Israeli tanks and troops began the largest reoccupation of northern Gaza on Friday since the Palestinian uprising began four years ago.
Ariel Sharon ordered the tanks in to prevent Hamas scuppering his plan to withdraw Jewish settlers from the territory and impose an emasculated state on the Palestinians.
The Israeli offensive follows a Hamas rocket attack that killed two small children in the Israeli town of Sderot.
Israeli radio quoted Sharon as telling his Cabinet: ”What can we do? The Jews, too, have a right to live. If this entails difficulties for the Palestinians, that is part of the price.”
Hundreds of soldiers backed by about 200 tanks, armoured vehicles and helicopters reoccupied the towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun and took control of a 5-mile wide area along the border.
On Friday night two Israeli missiles fired from a drone killed a Hamas militant and wounded eight other Palestinians, witnesses said.
The army also strengthened its force in Jabaliya refugee camp, a Hamas and Islamic Jihad stronghold where it met stiff resistance on Thursday, when nearly 30 people died in some of the bloodiest fighting of the intifada.
Earlier at least nine Palestinians were killed by rocket strikes on Jabaliya, including two Hamas fighters on a motorbike. A second rocket killed three people, apparently all civilians, near a school.
The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, called the Israeli offensive ”state terror” and called for international intervention.
The Israeli army says its troops will focus on hunting down Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters, searching for rocket-manufacturing workshops, and demolishing houses which provide cover for the missiles to be fired.
But a dozen previous such operations have failed to stop the rockets, including the army’s five-week occupation of Beit Hanoun in the summer.
Hamas demonstrated the continued difficulty of ending the attacks by firing another rocket into Sderot on Friday, without causing injury.
Several Cabinet ministers proposed putting additional pressure on the civilian population. The hardline defence minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told the security cabinet meeting that the army should smash Gaza’s power and water infrastructure to persuade ordinary Palestinians to oppose the Hamas rocket attacks.
Sharon is under pressure from critics in his own party who say his pledge to pull Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip has emboldened Hamas and other resistance groups.
Yuval Steinitz, chairperson of the Israeli Parliament’s defence committee, said he intended to press Sharon to launch an assault to seize the entire Gaza Strip, modelled on the army’s reoccupation of the West Bank two years ago in Operation Defensive Shield.
”Israel should wage Opera tion Defensive Shield number two in Gaza, take control of the entire strip in a widespread operation over a period of a few weeks to gather information, destroy the terrorist organisations’ infrastructure and wipe out any slicks of arms as well as the foundations for manufacturing Qassam rockets,” he said.
Netanyahu said that the prime minister might have to cancel the withdrawal plan if the attacks continued.
The escalation of the conflict also increased the pressure to hasten the withdrawal of Jewish settlers and military bases.
An opposition Labour MP, Ophir Pines-Paz, said that Sharon risked embroiling Israel in a drawn-out war of attrition in Gaza.
”The pullout from Gaza must be determined and quick, not according to the hesitant planning that invites an unending war of attrition,” he added.
Hamas has said it will cease attacks on Israeli communities once the settlers have gone. – Guardian Unlimited Â