Tensions over Palestinian death toll have eerie parallels to western concerns about current Israeli operations
The Jenin refugee camp in 2002, where intense street to street fighting raged for eight days during Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield.The Jenin refugee camp in 2002, where intense street to street fighting raged for eight days during Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield.Tony Blair’s government accused Israeli forces of acting more like the “Russian army than that of a civilised country” during a major military incursion into the occupied West Bank, newly released official files show.
Ariel Sharon, Israel’s prime minister at the time, launched Operation Defensive Shield at the end of March 2002, calling up 20,000 reservists, after a wave of suicide attacks killed scores of Israelis. “If some of the reports we were receiving were credible, the IDF’s behaviour was more worthy of the Russian army than that of a supposedly civilised country,” Cowper-Coles told the adviser, according to his report of the meeting.
George Bush, who was engaged in his own “war on terror” after the 11 September attacks the previous year, was equally frustrated by the Israeli actions, letting off steam in a private call with Blair.
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