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Gaza Refugee Camps Vow To Resist Israeli Attacks
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Israeli tanks ready to sweep Gaza |
JABALYA, Gaza Strip, May 10, (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As the Israeli army continued to prepare military aggression in Gaza, the crowded Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, braced for an impending attack with Palestinians vowing to resist.
The main Khulafa mosque was packed as the imam told people it was their "duty to resist", and residents vowed a resistance
to the death, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
With Palestinian Authority security bases a frequent target of Israeli retaliatory strikes, Jabalya's five police and security force bases were evacuated.
"We're not out in the street to arrest anyone, we don't have anywhere else to go. In any case, those wanted by Israel are hiding at unknown locations inside the camp," said a local commander who refused to be identified.
In Khulafa square, named after the mosque, the belligerent voice of imam Nizar Ibrahim could be heard exhorting people to resist Israeli occupation.
"God will bestow victory against Ariel Sharon and (U.S. President George W.) Bush upon those who believes."
Opposite the mosque, also known as the "martyrs' mosque" because of the high number of activists recruited there, a group of middle-aged men sipped Turkish coffee and talked of "unprecedented resistance" against the Israeli military.
"This neighborhood is Hamas' center in Jabalya. People are praying in greater number than usual because of the impending Israeli attack," said Jamil Nasser, 50, a taxi station owner who described himself as a believer but not affiliated to Hamas.
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Palestinian boys, in Gaza |
"Our fate is in God's hands but it's written in our religion that we should defend ourselves," he said.
"It they enter with their tanks and infantry, it will be a massacre for us and for them."
Israel's security cabinet authorized a military campaign in Gaza to avenge a Hamas claimed bombing operation on a pool hall outside Tel Aviv on Tuesday that left 17 dead and 55 wounded.
The Jabalya camp, home to 120,000 Palestinian refugees in an area
less than three square kilometers, is an alleged Hamas stronghold.
"People want somebody to defend them and Hamas has proven itself," said Abu Rami, 45.
He estimated 70 percent of men in the camp were unemployed as a result of the Intifada launched 19 months ago which led to the closure of the Gaza Strip preventing people from reaching jobs in Israel and its Gaza settlements.
On a wall in the square, the names of 16 Palestinians who have died in bombing attacks against Israel
were written in red paint next to a drawing of the logo of the Hamas armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades.
"We wrote our history with the blood of our martyrs, we wave our flag with the purified hand of the believer," was written on another wall.
At the end of the Friday prayers, bearded men with a defiant look in their eyes filled the square. "We're ready to fight till we die," warned one worshipper.
"Sharon will fail, more martyr bombing attacks will take place," said Abu Mahmud, 28, describing himself as a Hamas member.
Mahmud saw bloodshed ahead . "Many of us will die but God willing they (Israeli soldiers) will suffer too," he said recalling the fierce Jenin refugee camp aggression on the West Bank in which more than 50 Palestinian and 23 Israelis perished.
Explosives have been placed in the huge piles of sand lining the main streets and entrances to the camp, residents said. They said they were put in at night, but taken out by day when children were playing.
The Israeli occupation army, meanwhile, continued preparing Friday for a military attack in Gaza, massing forces on the border of the Strip, after the Israeli cabinet approved what senior security sources call "a focused, time-limited operation," according to Israeli daily newspaper, Ha’aretz.
The sources, however, hinted the attack could be called off at the last minute after American pressure on both sides.
Thousands of Israeli forces were called up Thursday under emergency orders (Tzav 8) in preparation for a military operation in the Strip. Israel, ignoring the Palestinians’ right to resist occupation, dubs its preparations to crack down on Gaza as ‘retaliatory’ following the bomb attack attack in Rishon Letzion.
However, a dispute broke out within the Israeli Army Command about the necessity of the operation and that criticism could lead to a smaller-scale action.
Israeli Military sources said there might be an incursion to the edges of the cities and refugee camps in the Strip that would concentrate on Hamas and Islamic Jihad (main Palestinian resistance groups). Most of the infrastructure of both organizations is allegedly in the northern sector of the Strip.
A senior source in Israeli General Headquarters last night admitted the Gaza operation is controversial in the army. He said one question is whether an incursion to Gaza will disrupt international political efforts that might achieve at least a temporary lull, Ha’aretz reported.
In Ramallah, meanwhile, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is "concerned" by the threat of Israel striking the Gaza Strip, Russia's top Middle East envoy said Friday.
Kremlin representative Andrei Vdovin said Arafat "expressed his serious concern that this might happen," when they met at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah Thursday.
"It is something that is on his mind," Vdovin said.
Vdovin told AFP that Russia encouraged "both sides to show maximum restraint" to avoid an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. He added that envoys from the diplomatic "quartet" comprising the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia were set to meet with Arafat in his battle-scarred office complex in Ramallah on Monday.
The Russian envoy said Gaza was likely be high on the meeting's agenda.
Arafat, for his part, told Vdovin that his security forces have arrested "two dozen" Hamas members who may have previously organized bomb strikes on Israel, the Russian official said.
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