More than 1,000 homeless after Israel sweeps through refuge camp

ISRAEL withdrew most forces from a Gaza Strip refugee camp yesterday after a swoop on suspected arms-smuggling tunnels, using tanks and bulldozers, that left eight Palestinian dead and more than 1,000 homeless.

Aides to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said he had fully recovered from illness. He held a meeting of his Fatah faction that confirmed a deal to have an emergency cabinet serve for an initial 30 days without an interior minister.

Saturday’s compromise, circumventing the key issue of control of the interior ministry, appeared to put in abeyance Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie’s threat to resign over Mr Arafat’s rejection of his nominee for the post, Nasser Youssef.

The interior minister would oversee any steps to rein in Palestinian militant groups hostile to a US-engineered "road map" plan for peace with Israel, now derailed by a relapse into violence on both sides.

Mr Youssef wants more powers than Mr Arafat is prepared to give him. Israel says Mr Arafat foments militant violence. He denies it.

“We decided on this position because of the Israeli military onslaught in Rafah.

“The upshot is that (Qurie) is prime minister in a cabinet working under emergency conditions,” said Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath.

Israeli tanks and armoured bulldozers were nowhere to be seen in the vast refugee quarter of Rafah, after three days of operations that killed three Palestinian militants and five civilians.

Israeli military sources said the army had withdrawn about 80 % of the forces that ploughed into Rafah on Thursday.

Peter Hansen, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency serving Palestinian refugees, said: “between 1,000 and 2,000 people have been left with nothing whatsoever”.

About 120 homes or blocks of flats were flattened, and dozens more severely damaged.