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URBAN OPERATIONS IN JENIN REFUGEE CAMP: THE ISRAELI EXPERIENCE

Gal Luft1

Urban warfare, as ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tsu concluded, is the lowest form of warfare.

It involves complicated command and control challenges and presents soldiers and commanders

with unparalleled tactical and ethical dilemmas. But the challenges facing superpowers, such the

United States or Russia, when conducting urban operations are quite different from those facing

a small nation like Israel.

Both the United States in Afghanistan and the Russian army in Chechnya have shown a

tendency to utilize a great deal of fire and air power before positioning ground troops in an urban

environment. Their air and artillery bombardments minimized their casualty rate, lowered the

defenders morale, and prevented it from operating freely in a familiar environment. At the same

time, firepower destroyed the civilian infrastructure of the city and entailed a heavy toll on the

local population in terms of blood and treasure. In a world of mass media, pictures from a

bombarded population center can undermine the legitimacy of the attacker and create public

pressure to limit its use of force. Superpowers have the political power needed to withstand such

pressure; small nations like Israel do not. Israel's military operations have always been subjected

to international scrutiny. Most of its military campaigns were fought under looming intervention

of the UN Security Council. For Israel Defense Force (IDF) commanders, the ticking clock hasoften been no less of a challenge than the enemy.

Such was the case during Operation Defensive Shield in March-April 2002 following a

series of deadly Palestinian terror attacks inside Israel. As pressure mounted in the UN and U.S.

Secretary of State Colin Powell was on his way to the region to broker a ceasefire, Israeli forces

were invading seven Palestinian cities in the West Bank, quickly gaining control over them. The

operations objective was to strike at the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure and to undermine the

perception of the refugee camps as safe havens for terrorists, impenetrable to the IDF.

Though the IDF met little resistance in most West Bank cities, in Jenin things were

different. The city's refugee camp, 600 square yards inhabited by over 15,000 people, all living

in poverty and neglect, was the scene of a fierce urban battle.The IDF clashed with hundreds of

1Dr. Gal Luft is co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) and a former lieutenant

colonel in the Israel Defense Forces.

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militants who used the local population as human shields. Like any other refugee camp, Jenin

was a tactically complex battle scene. Operating there involved passing through narrow streets

laden with explosive devices and snipers. Soldiers as well as civilians were exposed to crossfire.

Twenty-three Israeli soldiers and 52 Palestinians (the majority of whom were combatants) were

killed there.

Casualty averse on the one hand and concerned about the possibility of international

intervention on the other, the IDF relied mainly on special infantry forces assisted by armored

vehicles and attack helicopters. The infantry moved from house to house by breaking through

walls, using bulldozers to level houses of suspected militants and their accomplices. The

operation emphasized many of the problems of urban operations in the modern era. Two of them,

dealing with the civilian population and the power of mass media, will be discussed here.

Defining Combatants

The IDF operated under strict instructions to use force only against those who posed a direct

threat to the soldiers and to take severe action against anyone associated with terrorist activity.

But like in any other case of forces operating in urban areas, Israeli soldiers learned how difficult

it is to distinguish the enemy from the general population. Military personnel of non-state actors

often do not wear uniforms and therefore look like regular civilians. The city of Jenin was

defended by hundreds of armed and trained members of Fatah and its military wing, al-Aqsa

Martyrs Brigades, as well as members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Most of these fighters wore

civilian clothes. Others, members of the uniformed Palestinian security forces, took off their

uniforms in order to blend into the environment.

If uniforms could not be an indicator of who is a combatant, possession and use of

firearms was the second best measure. But the Israelis quickly learned that some Palestinians

who were not carrying firearms could be even more lethal than regular combatants. Some

Palestinians carried explosives under their clothes and used their innocent appearance as a way

of getting close enough to the Israelis to detonate their bombs. Other bystanders were passing

information to Palestinian fighters about the location of Israeli soldiers in the camp. This enabled

the fighters to snipe at the Israelis while enjoying the cover of the civilian population.

Even those considered non-combatants by any military yardstick were not as innocent as

one may think. The Palestinian population in the camps was completely mobilized to the war

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effort and harbored a strong urge for vengeance for what they perceived to be Israeli aggression.

Men, women and children planted hundreds of explosive devices, booby traps and other

obstacles in their streets and homes, making every car, alley, gate or room a potential bombing

scene.

Children combatants were also a tough challenge. In recent years we have seen the

growing militarization of children around the world. According to UN estimates there are

currently more than 300,000 children participating in armed conflicts in places like India, Burma,

Paraguay, Iraq, Philippines, and several African countries. In Sierra Leone alone, more than

5,000 children under the age of 18 years, both boys and girls and some as young as six years old,

are estimated to have fought in the conflict. Child combatants have also proven to be no less

atrocious than adults.

