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Israeli occupation compeltely unacceptable says UN { May 22 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120666,00.htmlhttp://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120666,00.html
U.N.: Israeli Operation 'Completely Unacceptable'
Saturday, May 22, 2004
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — A 3-year-old Palestinian girl was killed in this refugee camp Saturday, on the fifth day of Israeli searches and house demolitions that a senior U.N. official condemned as "completely, completely unacceptable."
Israeli troops entered the outskirts of the town of Rafah (search) overnight, and paramedics reported an explosion near an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank (search). Details were not yet known.
On Friday, the troops pulled back from two neighborhoods of the adjacent Rafah refugee camp, leaving behind dozens of damaged or destroyed buildings, torn-up roads and flattened cars. The army said it was redeploying forces and that its offensive would continue.
Forty-one Palestinians have been killed since "Operation Rainbow" (search) began Tuesday, including gunmen and eight demonstrators hit by a tank shell during a protest march.
A 3-year-old girl was shot dead Saturday in the camp's Brazil neighborhood, from which troops had withdrawn the day before, Palestinian hospital officials said. Relatives said Rawan Mohammed Abu Zeid was killed by a gunshot to the head as she walked to a shop to buy candy.
"We were playing in the house when she told me she wanted some candy," said her brother Diyab Abu Zeid, 19, crying uncontrollably on the telephone. "The older kids in the neighborhood were going to the store so I let her go with them.
"There was no one in the street but the kids, not even other adults," he added.
The army said it had no reports of shots being fired in the area.
Israeli tanks, bulldozers and jeeps moved overnight into a sparsely populated area at the eastern entrance to Rafah town, witnesses and Palestinian security officials said. Witnesses said the army used loudspeakers to tell male residents to come out of their homes.
Farmer Barak Abu Halaweh, 40, said armored vehicles flattened vegetable greenhouses and chicken coops and ordered him and his family of 15 to leave their house for three days.
The army had no immediate comment.
Rafah camp's Tel Sultan neighborhood, one of the hardest hit areas, remained without water and electricity, and sewage from burst and backed-up pipes flooded the streets.
The Red Cross said the Israeli army had allowed engineers into the area to restore water and sewage-treatment facilities.
Despite sporadic gunfire, residents in the Brazil and Tel Sultan areas took advantage of the lull in fighting to retrieve possessions from demolished homes. A few shops opened so that residents could stock up, and people ventured tentatively outside, waving white flags and strips of cloth.
Peter Hansen, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which aids Palestinian refugees, condemned the damage and destruction of houses — some, according to Palestinians, while residents were still inside.
"I think that the destruction is probably even worse than I've seen ... and is indeed completely, completely unacceptable," Hansen said as he toured a street littered with clothes, mattresses and the collapsed corrugated tin roofs of devastated houses. The sound of machine-gun fire could be heard in the background.
Hansen said that over the past 10 days, including a brief Israeli incursion into Rafah last week, 1,650 Palestinians have been made homeless.
Municipal officials said at least 43 homes have been demolished and dozens more damaged in the camp this week. The army said five houses were demolished after they were used as cover by militants to attack troops.
Army spokeswoman Maj. Sharon Feingold said troops had detained dozens of Palestinians, including suspected senior militants, and killed a local leader of the armed group Hamas.
During more than three years of Palestinian-Israeli violence, Israeli forces have made dozens of forays into the Rafah camp to destroy tunnels used to smuggle weapons across the nearby Egyptian border.
The Israeli military said 90 tunnels have been found and destroyed since 2000, though only one has been discovered during the current offensive.
While the army vowed to continue the incursion, Israeli officials indicated they were looking for an alternative to the mass demolition of Palestinian homes, a prospect that has brought fierce international criticism.
A key objective of the military operation is the widening of an Israeli patrol road between Rafah and the Egyptian border, which would make it more difficult for weapons smugglers to dig tunnels.
Widening the road would require the demolition of dozens of Palestinian houses, a plan criticized by the United Nations, the European Union and the United States.
More than 11,000 Rafah residents have been made homeless by Israeli demolitions since 2000.
Officials said Israeli Attorney General Meni Mazuz believed the road-widening plan would not hold up in local and international courts. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said he had instructed the army to come up with alternatives that would cause less destruction.
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