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Looking while their home being razed by the Israelis
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GAZA
CITY, November 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Palestinian was
killed overnight by Israeli forces, while an Israeli armored unit
swept the Khan Yunes sector of the southern Gaza Strip early Friday,
November 8, destroying a home and wounding two Palestinians. Israeli
reservists, meanwhile, accused their commanding officers of
endangering the Palestinian civilians ‘unnecessarily’.
In
Tulkarem refugee camp in the West Bank, Israeli occupation forces
tried to detain 25-year-old Radi Balawni, a resistance activist
from Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, who
had been wanted for anti-Israeli attacks, according to an Israeli army
spokesman.
"He
fled as the soldiers tried to arrest him and they opened fire,"
the spokesman claimed. Another Palestinian was wounded in the
shooting, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
In
Khan Yunes, meanwhile, the Israeli troops destroyed a three-story
house belonging to the family of Ismael Ashur Brif, 25, who was shot
dead Wednesday, November 6, after killing two people at the Rafah Yam
settlement where he worked.
During
the incursion several hundred meters (yards) inside the autonomous
zone, two Palestinians were wounded, one of them critically.
Brif,
who worked in the settlement for several months, smuggled in a pistol
and two hand grenades. He killed his employers and tried to seize a
vehicle before being shot down by the head of security.
The
attack was claimed by the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, the armed branch
of the resistance movement Hamas.
An
Israeli military spokesman confirmed Friday's operation to AFP.
Nearly
70 Palestinian houses have been razed in similar operations since the
start of August. Human rights organizations have condemned them as
"collective punishment" while the Israeli army claims they
are "dissuasive" measures.
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Can not help but watch their homes turned into rubble in seconds |
Meanwhile,
a group of Israeli reserve soldiers who recently completed duty in the
Palestinian occupied territories, charged that senior Israeli officers
in the Gaza Strip gave orders to fire mortar shells in a way that
endangered the Palestinian civilian population, without any
operational justification, according to Israeli daily Ha’aretz, Friday
November 8.
The
reservists added that one of the shells fell in the heart of a densely
populated Palestinian neighborhood.
One
of the soldiers told Ha'aretz that the incident began on
October 11 when a Palestinian fired on an Israeli outpost south of the
settlement of Nissanit. Troops responded with two tank shells which
missed their target. Later that evening, without having identified
armed (resistance activists), the area commander, a lieutenant
colonel, ordered troops to fire several tank shells in the direction
from which they had been fired on earlier near the Palestinian town of
Beit Hanoun.
The next evening the Israeli officer ordered his
troops to fire 60-millimeter mortar shells in the same direction. The
first shell landed in a residential area in the town of Beit Hanoun.
The officer reprimanded the troops for having missed their target -
the mortar was supposed to have landed in an open field outside the
town - but ordered them to resume fire. The mortar fire was apparently
carried out with the authorization of the regional commander, a
colonel, according to the paper.
"The tank fire on the evening of the incident
and especially the mortar fire the next day was inexcusable. The
mortar is a very inaccurate weapon and there is no justification for
using it in a densely populated civilian area when there is no visible
target. The use of mortar shells created an unwarranted danger to
civilians," the soldier told Ha'aretz.
