Music by Sharon

In Al-Am'ari refugee camp near Ramallah and Deheisha camp near Bethlehem, Khaled Dawoud found wanton destruction and continuing defiance
More than two weeks after Israel's army ended its occupation of 10 refugee camps in the West Bank, residents are still repairing the traces of the destruction left behind. Israel's army raided the camps, claiming it was trying to arrest suspected "terrorists" responsible for attacks against soldiers and settlers. But the real aim, according to camp residents, was to punish them for their ongoing resistance and assuage the Israeli right-wing. By the time the Israeli army reached the camps, the militants had fled to nearby towns and villages to avoid the civilian bloodbath that street fighting with the Israeli army would entail. Despite this, the Israelis were not deterred from carrying out their crimes.
At Al-Am'ari refugee camp near Ramallah, signs of destruction are evident upon entering the overcrowded residential area. The huge tanks used by the Israeli army in the take-over flattened the walls of houses on both sides of the camp's narrow streets as they trundled through. Several cars were simply crushed and turned into scrap metal.
The first building to be taken over by the army was Al-Am'ari's Youth Activities Centre. The soldiers used explosives to blow up the centre's metal gate. Inside, everything was turned upside down and destroyed -- computers, sofas, walls, books as well as pictures of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Even copies of the Muslim holy book, the Qur'an, were desecrated by the invading troops, copies of which were later found torn and burned on the ground.
Jihad Tumlia, the centre's director, said that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had been looking to settle an old score with the Palestinian refugee camps. Following the Israeli army's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, one of the first steps to be taken by Sharon -- an army commander at the time -- was to take over the refugee camps where Palestinians, forced to leave their homes in 1948, had settled. "His campaign, then, failed to force residents of the camps to flee for a second time, and this is probably what he wanted to achieve this time. But he has failed again," Tumlia said.
Tumlia added that the amount of force used by the Israeli army to take over Al-Am'ari on 14 March was stunningly disproportionate. "More than 200 Israeli tanks surrounded the camp, which extends over no more than one kilometre. He [Sharon] did not need more than four tanks to surround the camp, so it was a clear display of force by the occupation army."
Fearing attacks by Palestinian fighters, the Israeli army used a new tactic in taking over the refugee camps, both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Besides the tanks, heavy shelling and Apache helicopters circling overhead, the invading troops were accompanied by bulldozers and construction equipment. In order to avoid walking in exposed areas of the camp's warren of narrow streets, the soldiers dug "mouse holes" in at least 80 houses. Since the camp's poorly-built dwellings are attached to each other, the soldiers punched holes in their walls and moved from one to the other until they had achieved total control of the camp.
Hussein Hatto owns a house near the camp's entrance. Israeli soldiers took over his house and locked him, his wife and their three children in one small room for four days. "They destroyed everything inside the house for no apparent reason," he said. "Whenever any of us wanted to go to the toilet, we had to be accompanied by a soldier as if it was not our house," he added. For the first two days, the family was left with little food, but on the third day, Hatto was surprised to find one of the soldiers entering what had, by then, been turned into a prison cell, offering him loaves of bread. "But I soon recognised the trick. There was an Israeli television camera behind him. I threw the bread in his face, cursed at him and locked the door. I told him I preferred to die with family rather than get anything from him," said the father.
After the Israeli army pulled out, Hatto discovered that the soldiers had stolen a CD player, his wife's gold jewellery and his daughter's cassettes. In place of her cassette tapes, Hatto's daughter, Renad, found a note written in poor English. It said, "You have good test (sic, taste) in music. Sorry about the mess. We had to do it. I love the same music myself. Sorry again."
The same story was repeated in several other houses that were taken over by the soldiers and turned into "hotels" during their occupation of the camp. In some houses -- like that of Wafaa Idris, the first female Palestinian to carry out a suicide bombing -- the destruction was total and nothing was left intact. "They destroyed all sofas, beds, kitchen facilities, the television, everything," said her brother, Mohamed, while loading the broken sofas on a truck to fix them.
The occupation army also raided the house of Maher El-Sho'ani, a leading Fatah activist at Al-Am'ari refugee camp. He was one of two people killed in the camp during the invasion. As he was leading the pullout of other fighters, Israeli snipers spotted him and shot him three times. His mother, who brought him and his two brothers up following their father's departure to Brazil, recounted the story: "When the invasion started, he met the other fighters and asked them, 'Do you want to die as martyrs or waste your life for no good cause?'" He then urged them to "die as martyrs so that they will put up posters of us afterwards. He died and now there are posters of him all over the camp," his mother added, weeping.
Once the Israeli army had taken over the camp, it forced all men between the ages of 14 and 50 to gather at a school. They were blindfolded, had their hands tied behind their backs and forced to wear scarves on their heads inscribed with the names of various Palestinian factions -- Al-Aqsa Brigades (Fatah), Ezeddine El-Qassam Brigades (Hamas) -- to display them to Israeli television cameras. Nearly all were released after the cameras left.
The crimes committed by Israel's army in Al-Am'ari were repeated in refugee camps throughout the West Bank. Three people were killed, eight houses were totally destroyed by explosives and a total of 100 houses were damaged through the digging of "mouse holes" at the Deheisha refugee camp in Bethlehem. The camp has a reputation of being a "militant camp," as several suicide bombers originated from there. This may well explain the massive force used by the Israeli army in taking over the camp. "For three days, they shelled the camp with F-16 planes and Apache helicopters," said Jalal A'saker, a resident. Water and electricity were also cut, and many families were locked in small rooms while the army occupied their houses.
The events experienced by the camp's residents will live on for a long time following the Israeli tanks' pullout. The 90-year-old father of Amjad Abu Laban, a United Nations employee at Deheisha, died on the second day of the invasion. When Amjad used his connections to seek permission from the Israeli army to bury him, his request was turned down. "I contacted the UN office and the Red Cross but the Israeli army's response was always negative," Abu Laban said. Given the Muslim tradition of burying the dead soon after they pass away, Abu Laban had no choice but to bury his father in the garden of his two-storey house. "Even during the burial, we were afraid that Israeli helicopters would spot us and shoot at us. We did everything very quietly and discreetly," he added.
Despite the suffering, residents of the camps remain defiant. They say that what they went through has only strengthened their determination to continue resisting the occupation until the final withdrawal.
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