The Hindu : International : Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza

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Sunday, Sep 12, 2004

International

International

Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza

BEIT LAHIYA (GAZA STRIP), SEPT. 11. Israeli troops moved out of the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday, after a four-day operation that left eight Palestinians dead and tens of thousands in the area without electricity and running water.

At daybreak, tanks drove away from the towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun and the outskirts of the sprawling Jebaliya refugee camp, from where Palestinian militants frequently fire rockets at Jewish settlements and Israeli border towns.

Attacks continue

Even during the raid, some rocket and mortar fire at Israeli settlements continued. It was not clear why the army withdrew. Troops have frequently raided northern Gaza communities to stop the rocket fire, largely to no avail.

Heavy tank traffic cut up the main road in northern Gaza, as well as several side roads linking major neighbourhoods, making them impassable in some sections.

Some water pipes, electricity poles and telephone wires in the area were also destroyed, leaving about 130,000 residents without basic services, said Adel Hammoudeh, the mayor of Beit Lahiya.

Municipal officials said that 22 homes, 10 shops and five factories were destroyed in the two towns and the refugee camp.

The Israeli military said troops demolished three buildings used by Palestinian militants to manufacture weapons, and several others from which anti-tank missiles were fired. They said damage to infrastructure was caused by heavy exchanges of fire between troops and militants.

Eight Palestinians killed

The army accuses militants of attacking soldiers from heavily populated areas, endangering Palestinian civilians and infrastructure. In all, eight Palestinians were killed and 110 wounded in the four-day raid, hospital officials said. Among the eight dead were four gunmen and four civilians, including a 9-year-old boy.

Thirty-five of the wounded were 16 and younger, 90 per cent of them suffering from bullet wounds, said Dr. Manar al-Farra, director of the Al Awda Hospital in Beit Lahiya.

The Israeli military has intensified raids against militants in Gaza in the run-up to a planned withdrawal in 2005.

In Israel, opposition to the withdrawal is becoming more vociferous, with settler leaders warning it could lead to civil war.

However, the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, is undeterred, saying he will go ahead with his plan to remove soldiers and settlers from Gaza and four small West Bank settlements.

Sharon plan under fire

Another prominent settler said Mr. Sharon's actions were Nazi-like, in an echo of slurs against Premier Yitzhak Rabin in the weeks before his 1995 assassination by an ultranationalist Jew.

``In the last century, the only ones who expelled Jews because they were Jews were the Nazis,'' Haggai Ben-Artzi, brother-in-law of the Finance Minister and former Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, told the radio.

``To any one who does this I say this is a Nazi, anti-Semitic act.''

Mr. Sharon, however, vowed that he would not be deterred.

Mr. Sharon also said Israel can continue building in large West Bank settlement blocs without U.S. opposition if it does so quietly.

While the U.S.-backed ``road map'' peace plan calls for a settlement freeze, Israel believes it has tacit American approval for building within these blocs which it wants to keep in any future peace deal. — AP

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