Palestinians Say Israeli Aim Was to Destroy Framework
In one room of the Palestinian Ministry of Education, the litter of papers, glass, paper clips and periodicals was ankle-deep. The filing cabinets had been ransacked, and some toppled. Personal computers sat on the desks, their hard drives ripped out.

In another room, the Israeli soldiers had blasted open the safe. The explosion brought down the suspended ceiling there and in adjoining rooms, leaving a mess. Dr. Naim Abu Hommos, the deputy minister of education, said the safe had been used to keep all school test records since 1960. All were gone, he said, along with 40,000 shekels — about $8,500 — that had been kept there for petty cash.

That was the Ministry of Education. The neighboring Palestinian Legislative Council meeting hall was torn apart, and officials said the video archives of its sessions were gone. At the Ministry of Agriculture, the door had been blasted open by an explosion that also took out all the windows, and a neighbor said Israeli soldiers had filled two armored personnel carriers with boxes, presumably of records. It was the same at the Ministry of Industry.…

But even an abridged tour showed signs of a systematic effort by the Israeli Army to strip institutions of the Palestinian Authority of as much data as possible, with some apparent pillaging on the side. Officials at afflicted ministries and institutions said money was missing, as well as laptop computers, RAM modules, pocket organizers, video players and other items.

"What they are doing, and what is not being noticed enough, is that they are destroying all the records, all the archives, all the files, of the Palestinian Authority," said Yasir Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian minister of information. "This is an administrative massacre, and this will lead to chaos."…

Officials of the various international organizations that have been trying to build Palestinian institutions for self-rule said the damage to Palestinian records and data was a very high price to pay for the possibility of finding some incriminating information. They said the Israelis seemed not to have made a distinction between the political leadership and the civil service.

Nigel Roberts, the World Bank country director for the Palestinian areas, who toured Ramallah today for a preliminary assessment of the damage, said the Israeli actions represented a serious setback for international donors. "What is ironic here is that the donors have been building these institutions, inter alia, at the request of the state of Israel," he said.

The damage to the ministries is only a fraction of the destruction up and down the West Bank from the Israeli incursion. But in contrast to the physical damage, the loss of data could create long-term complications. At the Finance Ministry, officials said all payroll data for the Palestinian Authority seemed to be gone, so paying salaries, benefits and insurance to teachers, hospital workers, civil servants and police officers would pose a serious problem.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/international/middleeast/16RAMA.html