Israeli destruction a 'war crime', says Amnesty International

By DONALD MacINTYRE in Gaza

Israel was accused yesterday of committing a war crime by destroying more than 3000 Palestinian homes in Israel and the occupied territories since the intifada began 3 1/2 years ago.

The damning report from Amnesty International came as the Israeli Army killed up to 20 Palestinians - children as well as militants - in the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip where General Moshe Yaalon, the Army Chief of Staff, warned at the weekend that hundreds more homes could be destroyed.

In its critique of the Israeli policy of destroying buildings and "vast areas" of agricultural land, the report challenges 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".

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.

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.

Earlier, troops had fanned out under cover of darkness into the neighbourhood in the early hours of the morning (local time), 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 1000 people homeless. Since the intifada began in September 2000, 2806 Palestinians and 921 Israelis have died.

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.

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 mujahideen. This is the largest injustice, unacceptable by humanity."

Palestinian sources said the Amy 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 burned a library in the mosque.

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."

The Army insisted that the operation was aimed at militants who, it says, smuggle weapons through tunnels from Egypt to Rafah. Yaalon 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."

President George W. 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 to destroy homes.

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 Philadelphi 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 Yaalon last week.

The greatest burden of house destruction has fallen on Gaza, with more than 2200 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.

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".

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.

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".

The Foreign Ministry said - in reference to demolitions in Rafah - that houses were used to cover entrances to weapons-smuggling tunnels. "The demolition of these structures is often the only way to combat this threat."

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".

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