Israelis pull out but leave trail of devastation
Anti-terrorist assault destroys Palestinian homes and crops

The last Israeli tanks moved out of Beit Hanoun yesterday, exposing the worst destruction since the military assaults on Jenin and other West Bank cities more than a year ago.

Palestinians who returned to the small Gaza town occupied by the Israeli army for six weeks found that armoured bulldozers had levelled dozens of homes and factories, torn up roads and uprooted trees, up to the edge of the only public border crossing from Israel into the Gaza strip.

"I don't know why they destroyed it," said Mohammed Bishara who found his house flattened. "The Israelis say they had to do this because Hamas was firing rockets from here but they weren't. Everybody knows they were using the fields. Anyway, they destroyed my house and it didn't stop the rockets so I think it means they wanted to punish me for what Hamas does."

The Israelis said they went into Beit Hanoun to stop Hamas firing home-made rockets, known as Qassams, into Israel. It suits both sides to portray the rockets as fearsome but after more than 2,000 firings not one person has been killed and most miss their target by a long way.

The army said much of the town had been destroyed for "security reasons".
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No end to the growing settlements insult

What is happening before their very eyes is the non-stop expansion of the settlements. Settlements are the unlawful transfer of an occupying population to occupied territory; they are the cynical theft of land reserves vital for the Palestinian cities and villages; they are the denial of territorial contiguity and the potential to develop; they are the wresting of control of irreplaceable water resources; they are control of roads. They are all that, and more.

The settlements embody all of the perceptions of Israeli lordliness that have developed over the years on both sides of the Green Line. It is an axiom now that "state lands" are only for Jews; that Palestinians need less land and water per head than Jews; that they do not deserve or require the same infrastructure or conveniences as Jews (see East Jerusalem and Galilee villages); that Palestinians live here because we allow them, not because it is their right.

The settlements provoke that deep sense of insult felt by anyone whom the regime decides is worthy of far, far less than his fellow man.

That is the discrimination practiced every day, and every minute of every day. It is an alienating, burning insult, the same one familiar to the blacks of South Africa, the blacks of the United States, and the Jews of Eastern Europe.

The Israeli defense establishment knows well why it is skeptical about the success of the cease-fire agreement. Because when the Palestinians, like every other human being, can again drive a distance of 10 kilometers in seven minutes rather than five days, they will also once again see on their territory the flourishing settlements and the Israeli army protecting them.

They will discover an Israeli political establishment that may at most discuss the outposts, but does not see the insult, the end-result of discrimination and thievery, and for whom Ariel, Alei Sinai, Ma'ale Adumim, Efrat and Nokdim are as natural and eternal as Tel Aviv and Raanana.
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