Path of destruction

Israeli troops pull back, leaving devastation across more than a mile and more may follow

BY JAMES RUPERT
STAFF CORRESPONDENT

May 22, 2004

RAFAH, Gaza Strip - In Israel's offensive here against Palestinian guerrillas, army tanks and bulldozers controlled the neighborhood called Brazil for a day and a half. When they pulled back Friday morning, it looked as though they had unleashed some giant monster that had eaten a swath through the city.

Brazil is technically part of the Rafah Refugee Camp, established for Palestinians after Israel's founding in 1948 and named for Brazilian troops who patrolled here under a UN mandate in the 1950s. But it hardened long ago into a dense, chaotic neighborhood of concrete-block homes and shops.

In a display of power, Israeli bulldozers slashed a 20- to 30-foot-wide path through more than a mile of the city. At Nile Street, about 300 yards north of the fortified wall that marks the Israeli-controlled zone on the border between Gaza and Egypt, the bulldozers plowed up the asphalt, digging a dirt ravine. They piled dirt, broken asphalt and concrete, tree trunks and utility poles into berms that blocked side streets. Other mounds of debris were shoved through storefronts.
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sits on their hands and does nothing and the US keeps giving Sharon more money to support his brutality.