Israeli tanks and bulldozers pulled out of southern Gaza on Sunday after one of the most destructive raids of the intifada, leaving hundreds of Palestinians without homes and eight dead, including two children.
The army fought its way into Rafah refugee camp on Thursday night, ostensibly in search of tunnels under the border with Egypt which the military said were being used to smuggle heavy weaponry such as ground-to-air missiles.
But by the time the raid was over 48 hours later, just three tunnels had been found, while more than 100 homes had been rocketed or flattened by bulldozers, about 1 500 people left homeless and two children killed after an Israeli helicopter fired a missile into a crowd.
The army also cut off electricity and water to the camp.
The United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, accused Israel of breaching international law through ”disproportionate use of force” in a civilian area. Yasser Arafat’s aides called the raid a ”war crime and a human tragedy.”
”The Israeli soldiers came and opened fire in our neighbourhood two days ago,” said Ehad Abu Taha (23).
”The younger children were screaming so we tried to get away. We couldn’t take anything.
”My father tried to go back yesterday [Sunday] but the Israelis were still there. When we went back today, there was nothing left of my house. There was nothing left of my neighbourhood.”
In some places, entire rows of houses were crushed under the bulldozers. In other streets Israeli helicopters picked off two or three homes at a time with missiles.
At dawn on Sunday, once it was clear the Israeli tanks were mostly gone, hundreds of people loaded up donkey carts and fled their homes amid a swirl of rumours that the army would be back.
Women stumbled down the road with doors to their homes strapped to their backs and children hauled buckets filled with cutlery.
Mohammed Salar Omer (40) was among those in search of a new home.
”There were eight people living in this house. Where will I live? In the street? In the school? Some people have money but still have nowhere to sleep,” he said.
”There are 40 or 50 families around me trying to get their furniture or anything else they can out of their houses. We are asking: what did we do?”
The Israeli military said Palestinian fighters put up fierce resistance as the tanks went in, throwing hundreds of grenades and bombs. But all the casualties were among the Palestinians. Of the eight dead, four were fighters.
The two children killed by the Israeli helicopter missile were Ibrahim al-Qrainawi, eight, and Sami Salah, 12. About 60 other people in the same crowd were wounded, many of them women and children.
The army said that there had been gunmen in the crowd and that anyone on the street was presumed to be hostile.
”Where were we supposed to be?” asked Ashraf Khusa, who lived on the same street. ”They were blowing up our homes. There were bulldozers crushing our houses. Where could we go but the street?”
Much of the destruction was in an area known as Block J, adjacent to the large concrete wall that divides Rafah from Egypt.
Before the latest raid, about 620 homes had been demolished in Rafah during the intifada, most of them to clear a no man’s land between the camp and the wall.
The weekend attack upped the ante significantly, with the number of houses destroyed in two days equivalent to a fifth of the total over the past three years.
”We have had very, very significant damage to the refugee camp. This is well more than twice as bad as in any previous action,” said Peter Hansen, the head of the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza after visiting the camp on Sunday. ”There is a lot of fear, there is a lot of anger and there are a lot of people who are very desperate.”
The army described the raid as successful, saying it was difficult to find one smuggling tunnel, let alone three.
”These figures for destruction are extremely exaggerated,” said an Israeli military spokesperson.
”About 10 houses were destroyed, all of which fell into one of three categories – they had a tunnel, were booby trapped or there was intense gunfire from them.”
The UN dismisses the army’s claim. Hansen said Israel had the right to curb weapons smuggling but not through widespread destruction of civilian homes.
”I am not enough of a tunnel demolition expert to know whether firing missiles from a helicopter is a good way to destroy tunnels, but I would not have thought so,” he said. – Guardian Unlimited Â