Tension rises as bulldozers tear down zoo in Rafah By Donald Macintyre in Rafah 22 May 2004
With a parrot that had escaped the Israelis perched on his shoulder, and a kangaroo crouching in the corner of the room, Mohammed Juma contemplated the little that was left of the zoo he had spent five years creating. "This was my life," he declared. "I watched my dream being destroyed."
The first bulldozer, he said, had come, escorted by a tank, at 2am on Thursday morning. Between then and when Israeli soldiers left the zoo at dawn yesterday, he had watched as the army killed birds and animals, uprooted shrubs, trees and grass, destroyed pens and cages, and then dumped much of the debris and wreckage into the zoo's swimming pool.
The despoliation of the zoo at the Brazil refugee camp may seem insignificant after 41 Palestinian deaths in Rafah this week and the trail of destruction left by the Israelis elsewhere in the Al Salaam and Brazil camps - the Israelis demolished an estimated 43 homes in Brazil, reducing them to rubble still awaiting clearance yesterday - but it is a potent symbol of the much wider havoc wrought in the two camps and a third, Tel Sultan, since the Rafah incursion began on Monday.
The zoo, the only one in the Gaza Strip, was perhaps the only attraction for children in a town almost entirely without public amenities. Admission cost just one shekel - about 12p. The destruction betrayed a wantonness that went beyond anything that could be deemed militarily necessary to hunt down militants or find tunnels used to smuggle explosives. Although soldiers commandeered the top floor of one of the three buildings for sniper positions, it was much more difficult to explain the damage to the harmless recreation space below their vantage point.
