By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, May 18 2004 (IPS)

The United Nations issued a call to the international community Tuesday to press Israel to stop its military operations under way in Gaza aimed at destroying hundreds of houses, the largest such effort by the Israeli military in that region.

Israel intends to establish a buffer zone at one extreme of Rafah, a city located between the Gaza Strip and the Egyptian border, where at least 15 Palestinians were killed and 30 more injured Tuesday, according to U.N. officials.

Rafah, home to 150,000 people, of which 90,000 are Palestinian refugees, “has been surrounded by Israeli defence forces and is cut off from the outside world,” said Matthias Burchard, Geneva representative for UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees).

On behalf of UNRWA, Burchard called on the international community “to urge Israel to stop its ongoing military operation in Rafah aimed at destroying hundreds of houses,” the largest such operation by the Israeli military in the area.

Israel began last week to bulldoze Palestinian houses near the Egyptian border. A ruling from the Israeli Supreme Court gave the green light on Sunday to continue the demolition.

“It is feared that the Israeli defence force intends to widen the buffer zone along the Egyptian border, were it patrols along the so-called ‘Philadelphia Line’,” said the UNRWA spokesman.

For that end, “thousands of smalls houses and shelters would have to be destroyed,” Burchard told a press conference in Geneva. The Palestinians from the area continued to flee their homes Tuesday morning, abandoning their belongings, he said.

UNRWA has position emergency supplies, such as blankets, mattresses and food, to attend to fleeing families, and four schools have been prepared to receive them at least temporarily.

Burchard assured, that the agency’s “clinics, sub-clinics and warehouses are well stocked.”

Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has cited the reports of Israel’s intentions to carry out further demolitions in Rafah. Annan condemned the destruction of Palestinian homes and called on Israel, as the occupying power, to halt such acts of collective punishment and refrain from committing such violations of international law.

UNWRA commissioner general Peter Hansen, of Denmark, said, “With these disproportionate military operations, Israel is in grave breach of international humanitarian law.”

“This collective punishment can do nothing to calm the situation in Gaza or enhance Israel’s own security,” said the head of UNWRA, whose main offices are located in Amman.

The U.N. created the agency in 1949 to provide assistance to the Palestinian people who lost their homes and livelihoods as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Amnesty International, a leading human rights organisation, said in a statement Monday that Israel must immediately stop the “unjustified destruction of thousands of Palestinian and Arab Israeli homes” and farmland, saying the demolition “has reached an unprecedented level.”

The Israeli military has bulldozed some 3,000 homes in the past three and a half years, “leaving tens of thousands of men, women and children homeless,” said the London-based Amnesty.

“The grounds invoked by Israel to justify the destruction are overly broad and based on discriminatory policies and practices,” says the organisation in a report released Monday, “Israel and the Occupied Territories. Under the rubble: House demolition and destruction of land and property”.

The Palestinian Authority described the Israeli operations in Rafah as “a war of extermination.”

Israel, meanwhile, maintains that the border zone with Egypt is used by Palestinians to launch surprise attacks against its military forces, and that the area is scored with tunnels that the Palestinians use to bring in arms and explosives from Egypt.

Burchard said that many Palestinians built their homes near the border in order to be closer to their relatives who were forced to seek refuge in Egypt after the 1948 conflict. There are some 30,000 people living along the border zone on the Egyptians side, he estimated.

Furthermore, “the UNRWA Emergency Appeal is completely underfunded. For 2004 we asked for 193 million dollars, and have only received 30 percent of that,” he said.

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