Gaza Strip Caught In Endless Cycle Of Killing

by Ferry Biedermann

They burst into giggles and raise their voices even more when they spot two officers standing at the gate.

One of the officers, dressed in shabby civilian clothes, laughs and shrugs his shoulders: "They are just teasing us, they do it every day when they walk home from school."

The officer may downplay the taunts of a group of teenagers but the Palestinian Authority (PA) of Yassir Arafat at best has a very tenuous grip on Rafah.

The dirt-poor town and refugee camp in the far south of the Gaza strip, on the border with Egypt, is a focal point for the armed resistance against Israel. During the current, one-year-old intifadah uprising, local leaders say more than 60 people have been killed out of a population of 130,000.

Almost every cease-fire that Israel and the PA agree to is broken in Rafah. Last month's crucial truce talks between Israel's foreign minister Shimon Peres and the Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat were punctuated by deadly violence in Rafah. It was an early sign of the direction the cease-fire would take.

Rafah is familiar with the cycle of Palestinian shootings, bombings, demolition of Palestinian houses and incursions by the Israeli army. Since the Peres-Arafat meeting, at least four local people have died in the violence. The Palestinians blame the Israelis for using live fire despite the truce. The army says it is only responding to Palestinian attacks.

Ibrahim Ouda Shattat is furious. "The bastards, the dirty bastards," he loudly curses the Hamas gunmen who, according to him, are responsible for the attacks on the Israelis. He lives right on the edge of the Israeli-controlled zone in Rafah that runs along the border with Egypt.

"What heroes," he says with a scowl. "They sneak into our neighborhood, fire two shots and then run off. We the people who live here are the ones who have to pay the price when the Israelis retaliate."

Carefully he peeks around the corner near the end of the Salah e-Din street. Shattat points at the ruins of his three-story house, just a few meters down the road. It was blown up by the Israelis during the recent violence, he tells. Just beyond the ruins is an army post. "Usually they shoot at everything that moves," he says.

A fence marks the edge of the Israeli-controlled zone along the Egyptian border. In front of it lies a desolate landscape of rubble and broken pieces of furniture.

"We were hardly able to save anything," Shattat says sadly. He is dressed in a long blue gown. It is one of the few possessions he hurriedly grabbed when he heard the Israeli armored vehicles approach at 10:30 one night late last month.

Now he lives with his wife and seven children in a large shack that a kindly neighbor has put at their disposal temporarily. "That is all the support we have got so far. We haven't heard from Hamas or the PA," he says bitterly.

Just like many others, Shattat lost his job as a welder in Israel when the Gaza strip was sealed off after the start of the intifadah. The poverty in Rafah is visible everywhere: unpaved, dirty streets, half-finished and poorly built houses, even some tents, and a lot of people hanging around because they don't have anything to do.

Because of Israeli restrictions on the movement of its security forces, the PA has not been able to exert control over Rafah. It has become a fertile breeding ground for the militant, mostly Islamic, opposition that does not want a cease-fire and advocates continued armed struggle.

"The blood of our martyrs is the fuel for the intifadah," explains Abu Ibrahim, a local leader of the Popular Resistance Committee that coordinates the attacks against the Israelis. Abu Ibrahim pulls a gun out from his waistband. "Don't worry, it was just not very comfortable," he smiles and puts the gun down next to him on the couch.

The Committee includes all political groups, among them the Islamic Hamas and Jihad movements but also disillusioned members of Arafat's Fatah. Abu Ibrahim sees political gain in the people who were killed after the Peres-Arafat meeting: "They will ensure the failure of the truce."

The Committee de facto runs Rafah. It will continue its actions against the Israelis, irrespective of the PA's wishes. Another Committee leader, Nur e-Din, says: "The PA has been pressuring us since the beginning of the intifadah to desist. They were particularly upset about our mortar attacks on Jewish settlements. Now we don't hear from them anymore, they have given up."

Despite the disagreement between the Committee and the PA, Nur e-Din is adamant that he and his comrades will never aim their guns at fellow Palestinians. "We will continue the resistance, even if they don't want us to, but we will never fight our own people," he says.

It is doubtful, however, that the PA is keen to act forcefully to assert its control. "My brother is a member of the Islamic Jihad," says one of the PSS officers. "You have the same divisions in almost every family here. We are not going to fight our brothers."

He thinks, though, that even in Rafah the population will overwhelmingly support Arafat and the PA when push comes to shove. "We can establish control and calm the situation down but only if the Israelis make major political concessions. Otherwise the people will regard us as Israeli lackeys," says the PSS officer.