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VI. A Violent Season:
Destruction in Rafah, May 2004

In May 2004, while Israeli society debated the merits of Ariel Sharon’s proposal to “disengage” from the Gaza Strip and a handful of West Bank settlements, the IDF launched a major military campaign in the Gaza Strip that resulted in widespread destruction unprecedented in the current uprising.

Rafah bore the brunt.  During forays into the camp, the IDF razed entire rows of houses along the buffer zone and destroyed extensively deep inside Rafah.  Armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozers plowed through houses and shops, indiscriminately ripped up roads, destroyed water and sewage systems, and turned agricultural fields into barren patches of earth.  Fifty-nine Palestinians were reportedly killed in Rafah during a series of incursions from May 12-24, including eleven people under age eighteen and eighteen armed men.¹⁷⁹  In total, these incursions left 254 houses destroyed and nearly 3,800 people homeless; another forty-four houses were razed in the Rafah area during the same month in smaller operations.  May 2004 witnessed a level of destruction unprecedented in Gaza during the uprising – the number of homes destroyed that month was 8.75 times the monthly average for Rafah.¹⁸⁰

Most of the destruction took place between May 18 and 24 during the major incursions into Tel al-Sultan and Brazil.  Instead of attempting to control the heart of the camp as many residents expected, the IDF focused its attack on specific neighborhoods whose wide streets facilitated the movement of their forces and would have deprived Palestinian gunmen of cover to move undetected.  Israeli forces converged from multiple directions, quickly overwhelming armed resistance with Apache helicopter gunships and Merkava tanks.  Based on interviews with the IDF, two Palestinian armed groups, international aid agencies and residents of Rafah, as well as physical examination of the town, Human Rights Watch found little evidence of a sustained battle or resistance in Rafah during the incursions into Tel al-Sultan and Brazil.  Instead, extensive destruction of infrastructure and property occurred mostly in areas already under direct Israeli control.  Human Rights Watch’s research strongly indicates that the nature and scope of the destruction could not have been justified by absolute military necessity.  One of the most egregious examples was in the neighborhood of Tel al-Sultan, where two large agricultural fields were destroyed after the area was effectively secured (see below).

During the May 18-24 incursions, the IDF says it found three¹⁸¹ tunnel entrances: One was in the vicinity of the Termit outpost in the buffer zone.  Another, in the Brazil neighborhood, was an incomplete shaft that Rafah residents say had already been sealed by the PNA weeks earlier (see Chapter 4).  The third was in the town of Dahaniya, located four kilometers outside Rafah and not connected to any demolitions.¹⁸²  The IDF reportedly killed thirty-two Palestinian civilians, of whom ten were under age eighteen, as well as twelve armed fighters.  According to UNRWA statistics, the IDF destroyed 166 houses, leaving 2,085 people homeless.

Rampage in Rafah: An Overview

On May 12, an IDF armored personnel carrier (APC) was destroyed in the Rafah buffer zone near Block O, apparently by a rocket-propelled grenade.  The APC was heavily laden for explosives to be used in an antitunneling operation.  It is unclear whether the APC was on its way to an incursion into the camp or if it was to be used inside the buffer zone only.  The powerful explosion killed five soldiers and showered the area with fragments.  The military wing of Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

The attack on the APC more than doubled the number of Israeli fatalities in Rafah over the past four years.  And it came one day after the death of six soldiers in an APC during an incursion into the Gaza City neighborhood of Zaytoun.  The back-to-back incidents with eleven deaths prompted calls for both strong action and accelerating the “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip.