50,000 trapped by Israeli assault on Gaza

50,000 trapped by Israeli assault on Gaza

Chris McGreal in Jabaliya refugee camp
Tuesday October 5, 2004
The Guardian

Israeli forces have demolished the homes of hundreds of Palestinians,
bulldozed swaths of agricultural land and destroyed infrastructure in
their bloodiest assault on the Gaza Strip in years.

More than 70 people have died in Operation Days of Penitence, launched
in northern Gaza six days ago after a Hamas rocket attack killed two
Israeli children. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said that
the dead included 31 civilians. Nineteen were under 18.

Most of the nine people killed yesterday were Palestinian fighters,
but a teenage girl was among the dead, shot in her home. In southern
Gaza Israeli forces killed a four-year-old boy in Khan Yunis refugee
camp, where several Palestinian children have been shot dead in recent
weeks.

Last night the Israeli army said it had killed a Palestinian gunman
who had tried to infiltrate a nearby settlement. Early today an
Israeli missile strike in Jabaliya killed one Palestinian militant and
wounded two others.

But shielded from view is the suffering of about 50,000 Palestinians
trapped in areas seized by hundreds of Israeli troops, backed by about
200 tanks and armoured vehicles.

Palestinians in the Israeli-held areas, including parts of Jabaliya
refugee camp and the small town of Beit Hanoun, described by telephone
the widespread destruction and desperate living conditions.

Armoured bulldozers had demolished scores, possibly hundreds, of
homes, they said. Thousands of people had spent days without
electricity and water, although power was restored sporadically
yesterday. Residents said that the destruction of sewage systems had
contaminated the water supplies in some areas.

"I can hear shooting now," said Hanna Basyouni, 35, who has seven
children, speaking from an occupied section of Jabaliya. "I see the
tanks below me. The tanks and the bulldozers are 50 metres away from
my home. I can see them shooting right now."

Mrs Basyouni lives on the edge of Jabaliya where, she said, the
Israeli army had bulldozed greenhouses that had been families' only
source of income for several generations.

The Israeli military says it is clearing a six-mile-wide buffer zone
to stop Hamas launching rockets across the border. But yesterday the
Islamist group fired two missiles into Israel. "There's not one tree
left for as far as I can see," said Mrs Basyouni. "Five or six homes
around me are completely bulldozed, and I can't be sure how many
beyond that. My sister's home was destroyed ... [She] is living in a
tent. She has nine children."

Ambulance drivers, the only Palestinians permitted to cross into the
occupied areas, confirmed the scale of the destruction. Abid Ahmed Abu
Mohammed, a driver for Kamal Odwan hospital, said: "We saw at least 50
houses bulldozed on the edge of Jabaliya and many inside the camp.

"I think most of the bulldozing was to make way for the tanks. There
are main roads but the Israelis were afraid to use them because of
mines. The bulldozers ... destroyed whatever was in their way - entire
streets."

The Israeli army said it had destroyed or damaged a "small number" of
homes, either because its soldiers had been attacked or to allow its
tanks to avoid booby-trapped roads.

Many people are without water in Beit Hanoun, a town of 15,000 near
the border with Israel. Aref Azaneed, a ministry of agriculture
inspector, said: "The water and the sewage lines are near each other.
When the tanks destroy them, they mix. The water from the tap has
sewage in it."

Over the past three years the army has levelled 60% of Beit Hanoun's
agricultural land, destroying its wealth and the main source of citrus
fruit and olives in the Gaza Strip.

"Nobody comes in, nobody goes out," Mr Azaneed said. "We can only move
inside Beit Hanoun, and in a very careful way. There are about 40
tanks about 30 metres from houses close to Salahadin Road."

A UN official said yesterday Israel had wrongly accused Hamas
militants of using a UN ambulance to carry rockets, while Israeli
officials renewed accusations that Unrwa, the UN agency for
Palestinian refugees, was harbouring terrorists, the Associated Press
reported.

Israel has demanded the UN investigate the actions of Peter Hansen,
its top official in Gaza, after its army released video footage from
an unmanned aircraft that reportedly showed militants loading a rocket
into a UN vehicle in Gaza.

The UN says the footage shows a worker loading a stretcher into the
vehicle. On Monday Mr Hansen wrote to the Israeli foreign minister,
Silvan Shalom, accusing Israel of inventing the story.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Sto...319776,00.html

Ondertussen in Soedan....