Top Stories - Reuters
Palestinians Flee Gaza Homes, Qurie Appeals to U.S.
Date: Mon, May 17, 2004
By Cynthia Johnston
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Panicked Palestinians fled their homes Monday as Israeli forces surrounded a Gaza refugee camp after threatening to carry out a mass demolition in a militant hotbed despite an international outcry.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie pleaded for U.S. intervention in rare talks with a top White House policymaker but received little more than expressions of concern.
Shaken by ambushes that killed 13 Israeli soldiers in Gaza, the Middle East's strongest army said it planned first to hit militants and then raze hundreds of houses it says serve as gun nests and possibly dig a moat to block arms-smuggling tunnels.
The plan has drawn U.N. and European Union (news - web sites) condemnation as it could uproot thousands of Palestinians and result in the destruction of hundreds of homes near Gaza's border with Egypt.
As Israeli armor cordoned off southern Gaza's Rafah refugee camp, Palestinian militants there prepared for battle. Gunmen prepared ambushes for Israeli troops and militant factions set up a joint command to coordinate fighting.
"We either fight united and achieve victory or fight as individuals and lose," militants said in a statement.
Hundreds of frightened Rafah residents piled bedding, furniture, clothes, floor tiles and other items on donkey carts and rickety old trucks and moved out.
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) readied four schools with stockpiled food and water and set up rows of tents to take in 1,500 displaced to start.
"There is no place for me to go. I don't think I will return," said Youssef al-Jamal, 33, removing possessions from his home in the bullet-pocked, cinderblock camp of 90,000 people.
UNWRA said 12,600 Rafah residents have been made homeless by the razing of homes by Israeli forces since an uprising began in 2000.
After Israel's army chief said "hundreds of houses" would be flattened to widen a security corridor patrolled by troops along the border with Egypt, Qurie accused Israel of planning "ethnic cleansing and collective punishment of innocent civilians."
Qurie, in a Berlin meeting Monday with U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) that somewhat eased Palestinians' diplomatic isolation from the White House, appealed to Washington to rein in Israel.
"STOP CATASTROPHE"
"Qurie asked Rice to immediately intervene to stop the catastrophe in Rafah," Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters by telephone from Berlin.
He said Qurie urged Washington to kickstart the "road map" peace plan promising Palestinians a viable state but stymied by persistent violence and eclipsed by Sharon's unilateral plan to evacuate Gaza but strengthen parts of the West Bank.
Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said Sunday that Washington opposed "wholesale bulldozing of houses" in Rafah.
Rice said the planned demolitions were being discussed.
"It's a subject of conversation, a subject of concern," Rice said after the talks with Qurie, his first with President Bush (news - web sites)'s strategic adviser since taking office in late 2003.
Rice said U.S. officials had told the Israelis that "some of their actions don't create the best atmosphere."
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) also issued an appeal to Israel to stop razing Palestinian houses saying it was "against international humanitarian law."
Six Israeli soldiers were killed by a bomb laid in the path of their explosives-laden troop carrier in Gaza City during an incursion on May 10. Palestinian militants killed five more soldiers in a similar attack in the Rafah corridor the next day.
Another two soldiers were killed by sniper fire Friday.
Israeli forces killed at least 30 Gaza Palestinians, militants and civilians, last week.
Israel's army chief said hundreds of houses would be demolished to put forces in the "Philadelphi" corridor out of range of gunmen firing from the camp and thwart the digging of tunnels underneath to spirit in arms from Egypt.
"It will begin in a few hours," an Israeli political source said. "There will be arrests at first and later on demolitions."
Rafah has been a constant tinderbox in Palestinians' conflict with Israel over its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (news - web sites) in the 1967 Middle East war.
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