Israeli forces have killed six Palestinians, including a 14-year-old, and detained more than 1 000 boys and men in two days of raids on the occupied territories.
Tanks, helicopters and bulldozers led assaults on Rafah refugee camp in Gaza, and West Bank cities including Tulkarem, where the army seized a UN-run school and ordered all males between 14 and 40 to report there for detention or face ”punishment”, in the single largest round-up in a year.
A Palestinian cabinet minister, Saeb Erekat, accused the Israelis of using the war in Iraq as a cover for the assault.
”We urge the international community not to allow Israel to continue exploiting the war with Iraq to achieve its end goal,” he said.
Since the US and Britain invaded Iraq, the Israeli army has killed at least 17 Palestinians. They include six children, among them a 10-year-old girl and three boys in their early teens, and an elderly man who human rights groups say was pushed to his death by an Israeli soldier.
In Tulkarem, the army ordered at least 1 000 teenage boys and men in the town’s refugee camp — the Palestinians said it was twice that number — to gather at a school and surrender for detention or face ”punishment”. It said they would not be permitted to return for at least three days while it searched Tulkarem and checked their identities.
”It was a huge Israeli force that came in the middle of the night. Tanks, helicopters and soldiers who were shooting to frighten people,” Tulkarem’s Palestinian governor, Izzedine al-Sharif, said. ”They ordered all the males except the older and younger ones to come to the school. There was no way to resist it.”
The UN said the use of its girls’ school as a detention camp was a ”flagrant violation” of legal agreements.
Some of the detained men were released after their identities were checked, but they were put on to buses, driven out of Tulkarem, and ordered not to return for at least three days, by which time the army says it will have pulled out. At least 11 men were arrested.
An army representative, Major Sharon Feingold, said the raid came after a suicide bombing in Netanya on Sunday injured dozens of people.
”One of the methods to differentiate between those that have links to the terror infrastructure and those that don’t is that all men between 14 and 40 were ordered to report. It was an operational need to ensure that those not involved in terror were not harmed during the operation,” she said.
In Gaza, dozens of tanks, armoured vehicles and bulldozers led the raid on Rafah refugee camp. The army said it targeted buildings used as sniper positions and was searching for tunnels used to smuggle weapons from Egypt. It did not find any.
One gunman died in street fighting. Three other Palestinians were killed by a helicopter missile. The army said the dead men were ”terrorists”; residents said they were unarmed bystanders.
On the West Bank, Israeli troops shot dead a 14-year-old boy in the town of Qalqiliya. Witnesses said he was standing in the street outside his home. The army said he had failed to obey an order to stop.
In Nablus, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man they claimed was a wanted Hamas fighter. Khaled Rayyan (28) was hiding in a relative’s house with his wife and child when soldiers broke down the door. His wife, Salam, said he was killed when he tried to attack the troops with a pistol.
Thousands of Palestinians marched through Jenin refugee camp yesterday to commemorate the dozens of fighters and civilians killed in an Israeli offensive a year ago. During the offensive the army bulldozed about 800 homes in the centre of the camp. Twenty-three Israeli soldiers were also killed.
”The massacre in Jenin is a stigma on the face of Israel,” they chanted. ”The battle continues from Jenin to Baghdad.”
The Israeli army has charged a soldier who shot dead a 95-year-old Palestinian grandmother near Ramallah last December with ”negligently causing the death of a civilian”.
The soldier fired 17 rounds at a minibus taxi, killing Fatma Obeidi. He was originally sentenced to 35 days by his commanding officer at an administrative hearing, but the sentence was overturned. He now faces a full military court which can impose a sentence of up to three years. – Guardian Unlimited Â