ISRAEL: The Israeli army's demolition of Palestinian homes in Gaza's Rafah refugee camp is causing deep division within the "unity coalition" of Mr Ariel Sharon, rare and heavy criticism in the Israeli media, and a spate of anti-government demonstrations, writes David Horovitz, in Jerusalem.
This action has prompted furious protests from the Palestinian Authority, and condemnation from the UN, the EU and international aid groups. Palestinian officials say the army's bulldozers demolished more than 70 homes before dawn last Thursday. Mr Yasser Abed-Rabbo, the authority's Minister of Information, yesterday called the action "a war crime" and said the PA was "examining the legal means" to try to bring the army commanders responsible to trial.
The International Committee of the Red Cross and the UN have put the number of houses bulldozed at 53 or 54, and said some 600 people were made homeless. The ICRC distributed aid to 93 families yesterday.
Having said initially that 14 homes were demolished, the Israeli army yesterday raised that number to 21 or 22. It insisted, however, that all the homes had been abandoned by their former residents, that all claims to the contrary constituted "Palestinian propaganda," and that the demolitions had been carried out as a "last resort" - to prevent shooting from the buildings on nearby army positions, and the smuggling of weaponry from across the adjacent border with Egypt.
"The residents had left out of fear, because Palestinian gunmen had turned the area into a war zone," said an officer serving in the area. Previously, the demolitions had been presented as Israeli retaliation for last Wednesday's killing of four soldiers by Palestinian gunmen.
Some ministers from the moderate Labour party have castigated the demolitions as both inhumane and counter-productive.
Pressing the military imperative,however, Mr Matan Vilnai, the Minister of Culture and a former general, suggested "it could have been done differently with a little thought". The army could have set up caravans for the residents "and said: 'These are for you. In this area you can live'." "If someone really had their home destroyed", retorted the Defence Minister, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, "I am ready to send him a caravan."
Reflecting disquiet with official statements and explanations, both main Israeli TV channels broadcast substantial interviews with Rafah residents who said they had been made homeless. "There were 14 people in the house when the tanks came," Mr Salah al-Babli told Channel 2 in fluent Hebrew (a legacy of years working on Israeli kibbutzim, he said).
Rejecting the notion that the buildings had been abandoned, he said: "There was no advance warning. We were lucky to get ourselves out."
Israel's leading military analyst, Mr Ze'ev Schiff, said the action reflected "shamefully" on all Israelis. "It was an act of undisguised ruthlessness, a military act devoid of humanitarian and diplomatic logic, superfluous violence against civilians, among them children and the elderly, which will only serve to encourage revenge attacks by desperate people."
Mr Schiff added that "the destruction in Rafah is the diametric opposite of the capture of a Palestinian arms boat in the Red Sea" - a reference to the January 3rd seizure of the Karine-A, with 50 tons of weapons - said by Israel to have been ordered by the Palestinian Authority. The PA says it has arrested one of the three key players in the saga.