Amnesty report slams Israel
About 700 Palestinians and 109 Israelis died in attacks and shootings in 2004, while house demolitions in Gaza left almost 4,000 Palestinian homeless, human rights group Amnesty International shows in annual report.
Fewer Israelis died by the hands of Palestinian terrorists in 2004 than the year before, while the number of Palestinians killed in army operations increased, the human rights group Amnesty International said on Wednesday.
The group's annual report on world violations of human rights said that about 109 Israelis, including 59 civilian adults and eight children, died in Palestinian suicide bombings or other attacks in 2004 in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza, marking a decrease from about 200 killed in 2003.
About 700 Palestinians, including about 150 children, were killed during army operations in the West Bank and Gaza in 2004, up from about 600 Palestinians who died by IDF fire in 2003, Amnesty said. The report did not specify how many of the Palestinians killed were gunmen and how many were civilians.
About 120 were killed by Israeli missile strikes, the report said. Amnesty has often criticized Israel of targeting terrorists in crowded neighborhoods and causing civilian casualties during more than four years of violence.
Palestinian attacks decrease
The number of Palestinian attacks decreased in 2004. Israel carried out several large army operations in the West Bank and Gaza and killed many senior terrorist leaders in missile strikes, including Hamas’s Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in March 2004 and Abdel al-Aziz al-Rantisi a month later.
Violence has slowed down in recent months after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas declared a cease-fire in February to halt a four-year-old Palestinian uprising.
Palestinian terrorist groups agreed in March to abide by a de facto truce as long as Israel stops its operations in the West Bank and Gaza.
Many of the Palestinian shooting and bombing attacks occurred in settlements and army bases in Gaza. Israel plans to remove all 8,500 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip this summer, where they live among 1.3 million Palestinians.
Meretz MK: Gaza plan an excuse
Zehava Galon of the left-wing Meretz party called for an Knesset committee to discuss the findings of the report, saying the government was using its Gaza plan as an excuse to continue violence and house demolitions.
Israel is concerned that Gaza terrorists, who hope to claim the withdrawal as a victory, will try to seize control of the area after the pullout. In fall 2004, it launched a series of deadly army operations, including its biggest in the territory to date, to stop gunmen from continuing to launch rockets at Israeli towns and Jewish settlements.
House demolitions in the West Bank and Gaza by the Israeli army increased in 2004, the report said. Israel also destroyed some 300 homes and damaged about 270 more in the Rafah refugee camp in south Gaza last May, rendering almost 4,000 Palestinians homeless, Amnesty said.
The IDF has in the past destroyed Palestinian houses, many of which are abandoned, to clear paths for tanks during operations to root out gunmen. Many houses are wrecked during gun battles, and terrorists in Gaza often have used homes as gun nests or to hide tunnels used for smuggling weapons from bordering Egypt.
The army has recently stopped its policy of demolishing homes of the families of suicide bombers, which Palestinians and international rights groups had branded as collective punishment.
