Mideast - AFP
Rafah a "humanitarian catastrophe" says UN refugee agency
Date: Fri, May 14, 2004
GAZA CITY (AFP) - The United Nations (news - web sites) agency in charge of Palestinian refugees described the situation in Rafah as a "humanitarian catastrophe," after Israel announced that hundreds more homes would be destroyed in the southern Gaza Strip (news - web sites) town.
The Palestinian Authority (news - web sites) on Friday also described Israel's plan as a "major catastrophe" and urged the international community to prevent the demolitions.
"Destroying these houses will be a major catastrophe for our people. It is extremely serious," Palestinian negotiations minister Saeb Erakat told AFP.
"This shows Israel intends to stay in the Gaza Strip and not withdraw from it," he said.
Paul McCann, from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), condemned Israel's policy of demolishing entire neighbourhoods in the refugee camps along the border with Egypt and warned of a deepening crisis.
"The first houses to be destroyed will be empty buildings. Then inhabited houses will be demolished. Israel will be responsible for finding new accommodation for the evacuated people," the Israeli public radio said Thursday.
"It's impossible to believe that every one of these houses shelters militants or the entrance to a tunnel," McCann said in response to the government's argument that the demolitions are aimed at preventing the use of cross-border arms-smuggling tunnels.
He also pointed out that the "empty buildings" were only abandoned because of the constant danger of being killed or wounded and eventually expelled by the Israeli army.
"When the house on your left has been blown up and the house on your right has been blown up, you know you're next, so families don't always wait until the last moment to find other housing," he explained.
Israeli demolitions aimed at widening the so-called "Philadelphi route" buffer zone have already made 11,000 Palestinians homeless since the start of the intifada in September 2000, in policy UNRWA chief Peter Hansen as condemned as "collective punishment".
McCann said the agency had only managed to find new housing for 1,000 people over those three and half years and complained that an emergency appeal for larger donations this year had not been met.
An official from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites)'s office claimed, "This is a legitimate defensive measure, which is aimed at ensuring better protection for our soldiers who shouldn't remain as sitting ducks and at preventing the smuggling of weapons, mortars, rockets and tunnels between Egypt and the Gaza Strip."
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