Homes wrecked, lives destroyed: Israeli tactics that
fuel the Intifada
By Donald Macintyre in Gaza
19 May 2004

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=522676

Israel was accused yesterday of committing a war crime
by its destruction of more than 3,000 Palestinian
homes in Israel and the occupied territories since the
intifada began three and a half years ago.

The damning report from Amnesty International came as
the Israeli army killed up to 19 Palestinians -
children as well as militants - in the Rafah refugee
camp in the Gaza Strip where General Moshe Ya'alon,
the army chief of staff, warned at the weekend that
hundreds more homes could be destroyed.

In its critique of the Israeli policy of destroying
buildings and "vast areas" of agricultural land, the
report challenges head-on the argument that the
destruction is militarily necessary. It also warns
that "punitive forced evictions and house demolitions"
are a "flagrant form of collective punishment" that
"violate a fundamental principle of international
law".

The report was published as a heavily armoured Israeli
force moved into the Tel Sultan district of the Rafah
camp yesterday, in one of Israel's biggest incursions
into Gaza. The attack followed an assault by
helicopter gunships which had earlier killed seven
Palestinians - at least three of them gunmen - outside
a mosque.

As soldiers mounted a house-to-house hunt for
militants, the town's hospital was filled with 40
Palestinians wounded by missile attacks and Israeli
sniper fire. The local hospital morgue became so
overloaded that five bodies had to be shifted to
vegetable freezers in a nearby market.

Earlier, troops had fanned out under cover of darkness
into the neighbourhood in the early hours of the
morning, seizing vantage points amid two missile
attacks before dawn. With Rafah sealed off from the
rest of Gaza by the army, at least 45 military
vehicles moved into the camp, including tanks and
armoured bulldozers. At least 88 houses were destroyed
in the camp last week, making more than 1,000 people
homeless.

Since the intifada began in September 2000, 2,806
Palestinians and 921 Israelis.

Asmaa Mughayer, 15, and her brother Ahmed, 13, were
shot dead yesterday as they fed pigeons on the roof of
their house. Their uncle, Mahmoud Mughayer, said that
they had been unaware of the extent of the incursion
because with the camp's electricity supply cut off by
the assault there was no television. Their elder
brother, Ali, 24, had shouted at them to come down
because it was dangerous. When he heard no response,
he climbed the steps to find his sister and brother
lying dead in a pool of blood.

Mr Mughayer said: "The snipers fired at him, too. He
lay on the ground, and slowly crept pulling them one
after another to the third floor." He added that it
had taken an ambulance five hours to arrive because of
the firing. He added: "This was the biggest crime.
Asmaa and Ahmed were not mujahedin. This is the
largest injustice, unacceptable by humanity."

Palestinian sources said that the army had destroyed
four houses belonging to dead militants and taken over
another four houses. They added that at dawn a
helicopter spotted a number of militants near the
Bilal Ben Rabah mosque and had fired a rocket, killing
a militant from Hamas who was identified as Hani
Qifeh. Shortly afterwards, the same helicopter fired
again, killing two brothers and a third man, the
sources said. Missiles also burnt a library in the
mosque.

Witnesses said that armoured bulldozers had brought
down electric cables and telephone lines. "We are
afraid," said Miriam Abu Jazzar, outside her
daughter's home, apparently wrecked by a missile.
"Every hour there is shooting."

The army insisted that the operation was aimed at
militants who it says smuggle weapons through tunnels
from Egypt to Rafah. General Ya'alon said: "Rafah has
become a gateway for terror through which
rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons have
passed. After we tried to persuade the Palestinian
authorities to stop this activity, we were forced to
prevent this ourselves. If they [the Palestinians]
want to prevent house demolitions, they must stop the
arms smuggling."

President George Bush called the Gaza bloodshed
"troubling" but told the powerful pro-Israel lobby
group Aipac that Israel "has every right to defend
itself from terror". A White House spokesman said it
was in touch with the Israelis about the humanitarian
impact of their incursion but had been assured the
goal was to stymie smuggling, not level homes.

