gelatik
17.11.02, 10:43
A New York Times correspondent, who visited a mourning Rafah refugee camp
Thursday, November 14, wrote of the Israeli atrocities there and its slaying
of Palestinian children, babies and toddlers.
Posters of children killed by the Israeli army covered the walls of the
alleys among the bullet-scarred buildings of the Rafah refugee camp, a
reminder that two 2-year-olds were shot dead there in three days this week,
he said in an article entitled "A Palestinian Camp Mourns Its Slain
Children".
The Israeli army earlier killed an 8-year-old boy last month also in Rafah,
along the border with Egypt, the NY Times said.
Groups of grieving men sat in three condolence tents Thursday, receiving
visitors paying their respects. On the same evening, the Israeli occupation
army killed another camp resident.
Khaled Abu-Hilal, 37, was fatally shot in his home near an Israeli army
position on the border, residents said. After killing him, the army forces
claimed they had returned fire after being attacked several times with
gunfire and grenades, it added.
In more than two years of the second Palestinian Intifada against Israeli
occupation, the Rafah refugee camp, an impoverished community of 90,000
people at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip, has become one of the most
volatile and deadly fronts of the conflict.
Israeli forces in fortified positions, armored vehicles and tanks along the
frontier with Egypt clash daily with Palestinian activists. The soldiers fire
machine guns and occasionally tank cannons at the camp in what the always
army claims are responses to assaults with small-arms fire, grenades and
antitank rockets by local resistance activists.
On the second day of a large-scale sweep against resistance activists in the
West Bank town of Nablus Thursday, "Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 17-
year-old Palestinian in street clashes," the NY Times added.
The killings in Rafah have exacted a heavy toll. In one incident October 17,
six Palestinians were killed and dozens were wounded when an Israeli tank
fired shells into a crowded neighborhood, said the paper. The army again
claimed it was replying to an attack in which an army bulldozer had been hit
by an antitank rocket.
Near the border fence in Rafah, the army has demolished scores of refugee
dwellings. Hundreds of people have been made homeless.
"Today, residents buried the latest child to die here, 2-year-old Hamed al-
Masri. Residents said he was killed on Wednesday [November 13] as his family
fled Israeli gunfire near their house a few dozen yards from the border
fence," said the NY Times.
His father, Asad al-Masri, 36, said that after a bullet flew into the house,
he and his wife picked up their smallest children and fled, with Hamed and
his 6-year-old brother trailing on foot. Shrapnel from a tank shell tore into
Hamed, killing him instantly, Mr. Masri said. The boy's mother was wounded.
"The army said that troops were returning fire, but Mr. Masri insisted today
that there had been no fighting at the time and that the streets were empty
as residents prepared for the evening meal breaking a daylong fast during the
Muslim holy month of Ramadan," the paper added.
Masri used to work as a construction laborer in Israel, but had been out of
work because of Israeli border closings during the past two years. He could
not afford to move out of his house in what has become a battle zone, even
though the dwelling has been partly demolished. The homes of seven of his
brothers have been destroyed, and there is no money to pay rent anywhere
else.
"I worked my whole life to buy this land and to build the house," he
said. "We got used to the situation despite the shelling every day."
Although the army has said repeatedly that its forces in Rafah shoot only
when fired upon, residents asserted that much of the Israeli gunfire was
scattershot and often fired without provocation, the NY Times said.
Khaled Mashal, whose 2-year-old son, Nafez, was killed Monday, November 11,
said his baby had been sitting outside with him after the evening meal when a
shot fired from a distance hit the boy as he chased a balloon. Relatives said
the fatal bullet came from an tank guarding the Israeli settlement of Rafiah
Yam a few hundred yards away.
"We're caught here between the border, the settlement and the sea, so where
can we go?" said Talal Mashal, a relative.
Another man added, "Shooting could break out here at any time." He said that
when the bullets start flying, residents in upper rooms take shelter on
ground floors.
Mashal, who is also unemployed, said his family survived on food coupons
distributed by the United Nations relief agency for Palestinian refugees.
Still stunned by his son's death, he spoke little.
"Innocent children should not be killed," he said, "from both sides."
