Four more Israeli soldiers were killed in the Gaza strip on Friday as the military began razing hundreds of refugee homes in what the government called a security operation but critics described as retaliation for some of the worst casualties of the intifada. An Israeli MP called the destruction a war crime.
Armoured bulldozers tore down houses and apartment blocks hours after Israel Premier Ariel Sharon’s security Cabinet agreed to widen a security strip between the Egyptian border and Rafah refugee camp, known as the Philadelphi Road, where about 600 homes have been destroyed by the military over the past eight months.
The decision came after five Israeli soldiers were killed on Wednesday when Islamic Jihad blew up their armoured vehicle as it drove along the border. Six soldiers died the day before in an explosion in Gaza City.
The Israelis killed at least 30 Palestinians in the same time period in gunbattles and rocket attacks on Gaza City and Rafah. Many of the dead were civilians, among them children aged 11, 12 and 14.
The demolitions prompted more heavy fighting around the Philadelphi Road. Two Israeli soldiers died when a missile hit their vehicle, and two more were shot dead in a refugee camp, bringing to 15 the number killed this week. Palestinian snipers wounded several others.
The government said it had ordered the demolitions in Rafah to provide better protection for armoured vehicles and troops operating along the border. Israel radio said the military planned to destroy hundreds of homes in an area the army had been forcing Palestinians out of for months.
The Palestinian leadership denounced the demolition as a catastrophe and said it flew in the face of Sharon’s stated desire to pull Israeli settlers and the military out of the Gaza Strip. A leading left-wing member of the Knesset, Yossi Sarid, described the mass demolition as a war crime.
As the bulldozers moved in hundreds of Palestinians fled their homes carrying bundles of clothes and waving white flags.
While Israel’s Defence Minister, Shaul Mofaz, said the fighting was part of the ”war on terror” and vowed not to retreat, the army has clearly been shaken by the scale and effectiveness of Palestinian resistance just as it believed it had broken the back of Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s command structure.
Israeli bitterness over the deaths of the troops has been sharpened by Palestinian fighters and civilians carrying off parts of the slain soldiers’ bodies that were scattered over hundreds of metres by the explosions.
Mofaz spoke on Friday of ”the inhumanity and depravity of Palestinians in violating the honour of Israeli soldiers”.
He also claimed that United Nations ambulances were used to carry the body parts away in Gaza City.
The UN said it was investigating but noted that previous claims by the Israeli authorities about the misuse of UN ambulances had proven unfounded.
Palestinian anger in Rafah has been fuelled by the rising number of civilian casualties at the hands of the Israelis, particularly from rocket strikes. Anees Mansoor’s home was among those hit by the Apache helicopter attacks.
”I saw my mother unconscious,” he said. ”I took her to the hospital. When I went back to my house, my friends told me, ‘Anees, get your stuff from home and leave’. Then the electricity cut out in Rafah and the shooting started from everywhere.”
As he fled his home Mansoor began looking for the two friends he had agreed to meet.
”I saw them next to the supermarket in Elmo’aken Street and then I saw the Apache fire a rocket at the street,” he said. ”I ran to see what had happened to them but I couldn’t find them. There was nothing left of their faces. I just saw some hands here, some heads there.
”I can’t believe I saw my friends die.”
This week’s killings in Gaza have refocused Israeli public attention on Sharon’s stalled pledge to pull all Jewish settlers out of the territory, which was rejected in a referendum of members of his Likud party.
An opinion poll in Friday’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper showed public support for Sharon’s plan had surged in recent days. More than 70% of Israelis backed the removal of settlers.
The opposition Labour party and other left-wing groups are holding a rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday night to demand that the prime minister follow the wish of the majority of Israelis, and not bow to the minority in his own party, by pressing ahead with the withdrawal from Gaza.
”We have to leave Gaza, that is the opinion of the nation,” Labour leader Shimon Peres told army radio.
Among those who back the pullout is a well-known Israeli actor, Shlomo Vishinsky, whose 20-year-old son was one of the soldiers killed in Gaza this week.
”It’s clear that no one wants to be in Gaza except the members of the Likud,” Vishinsky wrote in Yediot Ahronot. — Guardian Unlimited Â