Hamas Halts Its Attacks on Israel From Gaza Strip

In an abrupt reversal after a two-day Israeli campaign of arrests and assassinations, the Palestinian militant group Hamas announced Sunday it would no longer use the Gaza Strip as a staging ground for attacks against Israel.

The declaration, delivered at a late-night news conference in Gaza City by Hamas’ top political leader, Mahmoud Zahar, came hours after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised a no-holds-barred crackdown on Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other militant organizations.

“The movement is announcing a halt to all its military operations from the Gaza Strip against the Israeli occupation,” Zahar told reporters. He said Hamas was acting to protect the interests of the Palestinian people.

Shortly before Zahar spoke, Israeli forces killed a top Islamic Jihad commander and his deputy by firing a missile into their car on a Gaza highway. It was the second deadly raid against Palestinian militants in just over 24 hours. A similar strike on Saturday killed two members of Hamas’ military wing.

In years past, it would have been unheard of for Hamas to announce so explicitly that it was suspending attacks, especially in the face of an Israeli military offensive. Even truce declarations by the group typically contain stridently defiant language and references to the continuation of the armed struggle.

But Hamas has been working hard to position itself as a political force in Gaza and intends to compete in parliamentary elections in January despite Israel’s angry objections to the group taking part in the vote.

Moreover, Zahar is the sole surviving member of Hamas’ founding leadership. Nearly all his close associates, including the group’s spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, were slain over the last two years in Israeli targeted killings.

It was not immediately clear whether Israel would ease or end its strikes at Hamas in response to Zahar’s declaration. Israeli aircraft early today fired on four structures in Gaza that the military described as Hamas weapons workshops.

Sharon, speaking on the eve of a key political showdown with his conservative rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, told his Cabinet on Sunday that he had authorized the military to take all necessary steps to quell rocket fire from Gaza aimed at nearby Israeli communities.

Palestinian militants fired three dozen homemade Kassam rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot over the weekend, the most sustained barrage since Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza on Sept. 12.

No rockets were fired Sunday, but the issue remained at the top of Israel’s political agenda in advance of an internal ballot in Sharon’s Likud Party. Today’s vote by the 3,000-member Central Committee is on when to hold the party’s leadership primary, but it is seen as a crucial indicator of whether the Sharon government can retain power.

The prime minister, taking a stance generally popular with the party’s hard-liners, outlined a series of measures that could include resuming assassinations of the militant groups’ top political leaders, carving out a buffer zone in northern Gaza to prevent rocket fire and hitting the seaside territory with artillery.

“There will be no restrictions on the use of all means to strike at the terrorists and the terror organizations, together with their weaponry and their hide-outs,” Sharon told Cabinet ministers at their weekly meeting. “We are not talking about a one-time action, but a continuing operation ... to hit the terrorists without letup.”

The Islamic Jihad commander killed in Sunday evening’s missile strike was identified as Mohammed Sheik Khalil, who the Israeli military said was responsible for a string of “murderous terror attacks.” Islamic Jihad, which in contrast to Hamas has continued a campaign of suicide bombings this year and has been targeted by Israeli forces, vowed revenge.

“There is no talk today of truce, but of war,” said Mohammed Hindi, a leader of the group’s political wing. “All the Palestinian people today are on a war footing.”

Earlier Sunday, in the biggest operation of its kind in months, Israel rounded up more than 200 Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in West Bank raids. Those arrested included about a dozen senior figures in Hamas, several of whom were planning to run in the Palestinian parliamentary elections next year. Israel also staged overnight airstrikes on several sites in Gaza that Palestinians said injured about 20 people.

The confrontation shattered what had been months of relative calm between Israel and Hamas, the most powerful of the Palestinian militant groups.

The spate of violence was set in motion by an explosion Friday at a Hamas rally in Gaza as the group was parading weaponry in a military-style march through a refugee camp. Sixteen Palestinians, some of them militants but others bystanders, were killed when a truck full of Kassam rockets blew up.

Even though Israel denied any responsibility and Palestinian officials indicated that the blast was caused by a mishandling of the homemade weapons, Hamas blamed Israel and said the weekend’s Palestinian rocket fire was retaliation.

For Sharon, the timing of the Gaza violence could not have been worse. He had brushed aside furious objections within Likud to move ahead with the pullout from the coastal strip, saying the benefits to Israel, both in monetary terms and reduced risk to soldiers, would outweigh the dangers.

Netanyahu, the former finance minister who is seeking to wrest the Likud leadership from Sharon, has contended for months that the withdrawal was a mistake and Hamas would use Gaza as a staging ground for redoubled attacks on Israel. Netanyahu quit his post last month to protest the pullout.

Polls commissioned by Israeli newspapers suggested Netanyahu’s camp would prevail in today’s vote, even though polls also show that the Israeli electorate is far more likely to vote for Likud with Sharon rather than Netanyahu as the party’s leader.

The bitterness of their quarrel was underscored Sunday night, when Netanyahu supporters apparently sabotaged the public-address system as Sharon was to begin his address at the opening of the Likud gathering. He walked out without giving his speech.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also is weathering domestic political storms. He has tried to avoid a head-on confrontation with Hamas, but Israeli pressure may leave him little choice but to try to disarm the group.

The chaos in Gaza threatened to scuttle an early-October summit between Abbas and Sharon. On Sunday, Israel said it had canceled a session meant to prepare for that meeting.

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Special correspondents Maher Abukhater in Ramallah and Fayed abu Shamallah in Gaza City contributed to this report.