Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

Sharon's new wave of ethnic cleansing

by Paul Brown  |  Socialist Resistance no17  |  page 18

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

Israel launched its latest wave of ethnic

cleansing, curiously titled Operation

Rainbow, on May 13 This has entailed large-scale destruction of homes in the densely populated town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. There have been 134 serious injuries and at least 45 confirmed deaths. Hundreds are now homeless and the infrastructure of the town is largely destroyed.

Almost the entire Block 'O' of the camp was demolished by military bulldozers, adding to the already huge number - 1,218 - of houses destroyed by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) along the northern edge of the Gaza/Egypt border.

The formerly close-knit community is now reduced to one mile of broken concrete, shards of metal, splintered wood, and rubble. This community has been there since they were placed in UN tents in 1949.

The Israeli government described the assault as the largest military operation since Operation Defensive Shield in spring 2002 Israeli sources confirmed reports of severe harm to the civilian population, including deaths, injury to medical teams, obstruction of medical care, house demolitions, and damage to infrastructure including roads, water, and electricity.

Red Crescent staff were shot at by soldiers when they tried to attend to the injured and dying. The soldiers have dug trenches around Tel-al Sultan which prevent ambulances from entering the area. As a consequence, the Red .... Israeli sources confirmed reports of severe harm to the civilian population, including deaths, injury to medical teams, obstruction of medical care, house demolitions, and damage to infrastructure including roads, water, and electricity Crescent were unable to respond to 15 emergency calls.

A Palestinian doctor described being shot at 'wildly' when he attempted to assist dying residents. Radio reports stated that the IDF destroyed the local clinic and knocked down one of its walls, forbidding 18 medical staff to leave. They cannot treat any new patients.

The orphanage in Rafah has been regularty shot at by the IDF, and soldiers detained 99 children and 18 teachers there during the incursion.

However, it is primarily men aged from 16 to 30 that the IDF are concerned with. This is because they are regarded as the most likely recruits to Hamas, al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade