Danger, Death Fill a Gaza Strip Camp

The inhabitants of this teeming refugee camp cowered as Israeli tanks slammed through their rutted streets Tuesday. Most Palestinian gunmen had fled ahead of the Israeli incursion, but Bajhat Skheleh and a band of armed comrades put up a fight.

Skheleh and the others were taking shots at tanks and armored vehicles when suddenly a Palestinian car pulled up. The car carried three dead men--including Skheleh’s brother Mohammed. When Skheleh went to retrieve abandoned weapons at another location, he found his other brother, Hani, bleeding to death.

In scarcely two hours, 18 Palestinians were killed and at least 45 wounded in a fierce overnight operation Monday and early Tuesday, part of Israel’s 13-day-old campaign to crush armed resistance in the crowded, impoverished camps that are home to refugees from Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. Jabaliya is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in the world and has historically led the fight against Israeli occupation.

With Tuesday’s siege of the Al Amari camp in the newly reoccupied West Bank city of Ramallah, Israeli forces will have raided eight camps, home to about 200,000 people.

The campaign that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is waging against the Palestinians is very much about the refugee camps, the sanctuary and breeding ground of the resistance that he has sought to eliminate for most of his career.

Around midnight in Jabaliya, the tanks and troops roared up Saleh Dardona Street, named for a man killed in the first intifada against Israeli rule. That uprising lasted from 1987 to 1993. Soldiers laid explosive charges inside the aluminum factory where Muslei Sultan says he produces tea trays. The blast flattened the building, destroying Sultan’s business of 20 years.

Soldiers ordered families who lived in apartments above the factory to evacuate before the explosion but gave them no time to collect any belongings or clothing, they said.

Up the road a short time later, soldiers similarly blew up a dozen or so machines in a metalworks factory owned by Nabil Tannira.

In both cases, and in the demolition of other workshops, the Israeli army said it was destroying factories used to produce rockets, mortars and other weapons.

Beyond that, it’s not clear what the raid on Jabaliya achieved. Unlike the operations at other camps, there was no mass roundup of men nor seizure of weapons. The tanks pulled out early Tuesday, almost as quickly as they entered, without penetrating the center of the camp.

Many of those killed and wounded appeared to have been gunmen or militants in the radical Islamic movement Hamas. Mourning tents popped up all over Jabaliya, and funerals were held en masse, complete with men firing automatic weapons and chanting for revenge.

But civilians were also among the dead. Among the first to die were Abdul Rahman Izzedeen, 54, and his son Walid, 36.

“I looked out the window and saw three tanks,” said the older man’s daughter-in-law Saleh. “I was so scared. They would shoot at anybody. People were running all over the place.”

The elder Izzedeen, worried about his children and grandchildren, climbed the stairs of his three-story house. His last words were to call down to the family: “Gather up the children. Stay inside, be careful.”

Izzedeen then reached for the door leading to the roof to pull it closed. Israeli soldiers who had taken up position on the upper floors of a house two buildings over shot him, his family said. He fell, blood gushing from his face and neck. Walid, rushing to help his father, was then shot as well. Both died. It took several hours for an ambulance to reach the home, the family said.

The Izzedeens--Abdul Rahman left behind a wife and 11 children, and Walid left behind a wife and eight children--had moved to their home on the edge of the camp only a year ago. It allowed them to escape the worst of the Jabaliya misery. The center of the camp--a warren-like collection of cinder-block shacks, muddy alleyways and barefoot children--is an awful place, even during times of peace.

And worse in times of war. On Tuesday, residents of this camp that has produced suicide bombers and shooters were seething at the destruction wrought by the Israeli incursion. Outside the Izzedeens’ home, in large black block letters, the graffiti read: “Hey Jews, you cowards. We swear we will answer your aggression. Just wait.”