Homes in Gaza are bulldozed by Israel

MIDDLE EAST:  Israel bulldozed a series of refugees' homes in the southern Gaza town of Rafah yesterday

MIDDLE EAST:  Israel bulldozed a series of refugees' homes in the southern Gaza town of Rafah yesterday. The move was in response to Wednesday's attack by Palestinian gunmen on an Israeli position adjoining Gaza, in which four soldiers were killed.David Horovitz reports from  Jerusalem.

Also yesterday, the Bush administration said it now had evidence linking Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority to the arms shipment seized by Israel in the Red Sea last week.

The Rafah demolitions left more than 100 Palestinians homeless, Palestinian officials said, adding that between 50 and 70 homes were destroyed.

Israeli army officials said that 10 homes had been bulldozed, and that the buildings had been used by Palestinian gunmen to fire on Israeli soldiers and to cover arms smuggling from across the nearby border with Egypt. They added that the two gunmen who carried out Wednesday's attack, and who were eventually shot dead by Israeli troops, came from the Rafah refugee camp.

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Israel's left-wing opposition leader, Mr Yossi Sarid, said there was no justification for making refuges homeless. And a US State Department official, while stressing "the need for Palestinian action against violence and terror", said the demolitions could not "contribute to the restoration of calm and an end to violence."

As Palestinian families wept amid the ruins and searched for their belongings, Mr Baha Abu Libdeh, a father of six, asked reporters bitterly what security danger his home had posed to Israel.

"I became homeless today," he said, "and my children will remember one thing about the state of Israel: it is the enemy".

After three of the quietest weeks in this 15-month intifada, Wednesday's attack by the Hamas gunmen and yesterday's Israeli response have shattered any hopes of a more permanent ceasefire. Islamic Jihad, which has shared responsibility with Hamas for most major attacks on Israeli targets in recent years, announced yesterday that it would no longer honour the ceasefire call issued last month by Mr Arafat.

"Starting from today," it said in a statement, "we will not adhere to any understanding or cooperate with the Palestinian Authority and its security services in the lie of the ceasefire." The Israeli government, for its part, remains adamant that Mr Arafat's ceasefire call was itself a lie.

Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, reiterated last night that Mr Arafat was pursuing a "strategy of terrorism". While Mr Sharon has for years derided the notion at the root of the collapsed Oslo peace accords, that Mr Arafat had made a transition from terrorist to statesman, last week's capture by Israel of the ship Karine A, loaded with 50 tons of weaponry, is apparently beginning to persuading members of the Bush administration that Mr Sharon is correct. For the first time yesterday, Mr Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, said there was now clear evidence of "linkages to the Palestinian Authority" in the episode, although he had not yet seen any information proving, as Mr Sharon has alleged, that Mr Arafat was directly involved. But the Reuters news agency quoted a senior US official as saying there were "strong suspicions that Arafat knew of the shipment".

Meanwhile President Bush said that he was "beginning to suspect that those arms were headed . . . to promote terror."