Middle East - AP
Palestinian Camp Bears Brunt of Violence
Date: Sat, Jun 05, 2004
By RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press Writer
RAFAH, Gaza Strip - Mohammed Zanoun writes his name in charcoal on the white remnant of a kitchen cabinet and jams it into the bare ground where his house used to stand. Zanoun's home was one of dozens crushed into rubble by armored bulldozers during a weeklong Israeli raid into the Rafah refugee camp that ended last week.
His block, in the comparatively upscale neighborhood known as Brazil, is now a patchwork of piles of debris and pits of sand. It's the same across the street. And on the next block.
"You know why I am doing this? So my children will not forget this is my home," he said.
Rafah has suffered more during nearly four years of violence than any other Palestinian camp or town. More than 13,000 of its 90,000 residents have been made homeless by demolitions since 2000, and about 365 have been killed in fighting.
The sound of gunfire from Israeli guard towers along the nearby border with Egypt echoes through the streets almost nightly, sometimes punctuated by the blast of tank shells.
Israel says the weeklong raid and most of its other operations in Rafah are aimed at uncovering tunnels used to smuggle weapons under the border. The army said troops uncovered three during the most recent raid.
The people of Rafah see only more suffering ahead, even if Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) pushes through with his proposal to withdraw from the Gaza Strip (news - web sites). Under that plan, Israel might widen a buffer zone separating Rafah from the border. That area already has borne the brunt of fighting and house demolitions.
The Block O section of the refugee camp along the border is now mostly a desolate moonscape, a large, empty no-man's land of huge mounds of rubble dotted by the occasional shell of a concrete house, often missing a roof or several walls.
Residents say the army has been widening the zone for years by systematically destroying houses along the border.
An army spokesman, Capt. Jacob Dallal, strenuously denied that, saying the army only knocks down buildings masking tunnels or being used by gunmen to attack soldiers.
The result has been an unplanned widening of the zone as gunmen took over the houses closest to soldiers guarding the border, the army destroyed them and the gunmen moved on to the next layer of houses, Dallal said.
"This wasn't something that was part of any premeditated desire," he said.
But even in neighborhoods far from the border, people are anxious.
"I feel like they are chasing us," said Mohammad Abu Jazar, who had a house destroyed three years ago and whose new house was damaged last month.
Dallal said the military regrets the damage and loss of life but also said crowded Rafah is "one of the most difficult places in the world for an army to operate."
In several raids in May, 246 houses were destroyed or so badly damaged they are uninhabitable, leaving more than 3,800 people homeless, the United Nations (news - web sites) said. Forty-five Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire during the most recent raid, Palestinian officials said.
The 40 members of the Faramayi family squeeze into a classroom at a school turned into a refugee center. Laundry hangs from the windows, a dirty blanket covers the door and mattresses lie stacked against one wall.
The family patriarch, Ismail Faramayi, 60, said they fled Block O after an Israeli tank shell or helicopter missile blew apart the front of their home, slightly injuring two family members.
When they returned several days later, the house where they had lived for 50 years was a mound of broken concrete, splintered furniture and smashed children's toys, he said.
Usually the demolitions come in the poorer parts of the refugee camp more likely to house militants, not places like Brazil, where Nabil Abu Saud has a whirlpool bath in his gray marble master bathroom — a room now open to the outside. The home, which he spent 30 years building with money from construction work in Israel, now has no sewage system, water, electricity or front wall.
Abu Saud, 50, worries the army will come back and finish off the house, but he cannot bring himself to move the new cabinets and beds that still smell of freshly cut wood.
"When I touch them, I feel like I'm dying," he said.
The 6-month-old stadium where neighborhood boys hung out every night playing basketball and soccer — a place locals dubbed "the soul of Brazil" — is in ruins.
The walls were knocked down and its asphalt is pitted by tank and bulldozer treads and covered in rubble from the damaged concrete bleachers. The big green gate is twisted. Three of its four light poles have been knocked to the ground.
Nearby, a small bulldozer with a Palestinian flag slowly works through the neighborhood, clearing ruined streets of piles of dirt, crushed pipes, ripped clothes and bedding.
In a pit where his house for 30 people once stood, Ghazi el Akhras, 51, has put up a tent of pipes, a tattered blue tarp, some plywood and blankets.
As el Akhras walked in, he removed his sandals, as Arabs traditionally do upon entering a home, and padded barefoot over the sand and dirt.
Israel knocked down his previous home 33 years ago in a different part of Rafah and sent him here, he said.
Although he hopes to get housing assistance from aid groups, he said he is wary of building a new home, even in a different part of Rafah.
"I'm afraid the Israelis will come again and destroy it," he said.
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