Hisham Abu Taha, Arab News

JERUSALEM, 18 May 2004 — Israeli forces surrounded a Gaza refugee camp to carry out a threatened mass demolition as the European Union called on the Jewish state to desist.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei pleaded for US intervention in rare talks with a top White House policymaker but received little more than expressions of concern.

The Israeli Army said it planned first to hit Palestinian fighters and then raze hundreds of houses and possibly dig a moat to block “arms-smuggling tunnels.”

The plan has also drawn UN condemnation as it could uproot thousands of Palestinians. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) says 12,600 Rafah Palestinians have been made homeless by the destruction of homes by Israeli forces since an uprising began in 2000.

Angry Palestinian leaders charged that the demolition drive contradicted Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the occupied Gaza Strip.

With scores of Israeli tanks and combat troop carriers ringing the teeming camp in southern Gaza, hundreds of residents piled bedding, furniture, clothes, floor tiles and other items on donkey carts and rickety old trucks and moved out.

UNRWA readied four schools with stockpiled food and water and set up rows of tents to take in 1,500 displaced people.

“There is no place for me to go. I don’t think I will return,” said Youssef Al-Jamal, 33, removing possessions from his home in the bullet-pocked, cinderblock camp of 90,000 people.

After Israel’s army chief said “hundreds of houses” would be flattened to widen a security corridor patrolled by troops along the border with Egypt, Qorei accused Israel of planning “ethnic cleansing and collective punishment of innocent civilians”.

Qorei, in a Berlin meeting on Monday with US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that somewhat eased Palestinians’ diplomatic isolation from the White House, appealed to Washington to rein in Israel.

“Qorei asked Rice to immediately intervene to stop the catastrophe in Rafah. He asked her to facilitate an immediate cease-fire as specified by the road map,” Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters by telephone from Berlin.

Rice said the planned demolitions were being discussed. “It’s a subject of conversation, a subject of concern,” Rice said after the talks with Qorei.

An EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels “condemned the large-scale demolition of Palestinian houses in the Rafah district of Gaza as disproportionate and in conflict with international law and also with Israel’s obligations under the road map.

“The Council (of EU ministers) called on the Israeli government to cease such demolitions immediately,” they added in a statement.

Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said the Israeli operations in Rafah were “dangerous” for peace. The international community understood Israel’s need to defend itself, Michel said. “But you cannot accept that Israel answers in such a violent way. It’s not acceptable. It’s of course very dangerous for the road map,” he added.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer warned that the international quartet backing Mideast peace should strive to speak with one voice.

— Additional input from agencies