October 1, 2003:
Mohammed's younger brother
Issam was seriously injured
and was taken to the hospital
about a week ago. His leg
was amputated and he is
undergoing medical treatment.

October 18, 2003:
Mohammad's younger brother,
Hussam [17 yrs old], was killed
by the Israeli army today.

Hussam was sitting at home
when he was shot in the face,
chest, back, legs. He had
nothing to do with any violent
or even political movement.

Hussam's crime is that he was
a Palestinian.

— The Webmaster

Fiery Nights, Bullets at Dawn: Gaza Explodes in Violence

http://www.wrmea.com/archives/Sept_Oct_2005/0509014.html

Washington Report, September/October 2005, pages 14-15
Gaza on the Ground
Mohammed Omer, www.rafahtoday.org,

THE WHINE of bullets, the unearthly shrieks of missiles streaking through the air, the sky painted red with garish fire of an unknown origin, the sharp odor of cordite, dust, heat—every sense was assaulted at once, and the synapses of my jet-lagged brain jolted awake, locked, froze, refused to comprehend. How could this be happening on Brugarta Street in Oslo? What was this inferno in the sky outside the neat, peaceful Spectrum Hotel? How had Israeli missiles managed to follow one Palestinian journalist all the way to Norway?

Or was it some nightmare collage of all the bullet-ridden nights at home in Bader Camp in north Rafah, near the Israeli settlement of Rafeh Yam?

The noise was relentless: the missiles, the shells that filled the night sky with flames, the screaming of women and children, explosions and bombs, all coming from the direction of Rafeh Yam. I tried to put the puzzle pieces together—the flight to Cairo, the long trip through Egypt, the longer wait at Rafah crossing—forcing my sluggish mind to work against a background of ambulance sirens, the shouts and klaxons from the fire trucks. Automatically, I reached for my mobile phone, one certain, familiar object in the chaos. The lighted screen said 10:24 p.m. Finally the shouts at the door made it all snap into place. Of course—I was home, welcomed a few hours ago by my family, and now by the familiar lethal Rafah lullaby of missiles and rockets.

The media routinely describe these events as “clashes,” but the word doesn’t begin to do justice to the din, the confusion, the strange feeling of alert numbness. Last night’s firefight was typical of the new violence sweeping through Gaza. It was a double conflict of sorts. For over a week, various militant factions had been firing Qassam rockets at Gaza’s illegal Israeli settlements in retaliation for Israel’s resumption of targeted assassinations of militants from Hamas and other factions. Since the Bader camp, a new neighborhood of UNRWA-built houses, is just across a fortified road from the Rafeh Yam settlement, it was inevitable that, as the fragile truce unraveled over the last two weeks, sooner or later Palestinian militants would decide to use the neighborhood as a launch site. Often, civilian residents throughout Gaza, well aware of the devastating return of Israeli fire, tell the fighters, “Please—not here!”And the militants often do their best to oblige.

In this case, UNRWA had told the residents—who already had lost their homes once to the Israeli bulldozers—to do their utmost to keep militants from operating in the new neighborhood. If Israel’s occupation army razed the new houses, UNRWA would not rebuild. Such draconian pronouncements are unusual for UNRWA, but like every other NGO in occupied Palestine, the U.N. agency can function only to the extent the Israeli occupation allows.

So when the Hamas fighters arrived, residents shouted, begged, pleaded, until the men moved off to the nearby sand dunes. Nevertheless, their two mortars still drew an inferno of missiles from Rafeh Yam onto the neighborhood. But even the smallest children in Rafah know that the Israeli war machine doesn’t need logical reasons to destroy a house, a street, an entire neighborhood. If pressed, they may cite tunnels, or militant activity, or the ever useful “security reasons,” but the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) basically destroys whatever it wants, whenever it wants.

After a few months of cautious hope following the February cease-fire agreement between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, by July, horror and chaos had swamped Palestine again. Once more blood, fire and fear has become the norm in Gaza. It’s back to the grim business of counting the dead, counting the injured, phoning the medics and hospitals to try to learn the names of the casualties. For the Palestinian civilians, it is back to sleepless nights trying to judge how close the shooting and bombing is, or trying to sleep at closed Israeli checkpoints.

Where did it start this time? Should we go back a week, to the July 12 suicide bombing in Netanya? Despite the supposed cease-fire and the planned withdrawal from Gaza and a few areas in the West Bank, the Israeli army has been routinely arresting members of militant factions and staging incursions into areas under Palestinian control. The young militant who carried out the Netanya bombing said he was “responding” to the Israeli crimes in the West Bank. Of course, IOF activity only increased after the Netanya attack, while in Gaza, the militant factions increased their Qassam launches in—yes, that word again—”response.” Drawing, of course, ever harsher “responses” from the Israeli army.

