Reuters Features
Palestinians Fear for Homes at Gaza Border Hotspot
Date: Thu Apr 1, 8:16 AM ET
By Cynthia Johnston
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Amid the rubble of homes destroyed by Israeli soldiers, 16-year-old Nada al-Agha and her family struggle to stay put in the Palestinian refugee camp of Rafah.
Both her parents have been wounded by Israeli gunfire and bullet holes mark the walls of rooms within the sights of an Israeli border watchtower, but the family will not leave.
"We expect they could destroy the house," Nada said in the battered camp situated on Gaza's border with Egypt. "But there is no money to rent somewhere else."
Her family inhabits the edge of a devastated no man's land that Israel has carved out of Rafah in what it calls a continuing campaign to root out Palestinian gunmen and find tunnels they use to smuggle in arms from Egypt.
With peacemaking at a standstill, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) plans to evacuate Jewish settlers from Gaza to reduce exposure to militant violence. His "Disengagement Plan" is of little solace to Palestinians on Rafah's front line.
"This is what they (the Israelis) are talking about, but who knows?" said Abla, a Rafah resident, pointing to bullet holes in her washing machine.
Israel's defense ministry, armed forces and security services have advised Sharon that it made sense to leave most of Gaza except for a strip along the border with Egypt.
LIVING IN FEAR
Fighting has actually increased in Gaza since Sharon announced his plan. Militants want to claim victory if the Israelis withdraw; Israel wants to prevent that by smashing armed factions beforehand.
Israel killed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in an airstrike outside a Gaza mosque on March 22, prompting the Palestinian Muslim militant group to vow all-out revenge. Israel has threatened to kill more militant Palestinian leaders.
Families in battle-scarred houses on the edge of Rafah's dead zone live in constant fear of becoming casualties or being made homeless. They sleep in back rooms relatively sheltered from Israeli fire.
"If you go over there, they will start shooting," said retired sports teacher Muhammed Hassan Mansour, pointing past the wall of a neighbor's house.
The United Nations (news - web sites) agency for Palestinian refugees says Israeli forces have demolished 1,400 homes throughout Gaza, and more than 900 in Rafah alone, since a Palestinian uprising began in 2000.
Nearly 15,000 people have been made homeless, it says.
Israel says the figures are exaggerated. It says it bulldozes or blows up homes that conceal tunnels, or those abandoned by residents and used by gunmen. It denies it is systematically demolishing inhabited dwellings.
Israel says its military actions in Rafah are to prevent the suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Israelis since the revolt began.
Militants have fired many mortars at the isolated, heavily guarded settlements where 7,500 Jews live amid 1.3 million Palestinians.
"Tunnels are really a lifeline of terrorist groups in Gaza," Israeli army spokesman Jacob Dallal said.
"Our intelligence is that they are trying to smuggle in (Russian-designed) Katyushas and anti-aircraft missiles. That would change the strategic balance between Gaza and Israel."
He said Israel had found and destroyed 80 tunnels over the past three and half years, half of them last year, and added that there were daily exchanges of fire in the border area.
"Gunmen use houses, particularly on the periphery (of Rafah), to use as points from which they conduct warfare."
SHOTS IN THE NIGHT
Palestinians say Israeli tanks and bulldozers often enter Rafah at night under cover of gunfire, sending residents fleeing for safety.
Residents say most of the demolitions happened in one swoop in late 2003, but more homes have since been destroyed in smaller incursions. In January, they say, Israel destroyed a mosque.
"Normally when the tanks come in at 2 o'clock in the morning, there is no time even to pack the most essential things but just to run out in pajamas said Peter Hansen, chief of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
"All of this of course gives life a great deal of insecurity." The UN agency has rebuilt some of the demolished homes and gives families financial help while they wait.
Refugees finding themselves homeless once again move in with relatives or rent apartments if they can afford to. Others stay in houses whose collapsed walls and dangling support columns attest to their fragility.
"Every night they shoot," said Umm Muhammed, whose house is near the border and has been strafed with automatic fire. She said that when the gunfire is fiercer than usual she takes her family to spend the night elsewhere.
"Last month we fled six times," she said.
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