Threat to Civilians Burgeons in Gaza

With mourners chanting calls for vengeance, the funeral procession wound its way through dusty streets on Sunday, bearing the shrouded bodies of a Palestinian mother, her grown son and young daughter.

Civilians are increasingly at risk in Israel’s nearly 2-week-old military offensive in the Gaza Strip, which in recent days has encompassed the use of heavy battlefield weapons such as tanks, assault helicopters and artillery on the edges of densely populated neighborhoods.

Most of the more than 50 Palestinians killed to date in the incursion have been militants, who have rushed to confront Israeli troops with antitank missiles, automatic rifles and rocketpropelled grenades.

But civilians account for a growing proportion of those injured in the close-quarters fighting, according to Palestinian medical officials.

Israel launched its offensive after Palestinian militants seized a 19-year-old Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid June 25. A dual aim of the military operation has been to rescue the soldier and halt rocket fire by Palestinian militants at Israeli cities and towns.

Many Palestinians believe that if the incursion grinds on for days or weeks, and if Israel pushes deeper into the crowded territory after largely confining itself to the fringes of cities and towns, the fate that befell Amna Hajaj and her son and daughter will become more common.

A powerful explosion tore through the family’s home at nightfall Saturday, as more than a dozen people were gathered in a small front courtyard, enjoying the evening respite from the day’s heat.

Killed instantly were Hajaj, in her late 40s; her son Mohammed, in his early 20s; and her 6-year-old daughter, Rawan. One other adult son and three more younger than 12 were seriously injured.

“Everything and everyone was covered in blood,” said Anwar Hajaj, a brother-in-law of the dead woman, who helped ferry the wounded to the hospital.

Palestinian witnesses insisted that an Israeli missile struck the low-slung family compound, and the Israeli military acknowledged staging a missile strike in the area at almost precisely the time the Hajaj home was hit.

But the army said its target was a group of Palestinian gunmen in the street, and that there was no indication any structure had been struck. Military sources said Sunday that the army investigation, while not yet complete, suggested that the home might have been hit by an antitank missile fired by militants.

In Gaza City’s main Shifa Hospital, 10-year-old Ibrahim Hajaj, his arms and legs swathed in bandages and his face peppered with shrapnel wounds, twisted back and forth in his cot and wailed. Family members tried to calm him.

“He knows his mother is dead,” said an uncle. “We tried to keep it from him, but he heard everyone saying so. And he saw her.”

The two sides will probably never agree on responsibility for what happened to the Hajaj family -- just as the Israelis and Palestinians consistently blame each other for the overall phenomenon of civilian casualties in times like these.

Palestinians contend that Israel employs a reckless degree of force in slum neighborhoods and refugee camps where many families live close together in concrete-block homes jammed into narrow streets.

Israel, in turn, accuses Palestinian militants of using civilians as human shields, deliberately launching attacks from deep within crowded areas in hopes that Israel will refrain from responding.

Moreover, military officials point out that attacks by guerrillas against the vastly superior Israeli forces tend to be hasty, hit-and-run affairs in which strikes often go awry and hit civilians instead of troops.

Although this incursion has not featured all-out urban warfare, the fighting has penetrated into populated areas for several days now -- first on the northern edge of Gaza, then closer to Gaza City.

Israeli forces, backed by tanks, helicopter gunships and artillery fire, have been operating since early Saturday on the city’s eastern edge, close to the main commercial crossing into the territory -- and also close to a neighborhood called Shajaiya.

Many members of Hamas’ military wing live in the area, and have been using its streets and soccer fields as staging grounds for firing on the Israeli troops. The Hajaj home lies on the fringes of the neighborhood.

Human rights groups say civilians are placed in harm’s way by combatants on both sides, but tend to place a greater burden of blame on Israel, as the invading force and the side in possession of far more powerful weaponry.

The Israeli military, however, says it goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid hurting or killing noncombatants.

“We undertake more restrictions than any other army in the world” when fighting in an urban setting, Col. Tamir Yadai, commander of Israel’s Golani infantry brigade, told Israel Radio on Sunday. “We have canceled planned operations whenever there was concern that our activity or fire might harm civilians, even at the cost of calculated risks to our own forces.”

Deaths such as those in the Hajaj family inflame Palestinian public fury against Israel and thus make it more difficult for Palestinian leaders to offer political concessions that could end the confrontation in Gaza, analysts say.

And civilian casualties tend to play directly into the hands of the militant groups, which use them to justify more attacks against Israeli targets.

“If you ask why we are firing rockets, look at how they killed kids, how they hurt innocent civilians,” said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the military wing of Hamas. His faction is one of those that claimed responsibility for the abduction of the Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reiterated Sunday that his government would consider a Palestinian cease-fire proposal only if Shalit were first released and militants stopped launching Kassam rockets into southern Israel.

One such rocket attack early Sunday wounded a man in the Israeli town of Sderot, which sits two miles outside Gaza and has been the most frequent target of the salvos. A second rocket around the same time damaged a house in Sderot but caused no injuries, the army said.

“The objective of the operation is to stop this terror,” Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon told Israel Radio. “This should be simple for the Palestinian side. The Palestinian people and its government should stop it, but if the Palestinian Authority won’t do it, Israel has to.”

Olmert told Cabinet ministers Sunday that Israel was involved in a war that does not lend itself to timetables, suggesting that the incursion could last for some time.

Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant, who heads the army’s southern command, also was quoted in the daily Yediot Aharonot newspaper Sunday as saying the incursion could last “another month, two months and, if need be, even more.”

Palestinian officials said a humanitarian crisis would result if the siege continued.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said power outages and shortages of fuel and food were already causing widespread hardship. He said the Gaza Strip had almost run out of fuel for generators, which for nearly two weeks have powered hospitals and municipal water systems after Israeli aircraft destroyed a key transformer station.

“It’s a catastrophic situation right now,” Erekat said.

*

Times staff writer Ken Ellingwood in Jerusalem contributed to this report.