The Operation
On May 18, Israeli Defence Forces, mounted in IDF Achzarit heavy armoured personnel carriers and tanks, backed up by helicopter gunships entered Rafah from the north-eastern Tel-Sultan neighbourhood, after sealing off the entire area in order to prevent movement of miltants into and out of Rafah.
Israeli IDF Caterpillar D9 armoured bulldozers erected sand-barriers around Rafah to isolate it. Later, the D9s entered into the Rafah in order to detonate booby traps, open routes and demolish houses used by militants.
The IDF and the Israeli government have considered widening the Philadelphi Route (buffer zone), in order to allow the digging of a moat which would block the excavation of tunnels in the future. As this would require the destruction of even more houses in the area than were destroyed to create the current buffer, the plan was abandoned in order to find a more humanitarian solution for the residents of southern Rafah.
During the operation, IDF forces arrested several wanted people and exchanged fire with militants. Several bombs and anti-tank missiles were fired against the armored fighting vehicles but caused no damage.
It is claimed that when Palestinian men responded to IDF calls over loudspeakers to turn themselves in to the IDF authorities for questioning, members of Palestinian militant organizations opened fire on them and killed two Palestinian children. A senior officer in Gaza reported that the IDF have in their possession pictures of this incident. The army has not published the pictures.
Most of the operation was focused on Tel Es-Sultan. This came as a surprise to Palestinians, as this area is relatively far from the border with Egypt. According to Palestinian sources, soldiers entered the area shortly after midnight, taking up positions on the rooftops. Only after the 3rd day of action did IDF forces enter the "Brazil" section.
A zoo located in or adjacent to the "Brazil" section of the Rafah refugee camp was destroyed during the operation.
On May 25, 2004, the IDF withdrew most of its forces out of Rafah and removed the blockade around it. However, there were still small IDF forces in Rafah, with the goal of pinpointing smuggling tunnels. On June 1 the operation officially ended.
Gaza District Coordinating Office Commander Yoav Mordechai was quoted Monday by Israel Radio as saying the IDF enabled Palestinians to receive food and medical equipment, and has fixed the water and electricity infrastructure in Rafah. He added that Palestinians had dug arms-smuggling tunnels inside mosques and schools and under children's beds in private homes. Mofaz said innocent people were hurt because the terrorists chose to operate in a dense population center, according to the report.
UNRWA, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees in the territories, also said that the IDF had destroyed a total of 155 buildings in Rafah over the past month, leaving 1,960 people homeless. It described the period as one of the most destructive in Rafah since a Palestinian uprising began in September 2000.
Read more about this topic: Operation Rainbow (2004)
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.”
—Henri Bergson (1859–1941)