Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid Compares Demolitions and Destruction of Palestinian homes in Rafah Refugee Camp to Nazi Atrocities Against Jews During the Holocaust

Sun May 23, 2004 10:03 AM ET

By Jeffrey Heller JERUSALEM (Reuters) -

A senior cabinet member touched a sensitive nerve in Israel Sunday by appearing to compare its destruction of Palestinian homes in Rafah refugee camp to Nazi atrocities against Jews during the Holocaust.

Justice Minister Yosef Lapid, a Holocaust survivor, called in a cabinet meeting for an end to the demolitions, describing such a policy as inhumane and liable to lead to war crimes charges against Israel in the International Court of Justice.

"I saw on television an old woman picking through the rubble of her house in Rafah, looking for her medicine, and she reminded me of my grandmother who was expelled from her home during the Holocaust," political sources quoted him as saying.

Israeli armor and infantry pushed into the refugee camp Tuesday in what the army described as a search for tunnels used to smuggle weapons from nearby Egypt.

The operation, in which 42 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds made homeless, has drawn international criticism, including from Israel's main ally, the United States.

Rafah residents say Israeli forces have destroyed some 35 homes and damaged dozens. The army said it razed five homes and others were destroyed or damaged during battles with the resistance.

At the cabinet session, an angry Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Lapid, leader of the centrist Shinui party and his main partner in the governing coalition, that his remarks were "unacceptable and intolerable," the sources said.

Speaking later on Israel Radio, Lapid acknowledged that his criticism of the raid -- the strongest voiced by a government member -- "had raised all sort of associations" at the cabinet session.

"To remove any doubt, I said that I didn't mean the Germans or the Holocaust, but when you see an old woman, you think of your own grandmother," he told the radio. Lapid's grandmother perished in the gas chambers at Auschwitz death camp.

Residents in the Rafah refugee camp said Sunday Israeli helicopters directed machinegun fire at several houses in the camp and medics reported two wounded, one of them a 10-year-old boy.

Violence in Gaza has risen since Sharon proposed evacuating troops and illegal Israeli settlements in a plan backed by most Israelis and Washington, but rejected by his Likud Party, in a May 2 referendum.

He is widely expected to present an amended proposal to the cabinet on May 30.

Israeli media reports said the main change would be to conduct a phased evacuation of the 21 settlements in Gaza, giving Israel the option of suspending the pullout at various stages, rather than uproot all the enclaves simultaneously.

Palestinians have welcomed any Israeli withdrawal from land occupied in the 1967 Middle East war but want a negotiated rather than a unilateral Gaza pullout.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03.

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