Despite earlier suggestions that the army intended to
demolish more homes - after at least 88 were destroyed
in the camp last week in the wake of an attack on an
Israeli troop carrier that killed five soldiers - it
denied that the operation was a prelude to a massive
widening of the Philapdelphi patrol road between Gaza
and the Egyptian border. While the present status of
that plan is still unclear, such widening would
require a demolition on the scale that had been
envisaged by Gen Ya'alon last week.

The greatest burden of house destruction has fallen on
Gaza, with more than 2,200 demolitions in the past
three-and-a-half years, and Rafah the worst afflicted
area. The Amnesty report suggests that a high
proportion of demolitions is purely punitive and that
such "collective punishment", including destruction of
homes of families of suicide bombers, is against
international law.

Amnesty challenges the military justification for the
destruction, much of which it says is "inextricably
linked" to its policy of land appropriation, not least
for "establishing Israeli settlements in violation of
international law". The report also points out that
Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states
that "extensive destruction and appropriation of
property not justified by military necessity and
carried out unlawfully" is a "grave breach and hence a
war crime".

Donatella Rovera, a co-author of the report, said that
"in the vast majority of cases" the demolitions
represented "wanton destruction". She added: "It's
unnecessary, disproportionate, unjustified and
deliberate." Reacting to the report, the Israeli
Foreign Ministry said Palestinian militants used
houses in civilian neighbourhoods to attack Israeli
forces, and that made the structures "legitimate
military targets" under international law.

Although most of the criticism is reserved for Israel,
the report says the Palestinian Authority should take
"all possible measures" to prevent attacks by
militants against Israeli civilians - and to ensure
that such groups do not initiate "armed confrontations
from residential civilian areas".

The Foreign Ministry said - in reference to
demolitions in Rafah - that houses are used to cover
entrances to weapons-smuggling tunnels. "The
demolition of these structures is often the only way
to combat this threat."

The core of Amnesty's argument is that while some
destructions may be militarily necessary within the
meaning of international law many are not and that
Israel's use of the military defence is "extremely
broad". It goes on to say: "In the case of long-held
occupied territory over which the occupying power
exercises effective control military needs must be
read extremely narrowly."

Lawful military purposes do not, for example, include
appropriation for the "expansion and consolidation of
Israeli settlements in occupied territory".

LIVING UNDER OCCUPATION

For four years, Khalil Bashir, a school principal, his
wife Souad, their six children and his mother have
been under pressure from the Israeli army to leave
their home near the Israeli settlement of Kfar Darom
in the Gaza strip.

In October 2000, Israeli soldiers took over the upper
floors of their house. Since then, the Bashir family
have been confined to the ground floor, while the top
floor has been turned into an army base accessed by a
ladder.

Even though the Israeli army has full control of the
house, soldiers have opened fire on the house from a
watchtower. The sides of the house are riddled with
bullets and the ground floor rooms facing the army
position have sustained extensive damage.

Three members of the Bashir family have been injured
by Israeli army fire. On 13 October 2000, Mr Bashir's
son Yazen, 17, was shot and injured in the leg while
he was getting water. On 28 April, 2001 soldiers shot
from the watchtower into Mr Bashir's bedroom while he
was reading, injuring him in the back of the head and
neck.

On 18 February 2004 Israeli soldiers shot and
seriously injured Mr Bashir's son Yusuf, 15. At the
time Yusuf was outside the house with his father
seeing off visitors, including two United Nations
staff members. The three visitors had just got into
their vehicle, clearly marked with the UN emblem, and
were about to leave when a single shot was fired from
the Israeli watchtower. Yusuf was hit in the back by a
bullet. He is still in hospital and it is not known if
he will walk again.

Shortly afterwards, his sister Amira, 18, told Amnesty
International: "I am worried for my brother. I don't
know if he will walk again; and I am worried about my
three little siblings, my parents and my grandmother.
I pray that they will be safe. The home should be the
safest place but for our family it is not."

Leonard Doyle






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