- GAZA -- Israel was accused
yesterday of committing a war crime by its destruction of more than 3,000
Palestinian homes in Israel and the occupied territories since the intifada
began three and a half years ago.
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- The damning report from Amnesty International came as
the Israeli army killed up to 19 Palestinians - children as well as militants
- in the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip where General Moshe Ya'alon,
the army chief of staff, warned at the weekend that hundreds more homes
could be destroyed.
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- In its critique of the Israeli policy of destroying buildings
and "vast areas" of agricultural land, the report challenges
head-on the argument that the destruction is militarily necessary. It also
warns that "punitive forced evictions and house demolitions"
are a "flagrant form of collective punishment" that "violate
a fundamental principle of international law".
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- The report was published as a heavily armoured Israeli
force moved into the Tel Sultan district of the Rafah camp yesterday, in
one of Israel's biggest incursions into Gaza. The attack followed an assault
by helicopter gunships which had earlier killed seven Palestinians - at
least three of them gunmen - outside a mosque.
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- As soldiers mounted a house-to-house hunt for militants,
the town's hospital was filled with 40 Palestinians wounded by missile
attacks and Israeli sniper fire. The local hospital morgue became so overloaded
that five bodies had to be shifted to vegetable freezers in a nearby market.
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- Earlier, troops had fanned out under cover of darkness
into the neighbourhood in the early hours of the morning, seizing vantage
points amid two missile attacks before dawn. With Rafah sealed off from
the rest of Gaza by the army, at least 45 military vehicles moved into
the camp, including tanks and armoured bulldozers. At least 88 houses were
destroyed in the camp last week, making more than 1,000 people homeless.
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- Since the intifada began in September 2000, 2,806 Palestinians
and 921 Israelis.
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- Asmaa Mughayer, 15, and her brother Ahmed, 13, were shot
dead yesterday as they fed pigeons on the roof of their house. Their uncle,
Mahmoud Mughayer, said that they had been unaware of the extent of the
incursion because with the camp's electricity supply cut off by the assault
there was no television. Their elder brother, Ali, 24, had shouted at them
to come down because it was dangerous. When he heard no response, he climbed
the steps to find his sister and brother lying dead in a pool of blood.
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- Mr Mughayer said: "The snipers fired at him, too.
He lay on the ground, and slowly crept pulling them one after another to
the third floor." He added that it had taken an ambulance five hours
to arrive because of the firing. He added: "This was the biggest crime.
Asmaa and Ahmed were not mujahedin. This is the largest injustice, unacceptable
by humanity."
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- Palestinian sources said that the army had destroyed
four houses belonging to dead militants and taken over another four houses.
They added that at dawn a helicopter spotted a number of militants near
the Bilal Ben Rabah mosque and had fired a rocket, killing a militant from
Hamas who was identified as Hani Qifeh. Shortly afterwards, the same helicopter
fired again, killing two brothers and a third man, the sources said. Missiles
also burnt a library in the mosque.
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- Witnesses said that armoured bulldozers had brought down
electric cables and telephone lines. "We are afraid," said Miriam
Abu Jazzar, outside her daughter's home, apparently wrecked by a missile.
"Every hour there is shooting."
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- The army insisted that the operation was aimed at militants
who it says smuggle weapons through tunnels from Egypt to Rafah. General
Ya'alon said: "Rafah has become a gateway for terror through which
rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons have passed. After we tried
to persuade the Palestinian authorities to stop this activity, we were
forced to prevent this ourselves. If they [the Palestinians] want to prevent
house demolitions, they must stop the arms smuggling."
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- President George Bush called the Gaza bloodshed "troubling"
but told the powerful pro-Israel lobby group Aipac that Israel "has
every right to defend itself from terror". A White House spokesman
said it was in touch with the Israelis about the humanitarian impact of
their incursion but had been assured the goal was to stymie smuggling,
not level homes.
