Israeli forces move into two Gaza towns

The Guardian
Nov. 23, 2006

Israeli troops, tanks and armoured vehicles today moved into two towns in northern Gaza, but the Israeli security cabinet decided against a larger offensive.

A gunman from the Hamas group had been killed and three teenage Palestinian girls wounded by Israeli fire outside a school, Palestinian hospital officials said.

The Israeli army said one soldier was wounded after an anti-tank rocket hit him in what Palestinians described as a ferocious gun battle.

Palestinian officials said Israeli snipers had positioned themselves on more than a dozen rooftops in Beit Hanoun and Jebaliya Gaza while troops fanned out on the ground.

As Israeli forces sought to track down Palestinian rocket teams, militants continued to fire missiles into southern Israel. Rockets hit a school just before pupils arrived.

Today's attacks came a day after a 43-year-old man was killed in a Qassam rocket attack on a factory in Sderot. He was the second Israeli killed in less than a week.

Militants have fired 100 of the homemade Qassams at Israel since the shelling of Beit Hanoun two weeks ago killed 18 members of a single family as they slept in their house. The Israeli military blamed the shelling of the Athamna family on a fault in its artillery.

Israeli forces and settlers left Gaza last year, but the military went back in after militants captured an Israeli soldier in a border raid in June.

Israel has killed more than 370 Palestinians in Gaza, about half of them civilians, since it began the offensive, hospital officials and residents say; three Israeli soldiers have been killed.

Some cabinet members have been pressing the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, to take tougher action amid growing frustration in the towns and villages bordering Gaza subjected to missile attacks.

But Mr Olmert, whose popularity plummeted after the botched operation against Hizbullah in southern Lebanon in the summer, is wary of another big military operation. Last week, he appeared to rule out an all-out assault, saying rockets could not be halted "in one fell swoop".

Reuters reported that some Israeli officials had floated the idea of an internationally brokered deal to end the fighting and possibly allow deployment of foreign peacekeepers in Gaza, but discussion was at a very early stage.

Israel is watching to see whether the thousands of international troops deployed in southern Lebanon can keep the peace after last summer's conflict, which was sparked by the abduction of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.