Demolitions not simply revenge

At first it seemed that the roughly 600 Palestinian refugees left homeless in the cold and rain by Israeli bulldozers were victims of revenge.

But it is now becoming apparent that Palestinians like Jihad Ghassas, a young carpenter who lost his home, are victims of Israeli maps, obstacles to perceived security imperatives in an area where, according to Israeli commanders, troops are endangered and arms are smuggled.

Mr. Ghassas stood Friday in the only room still intact in his house, now on the edge of the most recently expanded no man's land in the Middle East. It stretches over a hundred yards deep into this refugee camp along Gaza's border with Egypt, which has remained under Israeli control under interim peace agreements. Israeli weapons fire, tanks, and bulldozers have steadily leveled all the houses that were in the no man's land, culminating in Thursday's mass destruction, which took down 58 buildings, according to UN statistics, the largest single demolition during 15 months of fighting.

Some 70 UN-supplied tents have sprouted on nearby streets. The same process has been under way elsewhere in the Gaza Strip and West Bank in areas close to Jewish settlements and army positions, according to international aid workers.

"The idea is to depopulate areas they see as zones they would like to control," says Ann Kristin Brunborg, field director for the United Nations Association International Service. Ms. Brunborg, author of a study last year for the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group on army shooting practices, says Israel has deliberately displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians through "systematic" gunfire at their neighborhoods and destruction of their houses.

The army denies this. Spokesman Olivier Rafowicz said forces shoot only in order to protect Israeli citizens and soldiers, and that the army only destroys firing positions.

Carmela Menashe, the military affairs correspondent for Israel Radio, says the army does create buffer zones. "They say otherwise, but in Rafah there is no doubt about the intention to create an empty area," she says.

Yesterday, Israeli security forces also destroyed several houses in the Arab neighborhood of Al Isawiya in annexed east Jerusalem. A police spokesman said an Israeli court had issued destruction orders for 17 houses that were "built illegally," the wires reported.

On Sunday, however, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Israel had decided to stop the demolition of Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

But Mr. Sharon reaffirmed the demolition policy yesterday in remarks quoted on Israel Radio. "We act in accordance with our security requirements, and that is the only thing that influences our decisions," he said.

For Ghassas' family, the entry of tanks and bulldozers was a fresh trauma layered on to his grandparents flight to Gaza from Asdud, a coastal village that was conquered by Jewish forces in 1948 and later transformed into the Israeli city of Ashdod. More than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled their homes during the Arab-Israeli war that year, many of them taking refuge in Gaza.

Ghassas says the family had no warning, only the firing from tanks, and he scrambled to carry his brothers Mohammed, 3, and Saleh, 5, out of the house and to check that no one was left behind. Their possessions were destroyed.

"My heart is black. For one or two years, the hate will build up inside the people," he said. "And then there will be an explosion of revenge."

The Israeli action, approved by Sharon, came a day after four soldiers were killed by militants from Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, in the biggest setback the army has suffered in 15 months of fighting. The Hamas fighters came from Rafah, albeit from a neighborhood far removed from the one that was demolished. The fact that the army sent into the refugee camp troops from the Bedouin unit that had been defeated added to the sense that it was a revenge operation.

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