Palestinian, 65, Reportedly Dies in Army Demolition of Her Home

The broken body of a 65-year-old woman was dug from a heap of dust and rubble after Israeli troops tore down her house in a Gaza Strip refugee camp Wednesday morning, witnesses and family members said. Her death began a day of bloodshed throughout the West Bank and Gaza that left at least six Palestinians and two Israelis dead.

Early today, a Palestinian gunman killed two Israelis near the West Bank city of Nablus, according to early news reports. The gunman was also killed in the attack, Israel Radio reported. An army spokesman said that a small Jewish settlement came under attack but that details were being withheld because family members hadn’t been notified.

The violence began before dawn Wednesday with the death of Kamla abu Said, who was a bit hard of hearing and probably missed the shouts of the military wrecking crew that evacuated her home in the early morning hours, her family said. She was crushed to death when soldiers set off explosives that smashed the concrete house, according to witnesses.

Said is at least the second Palestinian to die in the wreckage of a house since the Israeli army brought back the controversial practice of destroying the homes of militants who attack Israel. Her stepson, Baha abu Said, a local security officer and member of a militant offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization, killed two Israeli soldiers in the early days of the uprising and died in the attack.

More than two years later, soldiers stormed the Maghazi refugee camp and razed his family’s house in retaliation. Soldiers fired machine guns from helicopters overhead to clear the streets, and Palestinians shot back, according to Israeli military and Palestinian sources.

Afterward, three of Baha abu Said’s brothers were taken away for questioning.

Israeli military sources said the family and their neighbors had plenty of time to get out of the house. Soldiers checked the rooms to make sure they were empty before the house was demolished, an army spokesman said. The army had received no formal complaints of Kamla abu Said’s death, it said, but was investigating.

“They shouted out to the people inside the house and near the house to get out,” said an Israeli army spokesman who declined to give his name.

But witnesses described a hasty, chaotic operation carried out under cover of darkness and gunfire.

“She was partly deaf and apparently she was not aware of what was happening,” stepson Khaled Said told the Reuters news agency. “Israeli troops were acting in a brutal way,” he added.

“They got us all out of the house so fast and in an aggressive manner. They gave no chance for us to see who was out and who was in,” he said.

Israeli soldiers have flattened hundreds of homes in recent months, and the widespread wreckage is a sore point between Palestinians and human rights organizations and the Jewish state.

The Israeli army argues that house demolitions are valuable tools in the bloody war with the Palestinians. Would-be suicide bombers are deterred, they say, by the threat of leaving their families homeless.

But critics, including the U.S., decry the demolitions as unnecessarily harsh. Human rights groups call them collective punishment, and State Department spokesman Richard Boucher has said that demolitions “exacerbate the humanitarian situation and undermine trust and confidence.”

The Israeli Supreme Court upheld the demolitions in a decision issued last summer.

Hours before sunrise today, a pair of 21-year-old Palestinian nurses in a Gaza City hospital were shot dead when Israeli soldiers fired machine guns out of helicopters on the eastern edge of town, medical sources reported. The army was investigating the reports.

A teenage Palestinian boy was also shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank village of Tammun on Wednesday, Palestinians reported.

The army spokesman said rioting villagers pelted soldiers with bricks and rocks. The soldiers shot a rioter in the leg, he said.

Earlier Wednesday, Israeli soldiers gunned down a Palestinian policeman outside a security office in the West Bank town of Kalkilya. The Israeli military said a group of police fled as a patrol drew near, and ignored orders to halt.