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From: "Middle East Report
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Subject: In Rafah, History Hangs Heavy in the Air
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 15:55:45 -0400
In Rafah, History Hangs Heavy in the Air
Omar Karmi
June 4, 2004
(Omar Karmi is a correspondent for the Jordan Times and managing editor
of
Palestine Report.)
Early in the morning on May 21, on a road into the neighborhood of
Tal
al-Sultan in the Gazan town of Rafah, 71 year-old Muhammad Salama swung
his
walking stick at a blade of grass. Some 100 yards ahead of him an
Israeli
army bulldozer rumbled along, apparently clearing the road of
obstacles.
Twice the bulldozer moved in the direction of a Red Crescent
ambulance
parked on the roadside, and twice the ambulance pulled back, until it
was
almost parallel to the spot where Salama sat in front of a row of
greenhouses.
"I am going to stay until I get in," said the elderly man
impatiently, in
response to repeated entreaties from residents urging him to move back
to
the relative cover of a small block of houses. The other residents
were
staying well back, and only a band of journalists, most attired in
flak
jackets emblazoned with the word "Press," ventured as far
forward as Salama
had. Somewhere behind the bulldozer, an Israeli armored personnel
carrier
was parked. Before the bulldozer had arrived, the APC sounded a siren
to
warn off journalists who had cautiously stepped past the ambulance
walking
in the direction of town. The message was unmistakable. Three days after
it
unexpectedly became the center of the Israeli army's "Operation
Rainbow,"
Tal al-Sultan was still off limits.
OPERATION RAINBOW
Operation Rainbow -- the biggest Israeli incursion into Gaza since
the
second intifada erupted in late September 2000 -- officially began on
May
18, though forces began moving in the previous day. Ostensibly to locate
and
seal off arms smuggling tunnels into Egypt and arrest armed
Palestinians,
the army sent some 100 tanks and APCs into Rafah, the southernmost city
in
Gaza. Palestinians in Rafah had been expecting the worst for some
time.
Following the May 12 destruction by Palestinian militants of a
military
vehicle near the Egyptian border, on May 13 Israeli forces moved into
and
shelled an area of the Rafah refugee camp, knocking down several houses
and
killing 12. The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR)
filed
a petition that day with Israel's High Court, which granted a
temporary
injunction against additional house demolitions until May 16.
Nevertheless,
more houses were reportedly destroyed on May 15. On the morning of May
16,
the High Court declined to extend its injunction, saying that it
was
"unnecessary, as the prosecution and military officers stated that
there is
no intention to demolish more houses." Simultaneously, the press
relayed
comments from Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon to the effect that
many
more houses would be bulldozed to "widen" the Philadelphi
corridor along the
Egyptian-Gazan border. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was also quoted
saying
that "We will deepen the fighting" in Gaza.
When it became clear on May 16 that the larger operation would proceed,
many
residents of Rafah decided to leave their homes for safer areas. On the
day
after Palestinians worldwide marked the fifty-sixth anniversary of the
1948
nakba, when more than 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forcibly
expelled
from their homes in what is now the state of Israel, some of those
original
refugees and their descendants once again packed their belongings and
headed
off to temporary dwellings hastily arranged by UN agencies or the
municipality of the poorest town in the Gaza Strip and West
Bank.
On May 16 and 17, there was a steady exodus from areas that
residents
expected would be targeted first. By the evening of the second day,
the
areas closest to the border with Egypt, Block O and Yubna refugee camp,
were
practically deserted. Some had fled Block O and Yubna to go to Tal
al-Sultan, next to the Jewish settlement of Rafiah Yam toward the
Mediterranean coast. This neighborhood, with its relatively wide streets
and
distance from the border, had seen little fighting in the past and seemed
to
offer a relatively tranquil refuge. But on May 17, the armored columns
moved
in there as well, separating all of Rafah from Khan Yunis and the rest
of
the Gaza Strip to the north. By May 18, Tal al-Sultan had been taken over
by
the Israeli military and isolated from the other areas of
Rafah.
"WORDS CANNOT DESCRIBE THE SCENE"
Two of Muhammad Salama's sons and their families were in Tal al-Sultan.
One
son, over his mobile phone, had informed Salama that everyone was well,
but
that his grandson Adham, a policeman, had been detained. Salama had
not
heard any more news of Adham since the evening before -- "probably
the
batteries died," he said -- and concerned, he had decided to try to
get into
Tal al-Sultan.
If his mobile phone's batteries had died, Salama's son would have
been
unable to recharge them. A 24-hour curfew had been imposed on residents
of
Tal al-Sultan, and as heavy Israeli military machinery wreaked havoc
upon
the infrastructure, soon they also found themselves without
electricity,
water or telephone landlines. News from the besieged neighborhood was
thus
hard to come by. While mobile phones were used incessantly, residents of
Tal
al-Sultan could report only what they saw through their windows.
