Amnesty International Report:
http://www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/mde150422002
"The Palestinians must be hit and it must be very painful. We must cause
them losses, victims, so that they feel the heavy price".
- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Prime Minister,
speaking to the press on 5 March 2002
"The military operations we have investigated appear to be carried out not
for military purposes but instead to harass, humiliate, intimidate and
harm the Palestinian population. Either the Israeli army is extremely
ill-disciplined or it has been ordered to carry out acts which violate the
laws of war."
--------------------
Ben Welderman from CNN stated on the air today....we feel Israel is hiding
something by not letting any of us enter. 'Us' is not only journalists.
But int'l relief services, Red Cross, human rights activists, Israeli
peace activists, ambulances, clean water trucks, etc, etc... It is amazing
how much was destroyed. Our offices were entered like all others in town by
about 25 Israeli soldiers...they used [a Palestinian guard] as a human
shield
to go from room to room... I felt violated.
--------------------
RUBBLE
ATTACKS TURN PALESTINIAN DREAM INTO BENT METAL AND PILES OF DUST
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
"We started in 1994 with damage control after the occupation. In 1995 we
moved to rehabilitation. In 1999 we were building new infrastructure, roads,
apartments, a seaport, strategic projects," said Muhammad Shtayyeh, the
director of the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and
Reconstruction, PECDAR, talking of an era that now seemed ages past. "Then
Sharon went to the mosque....."
What is impossible to dispute is the calamitous setback to what had been a
steady development of the Palestinian homelands. In 1999, the
best year for the Palestinians, there were 20 million square meters of
construction under way, $8 billion dollars in private investment, 143,000
Palestinians working in Israel each bringing home $30 a day, a 6 percent
rate of growth.
The Palestinian budget actually had a surplus. The airport in Gaza was
functioning, the private sector had created 3,500 new jobs, industrial
zones were luring large new companies.
"The Palestinian administration was highly functional, and delivered good
services," said Nigel Roberts, the World Bank representative for the
West Bank and Gaza. "One of the good stories of the past 19 months was that
they managed to maintain a functioning civil administration that
delivered basic services, health, education, despite all the problems of
delivering these services. Schools were running, municipalities were
working, there was a government out there that was functioning."
------------------------------------------------------------
JERUSALEM, April 10 - Thirteen days ago, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sent
Israeli forces into the West Bank to "uproot the infrastructure of terror."
Since then, the uprooting inflicted by his tanks, bulldozers, helicopters
and sappers has created a landscape of devastation from Bethlehem to Jenin.
The images are indelible: piles of concrete and twisted metal in the
ancient
casbah of Nablus, husks of savaged computers littering ministries in
Ramallah, rows of storefronts sheared by passing tanks in Tulkarm, broken
pipes gushing precious water, flattened cars in fields of shattered
glass and garbage, electricity poles snapped like twigs, tilting walls where
homes used to stand, gaping holes where rockets pierced office
buildings.
Today, on the day after 13 Israeli soldiers were killed going house to
house
in the crowded refugee camp of Jenin, the D-9 bulldozer was
sent in instead, erasing whole stretches of tightly packed concrete houses.
There is no way to assess the full extent of the latest damage to the
cities
and towns - Ramallah, Bethlehem, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Nablus and
Jenin - while they remain under a tight siege, with patrols and snipers
firing in the streets.
But it is safe to say that the infrastructure of life itself and of any
future Palestinian state - roads, schools, electricity pylons, water pipes,
telephone lines - has been devastated.
Even in areas where there is no fighting, the streets are largely the realm
of alley cats prowling overturned garbage bins, while residents huddle
behind shutters and drawn curtains. Many residents have been without water,
electricity or telephones for long stretches of time.
International aid and development organizations have managed to make only
occasional forays into the besieged towns. Today, a convoy of
cars and trucks with United Nations flags carrying emergency supplies for
refugee camps in Ramallah waited for an hour at Qalandria
checkpoint, and were forced to turn back at the end.
The images and reports of damage and destruction have come largely from
journalists who make risky forays into the towns, or from
residents reporting what they see when curfews are briefly lifted so they
can restock on supplies.
What they see is only the visible destruction. Untold damage has been done
to the workings of the Palestinian Authority, which to Mr. Sharon
has abided and even abetted terrorism. Officials of the World Bank said they
had briefly visited the Ministry of Education, the Central Bureau
of Statistics and some other offices of the Authority, and found computers
stripped of their hard drives, files ransacked and taken away, safes
blasted open.
Officials of the United Nations, the World Bank and donor countries met on
Tuesday to plan their actions once the Israelis withdraw.
Officials said all they could do was organize teams for each city, and wait.
Their task is enormous. The latest spasm of destruction has come on top of
the ravages of 19 months of fighting that left countless families
without income and 40,000 people hospitalized at one time or another.
Long before Mr. Sharon unleashed Israeli forces, he had regularly sent jets
and helicopters to flatten police stations, jails, television facilities
and buildings used by Mr. Arafat. He acted in response to suicide bombings
by Palestinian terrorists that have come to haunt Israeli society.
Some, like the British-era police headquarters in Bethlehem, were bombed
again and again. The Gaza airport was laced with deep trenches,
the nascent seaport was destroyed, all part of what the Palestinians and
donors took to be an assault on symbols of Palestinian sovereignty.
"We started in 1994 with damage control after the occupation. In 1995 we
moved to rehabilitation. In 1999 we were building new
infrastructure, roads, apartments, a seaport, strategic projects," said
Muhammad Shtayyeh, the director of the Palestinian Economic Council
for Development and Reconstruction, PECDAR, talking of an era that now
seemed ages past. "Then Sharon went to the mosque, God bless
him, and we're back to damage control."
It is a matter of angry dispute between Israelis and Palestinians whether
the visit by Mr. Sharon, then an opposition deputy, to the sacred site
of Al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem on Sept. 28, 2000, was the reason for the
violence that erupted that day and has continued since.
Israelis contend that Mr. Arafat found it in his interest to fan the flames
and has since supported the work of suicide bombers.
What is impossible to dispute is the calamitous setback to what had been a
steady development of the Palestinian homelands. In 1999, the
best year for the Palestinians, there were 20 million square meters of
construction under way, $8 billion dollars in private investment, 143,000
Palestinians working in Israel each bringing home $30 a day, a 6 percent
rate of growth.
The Palestinian budget actually had a surplus. The airport in Gaza was
functioning, the private sector had created 3,500 new jobs, industrial
zones were luring large new companies.
"The Palestinian administration was highly functional, and delivered good
services," said Nigel Roberts, the World Bank representative for the
West Bank and Gaza. "One of the good stories of the past 19 months was that
they managed to maintain a functioning civil administration that
delivered basic services, health, education, despite all the problems of
delivering these services. Schools were running, municipalities were
working, there was a government out there that was functioning."
All that has been crushed. Now, according to a World Bank report before the
Israeli operations of the past 13 days, real incomes are below
what they were in the late 1980's, the proportion of the poor - those
subsiding on less than $2 a day - has doubled to almost half the
population of the West Bank and Gaza.
Without support from international donors, especially the Arab League and
the European Union, "all semblance of a modern economy would
have disappeared by now," the report said.
Behind the statistics are the endless stories of lost income, lost
investment and lost hope.
Before the current Israeli offensive began, Yasir Safadi, 31, stood in Gaza
surveying a distant, muddy field that used to be his $3 million
concrete works. The plant was near a road used by Jewish settlers living in
Nissanit, and in January 2001 Israeli bulldozers flattened the
entire factory to clear a buffer zone around the road. The same was done
throughout the Gaza Strip, one of the most crowded patches of real
estate on earth.
Mr. Safadi said the tanks took five days to destroy his plant. Fifty five
employees were laid off, depriving 385 Gazans of a source of income.
Mr. Safadi himself was left with more than $1 million in debt. "Even if they
leave," he asked, "how can I afford to rebuild? And if I do, how
can I be sure they'll not destroy it again?"
In Jericho, a casino that had employed 2,000 Palestinians is closed. In
Bethlehem, a grand Intercontinental Hotel that had employed 1,115 is
being used by Israeli troops.
A few weeks ago, Sam Bahour, general manager of the Arab Palestinian
Shopping Centers in Ramallah, handed over the glossy brochure for
the grand shopping mall he was developing in neighboring Al Bireh. A native
of Youngstown, Ohio, with an M.B.A. from Tel Aviv University,
he had come to Ramallah in 1995, along with many other expatriate
Palestinian businessmen who saw a golden future in the land of their
ancestors. "We were fooled by Oslo," he said, referring to the treaty signed
in 1993 that was to lead to an independent Palestinian state.
The $10 million mall was still under construction, but Mr. Bahour was not
sure how long it would be before the building stopped, leaving the
grand skeleton standing among other abandoned projects in Al Bireh.
Today, Mr. Shtayyeh of the Palestinian economic council, insisted that
"Palestine will be viable." But the Israeli bulldozers in Jenin and the
Israeli dead from another suicide bombing suggested further destruction was
more likely. [New York Times, 11 April]
