ABSTRACT
In America, Palestine and Israel are regarded as local, not foreign policy, matters. (Said 2003)
In April 2002, in a dramatic shift in strategy, the Israeli Defence Force bulldozed a 40,000-square-metre area in the centre of the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. A UN report estimated that some 52 Palestinians were killed in the attack, about half of them civilians. In a detailed investigation, Human Rights Watch found that several civilians, including a disabled man, were crushed to death in their homes, because Israeli forces failed to allow relatives the time to help them escape; others were used as human shields by the advancing Israelis. In Jenin, Operation Defensive Shield (Mivtza Homat Magen in Hebrew), which involved major military operations against other Palestinian cities, left 140 multi-family housing blocks completely destroyed, 1,500 damaged and some 4,000 residents homeless, out of a population of 14,000. During the operation, lesser demolitions were also carried out in Nablus, Hebron and Ramallah. Destruction of material infrastructure and cultural and administrative facilities was also widespread.
