JERUSALEM, 18 October 2004 — Israeli forces mounted a new incursion into the south of the Gaza Strip in the early hours yesterday, a military spokeswoman said. She said the Israeli forces went into the Rafah refugee camp, near the border with Egypt, to look for tunnels being used to smuggle arms and to hunt down Palestinian fighters.
Palestinian security officials said the troops destroyed seven Palestinian-owned houses in the camp and damaged several others. The troops, backed by at least 10 armored vehicles and two bulldozers, entered the camp under intensive fire, witnesses said and a tank fired at least one shell at a house, moderately injuring two children. The raid ended before dawn.
Over 130 Palestinians, including civilians, were killed in the 17 days of army’s northern Gaza offensive. Five Israelis were also killed, two of them children hit by a rocket barrage on the Israeli town of Sderot, just outside the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and settlers fiercely opposed to his Gaza pullout plan ended in acrimony yesterday amid warnings that the country could now face civil war. The meeting at the premier’s office, which lasted some two hours, failed to reconcile any of the differences between the Jewish settlers and their one-time champion who rebuffed all calls for a referendum, settler leaders said.
“We met with a prime minister who was deaf to our positions and who just read set texts which had been cooked up by his advisers,” said Yehoshua Mor-Yussef, secretary general of the main Yesha settlers council.
“We did not receive any serious response to our demand that he put this to a decision of the people.” Pinhas Wallerstein, a senior figure in the Yesha settlers council, described Sharon’s uncompromising attitude in the talks as “disgraceful”. “It was one of the most disgraceful meetings with a prime minister of Israel,” he was quoted as saying by Israeli television. “He (Sharon) is determined to lead the country to a split which could degenerate into civil war.”
Sharon, who has faced death threats, has previously warned that some extremists are intent on stirring up a civil war. Yesha vice-chairman Shaul Goldstein said that Sharon had also blanked calls for early elections, adding that the settlers would now step up their lobbying of MPs to ensure the project is defeated in a parliamentary vote on Oct. 25. “For the moment, we are going to carry on our fight in the political arena,” he told AFP.
Under the terms of Sharon’s so-called disengagement plan, all 8,000 settlers currently living in the Gaza Strip and four isolated Jewish enclaves in the northern West Bank, are due to be uprooted from their homes next year. In turn, Sharon is hoping that such a unilateral measure will enable him to strengthen Israeli control over larger West Bank settlement blocs where the majority of settlers live.
MPs from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud party are to meet today to study the draft of a parliamentary bill designed to force a referendum on the proposed pullout from the Gaza Strip.