Neither
journalists nor aid organizations could gain access, and even
ambulances
were finding it difficult, according to Ali Musa, a doctor and director
of
the Yusuf al-Najjar Hospital, the only medical facility in Rafah that can
be
called a hospital, though it cannot offer the full spectrum of care
associated with that word.
According to PCHR, 39 Palestinians were killed in Rafah between May 17
and
May 20. With only one fatality on May 21 and fewer injuries than on
previous
days of Operation Rainbow, Musa could have been taking a much-needed
break.
The hospital is woefully under-equipped for the kind of emergency it has
to
deal with regularly -- the morgue, for instance, holds only six bodies
--
and the entire medical staff had been on 24-hour standby for the duration
of
the Israeli incursion.
But Musa was instead sharply dressed and freshly shaved. Over the phone,
he
was addressing a crowd of Israeli demonstrators that had gathered on
the
Israeli side of the Erez crossing at the northern tip of the Gaza Strip
to
protest the army actions in Rafah. Hoarse and sounding weary, the
doctor
told the protesters that several appeals for medical help from Tal
al-Sultan
had gone unanswered because ambulances were not allowed access. He told
them
that in at least one instance, an Israeli Apache helicopter had fired
a
missile at an ambulance. "Whatever I say," he croaked in
conclusion, "words
cannot describe the scene."
As Musa rushed from speaking to peace activists to greet the
visiting
politician Muhammad Dahlan, formerly interior minister for the
Palestinian
Authority, he had a one-word answer for journalists asking how the
hospital
had coped with the strain. "God," he said.
A tearful Harb Zidane Ghazeg al-Jereidah, 60, also invoked God as she
waved
her identification card at journalists. Her house in the Brazil refugee
camp
near Rafah's small sports stadium had been one of three she said
were
destroyed there on May 20. "It's a crime before God," she said,
her voice
rising in anger. Her home had housed seven people. "Forty years I
lived
here. Now we are on the street. My fridge, the TV, the furniture -- it's
all
gone. I only have my ID card."
DEMOLISHED "STRUCTURES"
Before dawn on May 20, the Israeli army expanded its operation to
include
the Brazil camp and adjoining Salam neighborhood. The tanks and
soldiers
stayed there for some 24 hours, during which another wave of people
from
those neighborhoods crowded into the UN facilities that had been
made
available as temporary housing in other areas of Rafah.
Yet, throughout the duration of Operation Rainbow, the Israeli army
consistently denied most accusations of house demolitions. On May 20,
while
Rafah municipality officials claimed over 40 homes had been destroyed,
and
the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) had counted over 30, army
spokespeople would admit to only five. Only when the operation was
winding
down on May 23 did that number rise to 12. On May 24, UNRWA had tallied
45
destroyed Palestinian homes. The Israeli army by then was talking about
56
demolished "structures."
Presumably, one of those structures would have been the Rafah Zoo in
the
same area as al-Jereidah's house had stood. There too, even as
journalists
picked their way through the twisted metal of demolished animal cages,
army
spokespeople initially denied any knowledge of the damage. Later, the
army
admitted that it might have "damaged a wall" of the zoo. When
confronted
with this assertion, Muhammad Ahmad Juma, the zoo's co-owner, simply
shook
his head. "Look around you," he told reporters. Around him,
children and
volunteers were trying to find some of the animals that had
disappeared.
Some were found dead under the rubble. Others, including wolves, foxes,
a
python and an ostrich, were loose somewhere. The animals Juma had been
able
to recapture, among them a frightened kangaroo and a sneezing ram,
were
being kept in a nearby basement.
Army statements, meanwhile, evolved further. While still only admitting
to
causing damage to a wall, the army now placed the blame for any
further
damage on "Palestinian explosives." Only at the end of the day
did an army
spokesman acknowledge that indeed Israeli tanks had "opened a
road" through
the zoo, and then only because "Palestinian explosives" blocked
the way
ahead.
STATED JUSTIFICATION
About half a mile away in the Salam neighborhood, Hasan al-Ajrami, 30,
stood
on top of a pile of sand and rubble from which bits of broken
furniture
protruded. Twenty houses, he said, had stood there two nights before,
among
them a house belonging to his family. "Everyone was at home at the
time," he
said. "They came at around one in the morning, with no warning, and
they
started bulldozing the place. People lost everything. Whoever ordered
this,"
he said, with perhaps unintended understatement, "is a reckless
person. And
those who carried out the orders are even more reckless."
Braving the sporadic gunfire, Ajrami led journalists to the top of
one
mound. "Look down there," he said. In the distance was a
watchtower, one of
the many the Israeli army has erected along the border with Egypt.
