Posted on 10/21/2003 2:55:42 PM PDT by SJackson
USSEIRAT REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip, Oct. 21 — It is not unusual for Israelis and Palestinians to have opposing versions of reality. But it is unusual for both sides to display the kind of concrete, if conflicting, evidence that they presented today for the violence that convulsed these streets on Monday night.
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The Palestinians here had their grief and their rage, their seven dead and their many wounded. The Israeli Air Force had its videotape.
Palestinian witness after Palestinian witness told the same story: An Israeli rocket struck near a car; then, after two, three or perhaps five minutes passed, a second rocket hit.
By then, according to this version, a crowd had gathered. Dr. Zain al Abedin Shahin, 29, had time to run down the street from his clinic to help the wounded; Muhammad Baroud, 12, had time to dash out of his house. Both, with others, died in the second blast, Palestinians here said.
"They are killers," Muhammad's father, Ziad, 42, said of the Israelis. Having been sent by his wife to retrieve his son after the first blast, Mr. Baroud had shrapnel wounds to his right knee, left hip, left wrist and neck from what he said was the second rocket.
Yet, after the missile strike, one of five Israeli air attacks on Monday, brought unusual criticism from within Israel, the Air Force took the rare step of showing reporters video footage it said was taken of the incident by a drone overhead.
The black-and-white images, which the drone transmitted live to commanders directing the helicopter crew that fired the missiles, showed a first missile striking a car traveling an empty street.
The car, which Israel said was carrying Hamas militants, continued for about 50 yards until it appeared to bump a curb. Then it backed up almost to its original spot. A single person appeared to be approaching when the car was destroyed in a direct hit by a second missile. The strikes were a minute apart.
It was at least 90 seconds after the second blast that dozens of people were seen leaving their houses to surround the wreckage. Moments later, the footage ended. The senior Air Force officer who had presented it said there was nothing more of interest to see.
"We would not allow any munition to be launched on a massive gathering of people," the officer said. "To fire into a crowd is not professional, it is not ethical and it's not moral."
He spoke after Israeli politicians and military analysts sharply criticized Monday's air attacks, citing civilian casualties. Alex Fishman, one of Israel's foremost military journalists and no dove, wondered in the pages of the largest daily, Yedioth Ahronoth, if Israel still imposed any limits on itself. "How long can we hurt innocent civilians?" he asked. "Is it conceivable that somebody on our side has decided that all of Palestinian society is the target?"
He also asked if the military method used on Monday "actually intensifies and broadens the circles of hatred for generations."
Israeli military officers say that it is the militants who endanger Palestinian civilians by hiding among them.
Palestinian hospital officials initially reported eight killed here. But seven bodies, including that of Mohammad, wrapped tight as a mummy in a green Hamas flag, were carried today by a chanting crowd of thousands through the missile-pitted street, past a block-long "condolence tent" set up for the many grieving families.
Inside the houses, weeping women mourned separately. Outside, gunmen fired semi-automatic rifles into the air. Against the cinder-block walls of this fetid warren, masked Hamas militants armed with hatchets spray-painted tributes to the dead, claiming them as martyrs and heaping them onto their pile of grievances.
Hamas vowed to retaliate for the Israeli air strike.
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Israel air force defends deadly Gaza strikes
TEL AVIV (AFP) Oct 21, 2003
A senior Israeli Air Force officer Tuesday defended a controversial series of strikes in the Gaza Strip, saying they had all hit their targets and that the number of casualties had been exaggerated. "These five attacks yesterday hit all the right targets accurately," said the officer, speaking to journalists here on condition of anonymity.
Palestinian medical sources say 10 people were killed and some 70 others injured in the five strikes Monday.
The deadliest attack hit late Monday in Nusseirat refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip, where seven Palestinians were killed and 40 wounded, 10 of them seriously, according to Palestinian sources.
An Apache combat helicopter scored a direct hit on a car with a missile, witnesses said, adding that the target was a local leader of Hamas' armed wing, who apparently survived while other passengers were wounded.
A second missile struck and killed residents who came to the rescue of the passengers, the witnesses said. Zein Shahin, a 30-year-old doctor who arrived at the scene by ambulance, was among the dead.
But the officer who aired footage from an unmanned drone of the Nusseirat strike, said that "they exaggerate by far the number of dead and injured," without offering any alternative toll.
A military spokesman also said six of those killed on Monday were members of the radical Islamic movement Hamas.
The scale of the attacks and casualties has caused unease among Israeli circles, with one cabinet minister calling on the government to apologise for hitting civilians.
The officer disputed the idea that there were many civilians in the area during the Nusseirat strikes.
"We would not allow any munitions to be launched into a massive gathering of people. We have never done it and did not do it this time," he said.
"Looking for targets in urban areas is not a great pleasure but we are fighting to defend our people."
Nothing is unprofessional, unethical, immoral in a war with monsters.
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