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- Despite earlier suggestions that the army intended to
demolish more homes - after at least 88 were destroyed in the camp last
week in the wake of an attack on an Israeli troop carrier that killed five
soldiers - it denied that the operation was a prelude to a massive widening
of the Philapdelphi patrol road between Gaza and the Egyptian border. While
the present status of that plan is still unclear, such widening would require
a demolition on the scale that had been envisaged by Gen Ya'alon last week.
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- The greatest burden of house destruction has fallen on
Gaza, with more than 2,200 demolitions in the past three-and-a-half years,
and Rafah the worst afflicted area. The Amnesty report suggests that a
high proportion of demolitions is purely punitive and that such "collective
punishment", including destruction of homes of families of suicide
bombers, is against international law.
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- Amnesty challenges the military justification for the
destruction, much of which it says is "inextricably linked" to
its policy of land appropriation, not least for "establishing Israeli
settlements in violation of international law". The report also points
out that Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that "extensive
destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity
and carried out unlawfully" is a "grave breach and hence a war
crime".
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- Donatella Rovera, a co-author of the report, said that
"in the vast majority of cases" the demolitions represented "wanton
destruction". She added: "It's unnecessary, disproportionate,
unjustified and deliberate." Reacting to the report, the Israeli Foreign
Ministry said Palestinian militants used houses in civilian neighbourhoods
to attack Israeli forces, and that made the structures "legitimate
military targets" under international law.
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- Although most of the criticism is reserved for Israel,
the report says the Palestinian Authority should take "all possible
measures" to prevent attacks by militants against Israeli civilians
- and to ensure that such groups do not initiate "armed confrontations
from residential civilian areas".
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- The Foreign Ministry said - in reference to demolitions
in Rafah - that houses are used to cover entrances to weapons-smuggling
tunnels. "The demolition of these structures is often the only way
to combat this threat."
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- The core of Amnesty's argument is that while some destructions
may be militarily necessary within the meaning of international law many
are not and that Israel's use of the military defence is "extremely
broad". It goes on to say: "In the case of long-held occupied
territory over which the occupying power exercises effective control military
needs must be read extremely narrowly."
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- Lawful military purposes do not, for example, include
appropriation for the "expansion and consolidation of Israeli settlements
in occupied territory".
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- LIVING UNDER OCCUPATION
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- For four years, Khalil Bashir, a school principal, his
wife Souad, their six children and his mother have been under pressure
from the Israeli army to leave their home near the Israeli settlement of
Kfar Darom in the Gaza strip.
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- In October 2000, Israeli soldiers took over the upper
floors of their house. Since then, the Bashir family have been confined
to the ground floor, while the top floor has been turned into an army base
accessed by a ladder.
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- Even though the Israeli army has full control of the
house, soldiers have opened fire on the house from a watchtower. The sides
of the house are riddled with bullets and the ground floor rooms facing
the army position have sustained extensive damage.
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- Three members of the Bashir family have been injured
by Israeli army fire. On 13 October 2000, Mr Bashir's son Yazen, 17, was
shot and injured in the leg while he was getting water. On 28 April, 2001
soldiers shot from the watchtower into Mr Bashir's bedroom while he was
reading, injuring him in the back of the head and neck.
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- On 18 February 2004 Israeli soldiers shot and seriously
injured Mr Bashir's son Yusuf, 15. At the time Yusuf was outside the house
with his father seeing off visitors, including two United Nations staff
members. The three visitors had just got into their vehicle, clearly marked
with the UN emblem, and were about to leave when a single shot was fired
from the Israeli watchtower. Yusuf was hit in the back by a bullet. He
is still in hospital and it is not known if he will walk again.
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- Shortly afterwards, his sister Amira, 18, told Amnesty
International: "I am worried for my brother. I don't know if he will
walk again; and I am worried about my three little siblings, my parents
and my grandmother. I pray that they will be safe. The home should be the
safest place but for our family it is not."
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=522676
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