UN probe in Jenin

While we know very little about what happened in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin in the West Bank when it came under Israeli siege last week, we know it was something really horrible, perhaps a tragedy of horrific proportions. The little evidence there is -- the Israeli army finally allowed a limited number of foreign journalists to inspect the area for a few hours on Sunday and to talk to survivors -- should be sufficient grounds to call for a thorough and independent investigation.

The United Nations, the only institution that is in a position to launch such an investigation, should answer the question: Was there a massacre of civilians by the Israeli army as Palestinians claim, or did the Israeli soldiers use enough restraint in their pursuit of what they claim are militant Palestinians in Jenin?

The accounts given by Jenin residents and by foreign journalists who visited the war-ravaged zone, albeit limited and under heavy Israeli army escort, truly disturb the conscience. Their stories contradict the Israeli army version of the events that virtually reduced Jenin to a pile of rubble.

One news dispatch likened what its reporter found in Jenin, a camp which until last week housed some 15,000 Palestinian refugees, to the condition of Berlin in 1945. Residents who survived the ordeal told of stories of how they were ordered to leave by the Israeli army, and of how all men of fighting age were detained before the siege started. There were stories of tanks bulldozing buildings with families still inside. The journalists did find some bodies under the rubble during their brief inspection of the area to corroborate this.

Israel justifies the attack on Jenin claiming that the camp is a hotbed of Palestinian militants with the potential of launching suicidal terrorist attacks on its people. The Israeli army has insisted that its soldiers exercised enough caution to prevent or minimize civilian casualties, and that it never bulldozed a building with civilians inside. It also claimed that the dead Palestinians were killed by booby traps planted by militant Palestinians aiming to kill Israeli soldiers.

The Palestinians claim that as many as 500 people were killed in the siege. While Israel refutes the claim, their officials could not agree on the number of Palestinian casualties. Officially, Israel said 70 Palestinian militants were killed, but its army officers privately confided that the number could reach into the hundreds, including civilians. The siege of Jenin exacted the heaviest cost in terms of Israeli soldiers killed -- 23, the highest in any operation since Israel began its attacks on Palestinian towns these past two weeks.

In the absence of any independent investigation, the number of civilian casualties among Palestinians, the chain of events leading to their deaths, the methods used by Israeli soldiers and the destruction of Jenin, will remain a mystery to the outside world.

The efficiency with which the Israeli army isolated the area from the prying eyes of foreign journalists, during and even after the siege, made sure that the truth will never be known. Palestinians as well as international and Israeli humanitarian groups are even barred from entering the area to bury the dead, giving credence to claims of the presence of secret mass graves.

In a state of war, both conflicting parties surely are guilty of engaging in propaganda wars, including lies. But the tragedy in Jenin, if it truly involved the deaths of hundreds of civilians, cannot pass unnoticed.

The limited evidence already gathered from Jenin is a compelling reason for a United Nations' intervention, if not in the entire Middle East conflict, certainly at least to find the truth behind the events in the refugee camp last week.