URBAN OPERATIONS IN JENIN REFUGEE CAMP: THE ISRAELI EXPERIENCE

Gal Luft
1


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 has
often 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

1
Dr. 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.

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

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

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

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.