OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Haaretz: All Israelis are to blame' for Rafah

"As far as I'm concerned, if they find a tunnel under somebody's house, they can bury them in it,
but how is this our fault? I used to say that anyone who listened to suicide bombers was crazy,
but after what happened here, I say that every Jew, wherever he is, all the Israelis, are to
blame for what happened here," Jamal Yussuf declared yesterday.

Practically the only public institutions still functioning in this camp are premises donated
by international bodies. In preparation for the operation, the IDF commandeered them because of
their good view of the surroundings. Such was the case with a child development center, a new
building. Here, too, furniture was flung on the floor, firing slits were carved out of the
walls, and hundreds of bullet holes riddled the outside.

So far, eight Palestinians have reportedly died during the operation, and about 80 have been
injured, with 15 still hospitalized in moderate to serious condition. Two of the dead are
children who undoubtedly had no connection to the IDF's struggle against the armed men in the
tunnels.

At the opening stage of the operation, 8-year-old Ibrahim Krinawi was killed. Ibrahim,
whose house was in the first row facing the border, was the youngest of five children. His
father Ahmed said the family was in the house when the operation began. They were going to
leave but the bulldozer got there before they were able to do so. He said the bulldozer began
tearing down a wall of the house, and he and his children went outside to stop it. At this
point, a single shot hit Ibrahim in the right side of his chest and he collapsed. His father
called an ambulance. As Ibrahim's brother Ayad told it, "at the beginning, he was conscious
and yelling that it was hurting him terribly and for us to save him. Then he began to bleed
and he begged us to take the bullet out but we couldn't do anything." The father said a
Palestinian ambulance stopped a few hundred meters from the house but could not come any
closer. Finally, family members carried Ibrahim to the ambulance. An hour later, he died at a
makeshift clinic.