"That's
about a kilometer away," Ajrami estimated. "What tunnels are
that long?"
The stated justification for Operation Rainbow -- a search for tunnels
used
to spirit weapons from Egypt to Palestinian militant groups -- was also
met
with contempt by the mayor of Rafah, Said Zuroub, who questioned why it
was
necessary to demolish houses to find the tunnels. "There is
technology to
find oil deep in the ground. And the Israelis can't discover tunnels
some
five meters deep? This is nonsense."
Zuroub did not pretend that there were no tunnels or smuggling in
Rafah.
"Smuggling is a business, and Rafah is a border town. In Egypt a
packet of
cigarettes costs five shekels. Here it is 13." The municipality's
already
limited resources, the mayor said, were being stretched to the limit.
Rafah
was designated as the poorest town in the West Bank and Gaza by a 2003
World
Bank report, and Zuroub estimated the unemployment rate to be in excess
of
75 percent.
He acknowledged that there was very little the municipality could do for
its
citizens, except to urge people to stay in their homes. Primarily, he
said,
this was because there was nowhere for them to go, but also, he
added,
because of history. "In 1947 [the pre-state Zionist militias] told
us to
leave. We are not going to leave this time."
"A DEVASTATED PLACE"
Operation Rainbow was officially terminated on May 24, though an
army
presence remained in the Brazil camp until the end of the month. What
passes
for normality in Rafah has slowly returned. People there have come to
expect
the periodic Israeli raids such as the one on June 2 that reportedly
left
another 18 homes demolished.
In all, UNRWA has put the number of people left homeless in the Gaza
Strip
during the intifada at over 21,000 people, 3,800 of them, according to
the
agency's Rafah Emergency Appeal, in Rafah in May 2004 alone. On May
31,
UNRWA issued a plea for $16 million in international aid to repair
the
damage from Operation Rainbow and its aftermath. "Rafah was always a
poor
place," agency head Peter Hansen told Agence France Presse. "It
is now a
devastated place." A June 2 press release from the International
Committee
of the Red Cross estimated that some 38,000 people had been left
without
potable water. The organization said it was preparing to bring
150,000
liters of water a day into Rafah for the next five weeks.
At least 45 Palestinians were killed during Operation Rainbow, including
at
least ten when Israeli tank shells and/or helicopter-borne missiles
slammed
into demonstrators who had gathered on May 19 to try to walk into
Tal
al-Sultan. Seventeen of those killed during the operation, according to
the
UN, were children under 18. In the cases of two of them,
circumstantial
evidence suggests that they were killed in broad daylight by Israeli
sniper
fire, and on May 26 Amnesty International called on Israel to conduct
a
"thorough, independent and impartial investigation" into their
deaths.
COLD COMFORT
History hangs heavy in the air in Rafah where a little over half
the
population consists of 1948 refugees or their descendants, and where
some
have been made homeless for the second or third time during the
current
intifada. The single greatest upheaval in Rafah since 1948 came with
the
Israeli occupation in 1967. Those who remember that time were eager to
point
out that Tal al-Sultan was mostly built by the Israeli army in 1971
as
alternative housing for those who had been made homeless by a
similar
campaign in the early 1970s to clear out the refugee camps and widen
the
roads to allow tank access.
In 1972, UN General Assembly Resolution 2963 condemned Israeli actions
in
Rafah, including the "destruction of refugee shelters and forcible
transfer
of populations" as being in contravention of the Fourth Geneva
Convention,
and called on Israel to "desist forthwith" from such practices.
General
Assembly resolutions are routinely dismissed by Israel as
non-binding.
Perhaps one could see the passage of a similar, but theoretically
binding
resolution by the UN Security Council on May 20, 2004 as a sign of
progress
for Palestinians. But the resolution was cold comfort for Abu Ali
Shahin,
Rafah's representative to the Palestinian Legislative Council, who was
keen
to remind journalists that the commander of the Israeli army's
southern
force in the early 1970s was none other than Ariel Sharon. "We have
no
alliances," Shahin said, invoking Israel's "special
relationship" with the
US. "Not even Arab countries are coming to our aid. We only have our
will.
We have nothing to struggle with but we must struggle. We have no
alternatives."
-----
For background on Israel's home demolition policy, see Chris Smith,
"Under
the Guise of Security: House Demolitions in Gaza," Middle East
Report
Online, July 13, 2001.
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero071301.html
For additional background, see the section on house demolitions on
the
website of the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem:
http://www.btselem.org
The summer 2004 issue of Middle East Report, "Two-State
Dis/Solution,"
offers in-depth analysis of possible political futures in
Israel-Palestine.
Order the issue or subscribe to Middle East Report (print) via a
secure
server at MERIP's home page:
http://www.merip.org
Middle East Report Online is a free service of the Middle East
Research
and Information Project (MERIP).
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