Rafah’s residents are inclined to take Israel’s military at its word when it says the assault on the town and refugee camp is not over and the army is just ”taking a deep breath”.
But beyond that there is little agreement over Operation Rainbow, which has shuddered to a halt short of its original aims.
The death figures, who died and how, the extent of the destruction and whether a Palestinian with a gun is a terrorist or legally resisting occupation are all contested. But at the heart of the dispute is the real reason for Operation Rainbow.
Was it, as Israel says, an assault on the ”terrorist infrastructure” that threatens ordinary Jews? Or, as many people in Rafah say, vengeance for the deaths of Israeli soldiers whose killings angered and embarrassed Ariel Sharon.
Operation Rainbow was undoubtedly prompted by the twin attacks, a fortnight ago, on Israeli armoured vehicles — one in Rafah, the other in Gaza City — that killed 11 soldiers. Two more died in the subsequent operation to recover the soldiers’ body parts in Rafah.
Military officials privately told Israeli reporters at the time that the operation was, in part, about hitting back and restoring morale in the army. But it also presented an opportunity to advance two of Israel’s goals: the continued demolition of Palestinian homes, particularly along the Philadelphi road security area on the border with Egypt, and the breaking of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Rafah before Jewish settlers are withdrawn from the Gaza Strip. The army has said it will not allow Gaza to become ”Hamasland”.
As Operation Rainbow wound down on Monday the head of Israel’s southern command, Major General Dan Harel, confirmed its objectives. ”The target of the operation was to secure the neighbourhoods along the Philadelphi road and to make sure that they are clean from terrorists and wanted operatives,” he said.
But as he spoke, General Harel knew Operation Rainbow had not achieved those goals which would have meant sweeping through all of Rafah and potentially confronting thousands of armed fighters.
Only two relatively quiet neighbourhoods, Tel al-Sultan and al-Brazil, were secured. The military never broke into more militant areas such as-Shabura, Block O or Yibna where it expected intense resistance.
Few members of the armed wings of Hamas or Islamic Jihad were killed or detained. Neither suffered a crippling blow nor were the ”neighbourhoods along the Philadelphi road” secured.
So what went wrong?
Soaring civilian casualties sowed early doubts, particularly after a tank lobbed a shell into a crowd of demonstrators killing at least 10. The army tried to shift responsibility by claiming that there were armed men in the crowd who threatened its troops.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, falsely told the security council that, of the dead, ”four to five were armed terrorists”. The army now says there was one gunman among the dead but officials say even that is in doubt.
The military’s defence that it had fired four tank shells to disperse the crowd only added to questions about its actions. The Israelis were furious with the Irish ambassador, speaking on behalf of the EU, for describing the firing of the tank shells as ”reckless endangerment”.
Then came the revelations of the destruction in al-Brazil. Right up until Palestinians returned to their wrecked homes and the world watched on television the army said it had not demolished any houses. As it turned out, entire rows of streets were bulldozed along with Rafah’s zoo in what appeared a particularly gratuitous piece of destruction.
The military later admitted demolishing 51 buildings. The UN and Israeli human rights groups said hundreds of homes were wrecked. Some 1 600 people were made homeless.
Yosef Lapid, the justice minister and Holocaust survivor, shocked the country when he appeared to draw a parallel with the actions of Nazi soldiers who drove his grandmother from her home. The army said it had only destroyed houses where weapons-smuggling tunnels were discovered or used as cover by terrorists. But only three tunnels were found and the destruction of homes looked to many Palestinians like collective punishment.
Resistance
Palestinians differ in their views of what Operation Rainbow was about. Some see the withdrawal before the troops made it to Shabura and Yibna as another victory on the heels of the attacks on the armoured vehicles. Others believe that Tel al-Sultan and al-Brazil were chosen because there would be little resistance. They say that is evidence that Operation Rainbow was motivated by vengeance .
”It was just to avenge the soldiers,” said Sadikh Abdullah, a Tel al-Sultan resident. ”Their morale was very low and they wanted an easy place to attack. There are no tunnels in Tel al-Sultan. There were no fighters here because there’s nowhere to fight … the fighters prefer the alleyways in Shabura.”
There are some Israelis who agree. In an editorial in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Ofer Shelah said Operation Rainbow had little to do with tunnel busting. He said: ”This is a strong-armed operation intended to dull the impression — in both Israeli and Palestinian consciousness — of the attacks in which 13 Israeli soldiers were killed. In delicate language, this is ‘searing the consciousness’. In slightly less polite wording, this is revenge, pure and simple.”
On Tuesday some in the Israeli press said the operation was a failure, including Amir Rappaport, an analyst writing in Ma’ariv newspaper. ”The fact that the [Israeli army] left Rafah … without even daring to enter the Shabura neighbourhood where the wanted men were is to a large degree a failure,” he said. Few in Rafah think that means they can finally sleep easy in their beds.
Neither Sharon nor his defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, are the type to give up on their goal of trying to break the Islamist resistance. In Rafah, they are waiting for the army to exhale.
Conflicting accounts
Deaths
Israeli army says 54 dead, including 14 civilians of which six were children.
Palestinians say 61 dead, half of them civilians of which 10 were children.
B’Tselem (Israeli human rights group) says 56 dead, at least 7 of them children.
Figures for period from May 13. Children defined as under 16.
Demolitions
Army says it destroyed 56 buildings, some of which contained several homes.
United Nations says 133 buildings were destroyed, housing 304 families or 1,639 people.
B’Tselem says at least 183 homes were destroyed but describes the figure as ”conservative” while it verifies some demolitions. – Guardian Unlimited Â