MIDDLE EAST: Thousands of Palestinians fled their homes in southern Gaza yesterday, after large numbers of Israeli troops and tanks cut off the Rafah refugee camp from the rest of the Strip ahead of a major ground offensive.
Trucks and donkey carts carrying residents and packed with belongings streamed out of the camp, which has been a flashpoint since hostilities erupted over three years ago. The UN Relief and Works Agency was setting up emergency shelters and pitching tents for the fleeing residents.
International criticism of Israel's actions mounted yesterday with the United Nations Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, saying the razing of homes was "against international humanitarian law". EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels also said the house demolitions were a violation of international law.
US officials, however, were more muted in their criticism. National Security Adviser Dr Condoleezza Rice, after meeting the Palestinian Prime Minister, Mr Ahmed Qurei, in Berlin, said the US had told Israel that house demolitions "don't create the best atmosphere".
Militants fired at Israeli forces and triggered explosive devices as they moved into Gaza to isolate Rafah, but by midday the camp was severed from the rest of the Strip. Israel says it is searching for tunnels used to smuggle weapons from Egypt into southern Gaza. Defence officials say some of the tunnels are dug from inside homes in Rafah. The army wants to widen a corridor under which the tunnels are dug and which runs between Rafah and the Egyptian border.
Five soldiers involved in destroying arms-smuggling tunnels were killed last week along the patrol road, named the Philadelphi Route by the army, and two more were killed a day later.
Widening the corridor - the army is also considering building a deep moat to prevent tunnel building - would mean the demolition of many more homes in Rafah. Some 11,000 Palestinians in the camp have already been made homeless by Israeli army demolitions since the start of the intifada uprising in September 2000. Army chief Lieut Gen Moshe Ya'alon said on Sunday that hundreds of homes might be demolished to widen the corridor.
Deputy Defence Minister Mr Ze'ev Boim was defiant in the face of international criticism, arguing that Israel did not want to harm civilians but that some Rafah residents "rent their houses for digging tunnels, so not all of the people there are blameless".
Meanwhile, Dr Rice restated yesterday the determination of the US to see the creation of an independent Palestinian state. She described her talks with the Palestinian Prime Minister as "positive and constructive" centring on the adoption of the security, political and economic reform measures of the Road Map peace plan.
"The Palestinians need to focus on a strong Prime Minister who can unify \ reorganise the security forces . . . to protect the Palestinian people," said Dr Rice to journalists after the talks. "President \ believes that the possibility of an Israeli disengagement could be the first important step towards the development of a Palestinian state and he's a firm believer in the two-state solution." Dr Rice said criticism of the Gaza withdrawal plan of the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, was unjustified and that it represented a "historic breakthrough".
"\ all the years since '67 we have had . . . the Mitchell plan and the Camp David plan . . . and we had Madrid and Oslo and we've had more envoys than I can count and we have not had a single kilometre of land go back or a single Israeli settlement dismantled."