50,000 Trapped By Israeli
Assault On Gaza
By Chris McGreal
in Jabaliya refugee camp
05 October, 2004
The Guardian
Israeli
forces have demolished the homes of hundreds of Palestinians, bulldozed
swaths of agricultural land and destroyed infrastructure in their bloodiest
assault on the Gaza Strip in years.
More than 70 people
have died in Operation Days of Penitence, launched in northern Gaza
six days ago after a Hamas rocket attack killed two Israeli children.
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said that the dead included
31 civilians. Nineteen were under 18.
Most of the nine
people killed yesterday were Palestinian fighters, but a teenage girl
was among the dead, shot in her home. In southern Gaza Israeli forces
killed a four-year-old boy in Khan Yunis refugee camp, where several
Palestinian children have been shot dead in recent weeks.
Last night the Israeli
army said it had killed a Palestinian gunman who had tried to infiltrate
a nearby settlement. Early today an Israeli missile strike in Jabaliya
killed one Palestinian militant and wounded two others.
But shielded from
view is the suffering of about 50,000 Palestinians trapped in areas
seized by hundreds of Israeli troops, backed by about 200 tanks and
armoured vehicles.
Palestinians in
the Israeli-held areas, including parts of Jabaliya refugee camp and
the small town of Beit Hanoun, described by telephone the widespread
destruction and desperate living conditions.
Armoured bulldozers
had demolished scores, possibly hundreds, of homes, they said. Thousands
of people had spent days without electricity and water, although power
was restored sporadically yesterday. Residents said that the destruction
of sewage systems had contaminated the water supplies in some areas.
"I can hear shooting now," said Hanna Basyouni, 35, who has
seven children, speaking from an occupied section of Jabaliya. "I
see the tanks below me. The tanks and the bulldozers are 50 metres away
from my home. I can see them shooting right now."
Mrs Basyouni lives
on the edge of Jabaliya where, she said, the Israeli army had bulldozed
greenhouses that had been families' only source of income for several
generations.
The Israeli military
says it is clearing a six-mile-wide buffer zone to stop Hamas launching
rockets across the border. But yesterday the Islamist group fired two
missiles into Israel. "There's not one tree left for as far as
I can see," said Mrs Basyouni. "Five or six homes around me
are completely bulldozed, and I can't be sure how many beyond that.
My sister's home was destroyed ... [She] is living in a tent. She has
nine children."
Ambulance drivers,
the only Palestinians permitted to cross into the occupied areas, confirmed
the scale of the destruction. Abid Ahmed Abu Mohammed, a driver for
Kamal Odwan hospital, said: "We saw at least 50 houses bulldozed
on the edge of Jabaliya and many inside the camp.
"I think most
of the bulldozing was to make way for the tanks. There are main roads
but the Israelis were afraid to use them because of mines. The bulldozers
... destroyed whatever was in their way - entire streets."
The Israeli army
said it had destroyed or damaged a "small number" of homes,
either because its soldiers had been attacked or to allow its tanks
to avoid booby-trapped roads.
Many people are
without water in Beit Hanoun, a town of 15,000 near the border with
Israel. Aref Azaneed, a ministry of agriculture inspector, said: "The
water and the sewage lines are near each other. When the tanks destroy
them, they mix. The water from the tap has sewage in it."
Over the past three
years the army has levelled 60% of Beit Hanoun's agricultural land,
destroying its wealth and the main source of citrus fruit and olives
in the Gaza Strip.
"Nobody comes
in, nobody goes out," Mr Azaneed said. "We can only move inside
Beit Hanoun, and in a very careful way. There are about 40 tanks about
30 metres from houses close to Salahadin Road."
A UN official said
yesterday Israel had wrongly accused Hamas militants of using a UN ambulance
to carry rockets, while Israeli officials renewed accusations that Unrwa,
the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, was harbouring terrorists, the
Associated Press reported.
Israel has demanded
the UN investigate the actions of Peter Hansen, its top official in
Gaza, after its army released video footage from an unmanned aircraft
that reportedly showed militants loading a rocket into a UN vehicle
in Gaza.
The UN says the
footage shows a worker loading a stretcher into the vehicle. On Monday
Mr Hansen wrote to the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, accusing
Israel of inventing the story.