Rafah Camp Hit Again by Israeli Bulldozers

Rafah camp hit again by Israeli bulldozers

By Justin Huggler in Jerusalem

Amos Oz: ’I have always maintained the solution is
partition’

Israeli tanks and bulldozers moved back into the Rafah
refugee camp in the Gaza Strip yesterday, just days
after the Israeli army destroyed about 100 houses,
leaving some 2,000 people homeless and eight, including
two children, dead.

At the same time, the Israeli army ordered 15
Palestinians being held without trial to be permanently
deported from the West Bank to Gaza - a move denounced
by Israeli and international human rights groups as
illegal.

Rafah refugee camp was already reeling after a three-day
incursion in which the Israeli army crushed entire rows
of houses with bulldozers as homeless Palestinians
loaded their possessions on to carts. And yesterday the
bulldozers returned.

The Israeli army claims the aim is to find and destroy
tunnels under the nearby Egyptian border which are used
by Palestinian militants to smuggle in guns and
ammunition. But after the last incursion, in which the
Israelis destroyed as many as 100 houses to find just
three tunnels, they were accused of inflicting
collective punishment on the Palestinians of Rafah.

The Israeli army at first disputed the number of houses
destroyed. But after the figures were confirmed by the
UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and by
independent news reports, the Israeli commander in the
region, Colonel Eyal Eisenberg, said: "I want people to
ask how many houses we have not demolished, not how many
we have."

There were no reports of any fatalitiesyesterday, but
six Palestinians were said to be wounded. The Israeli
army sealed off the refugee camp from the outside world,
as it did in the first raid. The raid began with
helicopters firing into the camp before dawn, witnesses.
said. Then some 40 tanks and armoured bulldozers
advanced and snipers took up positions. There was less
resistance than in the first raid, when militants fired
shoulder-launched rockets and threw grenades, the
Israeli army reported.

The army said the incursion could last several days, but
there are fears that troops may stay longer. That would
follow a pattern over the past 18 months in which it has
advanced into Palestinian cities, then withdrawn, only
to return to stay a short time later.

Palestinian militants do use tunnels to smuggle small
arms across the border. But the Israeli army has for
some time been demolishing houses in an effort to create
a buffer zone, and the raids have allowed it to
accelerate the destruction.

Yesterday’s expulsion of 15 alleged militants from the
west Bank to Gaza could be the forerunner of further
deportations. The army said it wanted to do the same to
more Palestinian prisoners.

The move has been denounced as a breach of the Geneva
Conventions. Although Article 78 allows an occupying
power to "assign residence" to defuse security threats,
the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said it referred
only to cases of immediate danger. "This doesn’t sound
to me like a clear danger to state security," said a
B’Tselem spokesman, Noam Hoffstater. "It looks like
they’re trying to push the boundaries further."

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