In the Gaza Strip (news - web sites), Israeli forces raided the Rafah refugee
camp and wounded three Palestinians with a tank shell before
armored bulldozers demolished 15 houses, sending residents
fleeing, witnesses said.
Israel has pledged to scrap settlement outposts on occupied
territory in keeping with a U.S.-backed plan for peace with
Palestinians. But the soldiers' target was just the crude
wooden synagogue, not the entire West Tapuach outpost, settlers
said.
Troops had been ordered to take down the structure built by
followers of slain ultra-nationalist Rabbi Meir Kahane at the
outpost, close to the established larger settlement of Tapuach,
after settlers lost a Supreme Court appeal.
Witnesses said about 300 troops were involved in the
northern West Bank raid and the synagogue was razed. A settler
spokeswoman said she was not aware of any plans by the army to
evict several families living in nearby caravans.
Israel is required under the "road map" to peace with the
Palestinians to uproot more than 100 outposts built without
government authorization since March 2001.
But so far Israel has only dismantled a handful of
outposts, most of them uninhabited and some of which have since
been rebuilt. Legal challenges have stalled plans to remove
others.
RAFAH RAID FOLLOWS ATTACK
The army, meanwhile, expelled another West Bank Palestinian
to the fenced-in Gaza Strip after accusing him of belonging to
the militant Islamic Jihad group.
Anwar Abu Zahu said he was taken out of a prison in Israel
in the morning, dropped off at the Erez border crossing with
the Gaza Strip and told "You are in Gaza" after losing an
appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court against expulsion.
Some 20 other West Bank residents have been sent to Gaza
for alleged complicity in attacks against Israelis, having
exhausted judicial appeals. International human rights groups
have said the expulsions violate international law.
Israel says the expulsions are a preventive measure against
Palestinians who cannot be put on trial for fear of exposing
intelligence sources who provide information against them.
The army incursion into Rafah in southern Gaza was launched
six days after a Palestinian mother-of-two blew herself up at
the main border crossing between Israel and the northern end of
the territory, killing four Israeli soldiers.
Witnesses said two bulldozers backed by five tanks
destroyed the houses and damaged eight others. They said one of
the tanks fired a shell, wounding three people.
An officer involved in the raid, who gave his name only as
Lieutenant-Colonel Adams, said soldiers had searched for
tunnels in which militants had detonated explosives underneath
soldiers at army outposts or in vehicles, but found nothing.
He said Israeli forces came under heavy sniper and
anti-tank fire and all houses razed were used as cover by
gunmen.
(Additional reporting by Maia Ridberg, Allyn Fisher-Ilan,
Mohammed Assadi and Nidal al-Mughrabi)
