Rafah bears the brunt

On Monday 17 May, Israeli forces, spearheaded by tanks and helicopter gunships, launched an invasion of the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in a military offensive unprecedented in scale since 2002. This was the second major incursion into Rafah in a week and the aim is to destroy hundreds of Palestinian homes.

By Tuesday morning, 12 Palestinians, including one child, had been killed and more than 20 Palestinians injured. Thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee their homes as poorly-armed Palestinian fighters made brave but futile attempts to defend their area. The previous day, the Israeli Supreme Court had ruled that Israeli forces had the right to demolish Palestinian homes in Rafah.

Amnesty International has petitioned Bertie Ahern's government to use its EU Presidency to tackle Israel over this policy of razing thousands of Palestinian homes. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, which had sought to stop the demolitions through the Israeli courts, has sent a letter to the Dublin Government as President of the EU, to take immediate effective action as required of all High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention. The PCRH "urges the EU states to immediately dispatch international protection for the Palestinian civilian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories".

EOIN MURRAY is an Irish human rights activist living and working in Gaza City. Here, in his first report for An Phoblacht, he describes his recent visit to Rafah and gives an indication of the human cost of Israel's aggression.

"The past week in Gaza has been one of the most intense since the second Intifada began. Events on the ground, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) policy of 'creating a new reality' are moving so quickly that each sentence is almost out of date by the time it is written.

I will never forget my first trip to Rafah refugee camp, two weeks ago. The road to Rafah is closed. Access is permitted for Israeli settlers only and for soldiers. Palestinians can not use it. Instead, they take the scenic route, a long and winding sea road. The sun glistens into our taxi as it trundles along, in a queue of taxis, all headed southbound. Next stop Rafah, ensh'allah (god willing). Like West Belfast, taxis pass for a public transport system all across Gaza.

The north of the Gaza Strip is divided from the south by two checkpoints, 400 metres apart. The two checkpoints protect another road, which is for the use of Israeli settlers only. The checkpoint is really a traffic light. We never see a soldier. All around us are immense green 'tin-cans' covered in netting with sophisticated monitoring equipment. The Israeli soldiers are inside. They watch. They decide when the traffic on either side should stop or move.

We wait. The car is boiling, the leather seats in the old yellow Mercedes are sticky with years of sweat. My fellow passengers are uncomfortable.

The women seem to head into a form of closed-eyed meditative trance. One of them swings her head around impatiently. We wait. Some of the passengers in the car have waited like this on occasion for seven hours, just for the light to change. You cannot leave the car. You cannot go to the toilet. You are trapped, powerless.

We wait.

After half an hour of tense anticipation we are allowed to cross. Now the risk is that we get stuck before we pass through the next checkpoint, in which case our car will be stopped, searched, examined, turned over, dissected. There are very rarely attacks on this checkpoint because of the hardship its closure would impose on Palestinians. The security justifications for such a disruption are non-existent. It is designed to make life difficult, unpalatable and unbearable.

Fortunately, we pass through swiftly.

We have broken the back on the journey to Rafah. I have been lucky, this 40-minute journey only took one hour and 20 minutes. Often it can take six or seven hours for the people trying to go to work in Gaza, or visit sick family members in the hospital.

I have no right to speak about Rafah. I have no right to express my feelings. The tears of happiness and sadness that I wanted to express constantly. The warmest, kindest people I have ever met. They have nothing and they give everything. They tell the saddest stories I have ever heard. The daily grind of occupation is miserable, it is frightening.

In the past two days alone over 100 homes have been demolished as part of the Israeli policy of collective punishment (in breach of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention). It appears that many hundreds more will be demolished before the incursion ends.

Included in these houses are the homes of many people I met in Rafah. They are teachers, ambulance drivers, doctors, intellectuals, as well as people living below the poverty line ($2 a day) in miserable conditions. Most of these people are refugees from the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe), when they were forced to flee from their homes.

Many of the homes I visited had framed keys hanging on their walls. When I asked about them I was told that these are the keys to their now demolished homes in modern Israel. Some day the refugees dream of returning.

While in Rafah we visited one family whose home had been demolished. They are now living in one of the changing rooms underneath Rafah's small football stadium. Out of the thousands of families in the Gaza Strip who are victims of this policy, UNRWA, the UN agency designated to deal with the refugees, has only been able to relocate 347 families to temporary shelter.

As I write, schools are being turned into centres to house the homeless, Rafah's meagre clinic that serves as a hospital is packed full of the critically injured and the dead. Israeli troops are digging a trench to isolate the camp and town from the rest of Gaza. Humanitarian and aid agencies have all been denied access.

The failure of the international community to provide support to the civilian population is deeply distressing. So far, they have refused to provide an international stabilisation force to monitor an Israeli withdrawal and stop human rights abuses. The conflict here must be resolved on the basis of international humanitarian and human rights law as well as full participation of the all Palestinian groups and leadership. Otherwise, peace will continue to evade us all."