Jenin-style urban warfare in Baghdad?

"The American military has been asking the Israeli army for advice on fighting inside cities, and studying fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin last April," reports Justin Huggler of the Independent. According to Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history and strategy at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, the US military will likely mirror Israeli tactics by utilizing converted bulldozers to fight in Baghdad.

This, Huggler reminds us, is "cause for concern."

During fighting in the Jenin refugee camp last April, more than half the Palestinian dead were civilians. There was compelling evidence that Israeli soldiers targeted civilians, including Fadwa Jamma, a Palestinian nurse shot dead as she tried to treat a wounded man. A 14-year-old boy was killed by Israeli tank-fire in a crowded street after the curfew was lifted. A Palestinian in a wheelchair was shot dead, and his body was crushed by an Israeli tank.

Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded and refused the Red Cross access. Using bulldozers, the Israeli army demolished an entire neighbourhood – home to 800 Palestinian families – reducing it to dust and rubble.

...When reporters got into the Jenin refugee camp, we found the fronts of houses neatly scythed off so the insides of the houses were visible from the street, with personal belongings, sofas, beds, children's toys, hanging precariously from half-collapsed floors.

If this comes to fruition, it will lend an entirely different meaning to Pepe Escobar's contention that the war is causing the "Palestinization" of Iraq.

Update: Nigel Parry elaborates on what exporting Jenin to Iraq would mean.