Hisahm Abu Taha, Arab News

JERUSALEM, 14 May 2004 — Israel killed 12 Palestinians yesterday in revenge raids on the Gaza Strip as President Yasser Arafat called for global intervention to help prevent “Israeli crimes”.

The Israeli raids followed the deaths of 11 of its soldiers in ambushes on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The new spiral of violence intensified debate between proponents and opponents of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to evacuate settlers from Gaza, now stalled by rightist hard-liners in his own Likud party.

Eleven Palestinians, four of them fighters, were killed in helicopter missile strikes in Rafah refugee camp, near the area where the resistance blew up an explosives-packed troop carrier on Wednesday. Five soldiers in the vehicle were killed.

“A helicopter fired missiles at a group of armed militants in two separate incidents at the same spot,” an Israeli military source said.

Israeli troops, combing the area for the soldiers’ remains, later shot dead a 19-year-old Palestinian during a push into Rafah, where 10 homes were demolished.

Another helicopter missile strike in the late afternoon wounded at least three people on the edge of the camp, witnesses said.

On Tuesday, six Israeli troops died when their armored vehicle struck a land mine during a raid in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood. Palestinians grabbed the soldiers’ body parts, which were scattered over a wide area.

Israeli forces left Zeitoun early yesterday in an Egyptian-mediated deal under which Palestinians returned the men’s remains.

Palestinian medics said 16 people, including fighters and bystanders, were killed and 185 wounded in the two-day siege of the neighborhood.

“They (the Israelis) have moved their crimes from Zeitoun in Gaza City to Rafah,” Palestinian President Yasser Arafat told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah. “I call on the whole world to condemn these Israeli criminal acts.”

In Brussels, the European Commission decided to send $33 million in humanitarian aid to impoverished Palestinians in light of the upsurge in violence. The money would provide food aid, water sanitation and improved ambulance services.

The Palestinian ambushes in Zeitoun and Rafah, recalling tactics used by Hezbollah fighters against Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon, dealt the Israeli Army its heaviest blow since April 2002, when 13 soldiers were killed in the West Bank.

But Israel’s army chief, Gen. Moshe Yaalon, rejected any comparison with Lebanon, where frequent attacks by Hezbollah created a public groundswell in Israel for a troop withdrawal carried out in 2000 after 22 years of occupation.

“We will act as long as there is terror in the Gaza Strip... and weapons that can threaten (Israeli) communities in the area,” he told reporters.

Polls show most Israelis see Gaza as a liability that should be abandoned. Sharon vows to pursue his plan despite its defeat in a May 2 Likud vote that reflected fears Palestinian hard-liners would seize on a unilateral pullout as a victory.

“There is a war against terror, and in that war there are bad days,” Israeli Vice Premier Ehud Olmert said.

— Additional input from Reuters