Thursday night, July 14, an Israeli woman, Dana Glakowitz, 22, who lived in Sderot, near the Gaza border, was killed by a Qassam strike as she sat on her porch. Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel Razaq Al Yahya declared a state of emergency and ordered the PA police to stop the militants from firing on Israeli settlements within Gaza and towns in the Negev, near the border. The IOF immediately closed its checkpoints, dividing Gaza into three sealed sections. Shortly after midnight, the IOF launched four rocket strikes on Gaza within an hour. Three were on northern Gaza—one on a cemetery in Khan Younis that the Israeli military claims was being used as a launch site by the militants. In Gaza City the headquarters of an Islamic charity was destroyed—the IOF claimed it was “pro-Hamas.”

Armed Internal Conflict

All that night there were heavy clashes between PA police and masked militants, with cars carrying Hamas members attacked and, in retaliation, militant assaults on police stations and police cars. Tragically, in the Zeytoun neighborhood of Gaza City, two bystanders, a teenager and a child, were killed during a firefight between militants and the PA police. It was the most serious internal conflict among Palestinian factions in recent years.

With the dawn, the police-militant battles wound down and eventually ceased, but civilians in Gaza City were burning tires in an effort to blind the Israeli unmanned surveillance drones. In mid-afternoon, Israeli helicopters resumed extrajudicial assassinations, with rocket attacks an hour apart on two cars carrying Hamas members—one near Nablus in the West Bank, and one in Gaza City. Four Hamas members were killed in the Gaza City airstrike, at around 4 p.m., their white Volkswagen reduced to barely-recognizable rubble. According to eyewitnesses, body parts and shredded flesh of the four occupants were scattered over a wide area. Six pedestrians were also injured.

Witnesses reported Israeli troops and tanks massed at the sealed borders. Israeli public opinion was sharply divided, with hard-liners urging Sharon to a ground invasion at once, while cooler heads suggested President Abbas be given time to get the situation under control. Further complicating matters was an illegal demonstration of thousands of right-wing Israelis, determined to march into Gaza to reinforce those settlers vowing to resist the evacuation. Thousands of Israeli troops were busy holding them at bay. Egyptian diplomats arrived in Gaza City to meet President Abbas and the heads of the various militant groups in an attempt to reach new agreements and preserve the cease-fire.

Gaza’s Abu Holi checkpoint was closed for five days while Israeli troops dug a 20-foot trench to halt traffic near the Netzarim settlement in central Gaza. Normal travel slowed and came to a complete halt as people waited for hours in the blazing July sun for the brief—usually 30-minute—opening in the evening. At the Netzarim trench, women, children, medical patients and elderly people all risked being shot by Israeli snipers stationed in a nearby concrete tower as they trudged nearly two miles over sand and rock.

The risk became reality when, on Monday, July 18, a Palestinian teenager, Raghed el-Abed el-Masri, was shot dead by an Israeli soldier in the sniper tower guarding the Abu Holi checkpoint. The Israeli army said the soldier had fired “warning shots in the air,” but not at the cars, when Palestinian traffic attempted to cross without permission. However, Dr. Ibrahim Masadar, director of the Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital, said Raghed had been shot in the back, the live bullet exiting through his heart and chest.

Acknowledging that Palestinian civilian authorities had complained about the killing of the 14-year-old, as well as the wounding of several others in the same incident, an IOF spokesman said the army was “still investigating.”

Israeli authorities also have reinstated a travel ban on Palestinian men and boys between the ages of 16 and 35 from leaving Gaza through the Rafah crossing, Gaza’s only route to the outside world. In north Gaza, the Erez crossing into Israel has been sealed as well, preventing some 7,000 Palestinian workers who have permits to travel to their jobs in the industrial zone from getting to work. These restrictions constitute “collective punishment,” and as such are forbidden by international law.

There were further clashes July 19 between Palestinian security forces and militants in and around Jebalya, with 13 wounded. Predictably, perhaps, each side blamed the other. In nearby Gaza City, however, Abbas and the militants seemed to be reaching agreement. In any case, both sides withdrew their armed fighters from the street—realizing, many hoped, that a Palestinian civil war would help no one but Israeli hard-liners. And while the powerful discuss, debate, speak to the press, and jockey for power, the men, women, and children of Gaza brace themselves for a long and frightening summer.

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