Israeli court gives go-ahead for Gaza demolitions

JERUSALEM - Israel's Supreme Court cleared the way on Sunday for the army to demolish Palestinian refugees' homes near a flashpoint Israeli-controlled corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States opposed the demolition of homes in the Rafah refugee camp and urged an end to the cycle of violence.

About 120,000 Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stalled Gaza pullout after militants in the area killed 13 soldiers this week, dealing the Middle East's mightiest army its worst blow in two years.

Refusing to extend a stay sought by a Palestinian rights group, the court appeared to set broad terms for bulldozing homes in the "Philadelphi" buffer zone, saying the army could destroy houses for operational purposes or to protect soldiers.

Israeli political sources said hundreds of homes in Rafah refugee camp, on the edge of the corridor where the army suffered seven of the 13 fatalities, could be razed to widen the area and make it safer to patrol.

UN relief officials estimated that Israeli armoured bulldozers flattened more than 80 buildings in Rafah in the past days, leaving about 1100 Palestinians homeless. The army said it demolished structures used by gunmen.

"We will not allow Palestinian terrorism to attain the capabilities it aspires to, which would threaten the heart of the nation even after our disengagement from Gaza," Sharon told his cabinet at its weekly meeting on Sunday.

Powell told a news conference in Jordan: "We know that Israel has a right for self-defence but the kind of action they are taking in Rafah with the destruction of Palestinian homes we oppose. We don't think that is productive."

Powell also rebuked Yasser Arafat for urging Palestinians to "terrorise the enemy", saying the Palestinian president was making it "exceptionally difficult" to move the peace process forward.

Sharon has vowed to press ahead with a Gaza pullout despite his right-wing Likud party's rejection of the plan in a May 2 referendum. Israeli opponents of the blueprint say a withdrawal would "reward terror" after more than three years of violence.

A senior source in Sharon's office said the prime minister intended to submit a withdrawal proposal with only "minor alterations" to his cabinet. A Sharon aide said the amended plan should be ready within two to three weeks.

The original plan, endorsed by US President George W Bush, called for evacuating all Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. Four of the 120 in the West Bank would also go, but Sharon has vowed to hold on to major settlement blocs there.

In a historic political twist on Saturday, Israel's self-described "peace camp" packed the Tel Aviv square where warrior-turned-peacemaker Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995 and rallied around right-winger Sharon and his Gaza proposal.

"We will say goodbye to Gaza," said Shimon Peres, the opposition Labour Party leader and former prime minister who has watched violence effectively bury the interim peace deals he helped negotiate with the Palestinians in the 1990s.

In Gaza, 7500 Jews live in hard-to-defend settlements amid 1.3 million mostly impoverished Palestinians.

In addition to the 13 Israeli dead in Gaza this week, 29 Palestinians, militants and bystanders, were killed during fierce fighting.

Several bystanders were wounded in helicopter missile strikes in Gaza early on Sunday against an office affiliated with Arafat's Fatah group and another belonging to a pro-Hamas newspaper, witnesses said.



- REUTERS