In Jenin, Palestinian children threatened the Israelis just like adult combatants. Prior to

the intifada, children ten years and up have been receiving military training in camps across the

West Bank and Gaza. Boys and girls who participated in the camps were trained in the use of

assault weapons, as well as in how to carry out kidnappings and ambushes. They demonstrated

fair combat capability. In addition, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad recruited children as young as

13 for suicide missions. Others were used to plant and detonate bombsone such bomb killed

13 Israeli soldiersin the narrow allies of the camp.

The mobilization of children into an armed conflict and their transformation into killing

machines is an unsettling trend which raises an ethical question: should children continue to

enjoy immunity or should they be treated like adults when it is clear they impose a clear and

imminent threat? Most Western militaries still harbor cultural inhibitions about targeting

children, but the Jenin case shows that this inhibition could be costly.

Relations with the Media

Jenin was one of the few places where Israel blocked media coverage. The reason for restricting

reporters was mainly due to the IDF's need to preserve freedom of operation. Journalists and

cameramen chasing after a picture or a story could impede military operations in the camps

narrow streets and had to be restricted. Furthermore, their presence in the battle scene

endangered their lives. Cameramen were particularly vulnerable: Israeli helicopter pilots

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reported they misidentified television cameras as shoulder launched anti-aircraft weapons and

could have easily targeted innocent journalists.

But the media blockage proved to be a double edged sword: though it did enable the IDF

the necessary freedom of action, it also facilitated an industry of lies, deception and hostile anti-

Israeli propaganda which ended up having strategic implications on the entire campaign. With no

credible reporters on the ground to tell the story, the international media was fed by local

Palestinians who described Israeli war crimes that Israel was allegedly trying to cover up.

Reports about a massacre of anywhere between 500 and 3000 people appeared in some of the

world's most respectable media networks.

These reports were later proved to be false. A UN fact-finding committee established

months after the event that the Palestinian death toll in Jenin was 52, of whom non-combatants

numbered no more than 20. But by the time the truth was established, the myth of the Jenin

massacre was already embedded in the minds of millions.

How was the myth created? At one point in the fighting, the army used loudspeakers

calling on all the men between the ages of 16 and 50 to turn themselves in. Many were sent for

questioning, while the rest were not allowed to go back to the city, where the battle continued.

They were transferred to nearby villages in the West Bank. Their families did not receive word

from them or about them, and rumors began to fly that they had been executed. Simultanously,

another rumor began to spread. The army sent three large airconditioned supply trucks to Jenin.

Reservists decided to sleep in them. Some Palestinians saw dozens of covered bodies lying in the

trucks and told reporters who were away from the scene the IDF had filled trucks full of

Palestinian bodies.

Israel learned the hard way that mishandling and restricting the media can have strategic

consequences and that the absence of Western media in Jenin contributed to distorted, often

hostile, coverage. Influenced by the horror stories from Jenin, the international community

mobilized to bring a premature end to the Israeli campaign, which was the exact response Israel

wanted to avoid.

From Jenin to Baghdad

The IDF's experience in Jenin reflects some of the challenges modern militaries repeatedly face

when operating in an urban environment. Though the United States is not subjected to the same

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political-military constraints Israel faces, it has faced similar dilemmas in some of its urban

combat experiences, especially in Mogadishu, a city topographically and architecturally similar

to Jenin. There, in October 1993, American soldiers killed several hundred Somali militiamen

and civilians and wounded more than 1,000 in just one day of fighting in an effort to rescue U.S.

troops pinned down during the failed attempt to capture the lieutenants of Somali warlord

Mohammad Farah Aideed.

Today, as war against Iraq looms on the horizon, military experts agree that the most

unsettling scenario pertaining to such a war is U.S. involvement in urban combat in the streets of

Baghdad. Looking at a map of the city, one can easily see that Saddam Husseins headquarters

and palaces are located in its center, engulfed by miles of residential neighborhoods. If the Iraqi

people attempt to defend their regimea notion many policymakers tend to dismiss too easily

U.S. troops would have to cross dozens of Jenin-style areas before they reach Saddams bunker.

This is likely to inflict heavy casualties on the attacking forces as well as on the local population.

Both the Jenin and Mogadishu cases showed that there are no textbooks or field manuals that can

provide a clear answer to all the situations soldiers might face on the ground. Admittedly, even

the most humanitarian and experienced soldiers are prone to panic, suspicion and nervousness

and could make the wrong judgment when trapped in a maze of dark alleys and surrounded by a

hostile population. Both cases also show that when military forces averse to casualties become

embroiled in a fierce urban war, their concern about their troops safety takes precedence over

the welfare of the local population.