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Rafah (again)

Politics

Rafah is back in the news (emphasis added):

Until the start of the intifada, the houses in the Rafah refugee camp were only a few meters from the border. But since October 2000, the IDF began tearing down the houses closest to the border because of exchanges of fire, and now houses standing at a distance of up to 300 meters from the border have been marked for demolition. According to UNRWA figures, 88 buildings have been destroyed in Rafah over the past few days and 1,064 people have been rendered homeless. Since the start of the intifada, 1,309 structures have been destroyed and 11,000 people left homeless.

All this destruction has done nothing to lessen the number of incidents and casualties nor the chain of bloody clashes. In the week since the 13 IDF soldiers were killed in the Zaitoun quarter of Gaza and at the Philadelphi Route, 57 Palestinians have been killed in the Rafah area, most of them gunmen but among them also two youths aged 14 and 16, and excluding yesterday’s casualties from the demonstration. These acts will merely strengthen the wall of hatred between the two peoples. People whose homes have been demolished and whose fields have been overrun by tanks, and the family members of those who were killed and wounded in yesterday’s demonstration, can now be expected to join the surging ranks of hostility. The damage to Israel’s image in the world is immense, and Israel after all is dependent on international public opinion, and particularly that of the Americans.

See my previous post on Rafah. (It has a cartoon!)

More here and here. (via Cursor)

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