'How deep is all this blood'

Palestinians say it was massacre. Israelis say it was combat. The world does not know; it is not being allowed to. Graham Usher reports from outside Jenin refugee camp
From a hillside awash with flowers you can see Jenin, a town of 35,000 people. It is deserted. A cloud of smoke unfurls above a ragged patch of houses, huddling in the valley.
This is Jenin camp. You can see the warren of streets, houses black from fire, walls gashed with shell holes the size of craters. There is nobody on them. There is nobody in them.
This is where for 10 days Israeli tanks, helicopters and soldiers fought around 160 Palestinian fighters and pitched missile after missile into a cluster of shelters housing 13,000 refugees. This is where a massacre happened, say Palestinians.
We do not know. As we attempt to descend the hill's rocky slopes Israeli soldiers climb them, turning us back. We are less than a kilometre from the camp.
We have accounts, second-hand. A worker from the International Red Cross outside the camp says between 160-200 Palestinians may have been killed, maybe 600 injured and 3,000 made homeless.
We have stories, dozens of them -- told by the camp's refugees, like 42-year-old mother of four, Atra Hussein Nejm.
Together with a son and two daughters, she was with 800 refugees found wandering on the streets of Jenin town. She has not seen her husband and eldest son for six days. She has no idea if they are alive, dead or worse.
She sits in a home in Burkin, a village two kilometres from the camp, flanked by her daughters. She tries to speak. She cannot. She cries. Then, in a tumult, she speaks: "The soldiers destroyed houses. They killed children. The helicopters bombarded us day and night. After the houses were destroyed, the bulldozers came to clear away the rubble, burying the dead in the earth. Fifteen, 20 people, were buried at a time in different places. The dead spilled on the streets. Thirteen were buried in the hospital. Five near the mosque. I saw this with my own eyes."
She looks at us, determined we believe her: "The soldiers went into the houses, separating men, women and the young men. They went into one house and dragged out five young men. Then they killed them, executed them, in front of us. They were not fighters. There was no fighting. I saw this with my own eyes."
Accounts like this are legion. We go to Rummana, another village, where the army dumped 500 men and boys from the camp with nothing on their bodies except their underwear. Thirty-five-year-old Amjad Kazan was one of them.
He, too, is determined we believe him. He raises his wrists: they have thick red welts from clotted blood. His hands were manacled for four days. He was hooded. He describes his capture:
"I was taken with nine others. The soldiers handcuffed us. At first they told us to crawl on our hands and knees. Then I was taken alone. They put a gun to my head. They told me to walk before them into houses. I was their human shield. When they found the houses were empty, they smashed the furniture.
"We were taken from one place to another in the camp. We were beaten. They cursed us, interrogated us. I remember one man sitting handcuffed on the floor. A soldier stubbed out cigarettes on his arm. He did this again and again. The soldiers would say, 'You are from Hamas.' I said, 'I'm not.' They said, 'We found explosives in your home.' I said, 'You didn't.'"
He is with scores of other men, slumped out in a mosque, surrounded by bundles of clothes and wall charts listing the missing. One man sits still, numb. He has just been told his two brothers are dead. Another man cries. A fat boy runs between the crush, laughing, crying, it is not clear. He is looking for his parents.
We descend the narrow lane from Rummana, greeted by a convoy of tractors from Selim, a Palestinian village inside Israel, hauling milk, blankets and mattresses. The driver raises his fingers in a V-for-victory salute. A Palestinian flag billows over the axle.
We climb the valley into Israel across meadows covered with blue lilac, yellow rape, red poppies and purple bougainvillea. All dance, sway in the wind, hoisting their foliage, reaching for the sky. "How small these flowers are," wrote Mahmoud Darwish.
In the distance a brown pall hovers over a mass of khaki, mustering in the haze. There is a slow, low growl. The tanks are leaving Jenin. "How deep is all this blood."
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