As the Palestinian authority requested an emergency UN Security Council session, Israel already started the second wave of assaults in Rafah, killing 12 residents and knocking down dozens of homes.
Among the people of Rafah there are dozens of young armed gunmen who are ready to fight and believe that without raising its coast, occupation would never end.
Gunmen with rifles and home made explosives are helplessly defending the city and its camp against tanks, choppers, and huge army bulldozers.
Most likely, an American veto would block any attempt to condemn Israel and demand the halt of home destructions in rafah.
The American Ambassador to the UN would likely call any drafted resolution submitted by the Arab block as biased, then, Europeans would likely invest efforts to modify and balance the drafted resolution, yet the modified resolutions will finally be vetoed.
A scenario that have been repeated many times that even a little kid in Rafah, sitting in a tent after his home was knocked down, will be able to draw its expected details.
It is beyond questioning that Israel, as the occupying power, faces a security problem in Rafah. Similar to all other occupied Palestinian areas, armed resistance groups are fighting against its continued occupation. Yet, in Rafh, an additional problem of weapons smuggled through the Egyptian borders exists.
Even when the scale of the problem is magnified considerably, it is not deniable. Tunnels were dug since long for smuggling drugs and prostitutes from Egypt into Gaza and Israel, and later for the money making weapon’s smuggling industry.
Even so, international law, when addressed the accepted norms of fighting in the case of direct military occupations, clearly stated the limits that occupiers have to abide to in a crisis situation.
International laws considered the destruction of residential homes as a war crime regardless of reasons behind it; whether done for revenge, deterrence, or to prevent smuggling of weapons.
Moreover, international laws considered the systematic wide scale destruction of civilian homes, similar to what Israel is doing right now in Rahah, as a crime against humanity.
Therefore, it is not clear what the Americans mean as they demand a balanced resolution or what U.S. Secretary of State Collin Powell meant as he asserted the right of Israel for self defense, shyly criticizing massive home demolitions in Rafah as “unproductiveâ€Â
It seems that the only case in which the U.S. would be bothered with war crimes or crimes against humanity would be when it is done with no crisis in the region; “done for fun.â€Â
History wise, all war crimes and crimes against humanity were conducted within a crisis environment. Yet, the crisis environment was never an excuse to call them “unproductive actsâ€Â; we still need to remember that we are talking about human lives and thousands of innocent people turned homeless.
