants were among the dead, and has named some of them, but has placed no precise estimates on the breakdown. Human rights organizations put the civilian toll closer to 20 - Human Rights Watch documented 22 civilians among the 52 dead, while Physicians for Human Rights noted that "children under the age of 15 years, women and men over the age of 50 years accounted for nearly 38 per cent of all reported fatalities".