Israel Continues Strikes on Gaza

For the second night in a row, Israel on Friday staged a deadly missile strike against Palestinian militants in the northern Gaza Strip.

Majid Matat, a field operative for the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, was killed when two missiles fired by Israeli aircraft incinerated his white Subaru just after dusk near the town of Beit Hanoun, Palestinian officials and witnesses said. Two of his comrades escaped.

Matat and his companions had just fired a homemade rocket toward Israel, using an open field as a launching ground, and were driving back toward Gaza City when their vehicle was hit, Palestinian security sources said.

The attack came less than 24 hours after Israeli missiles hit a car carrying members of Islamic Jihad as it was traveling through the Jabaliya refugee camp. Eight people were killed, including a senior commander of the militant group, at least two of his associates and several bystanders, Palestinian officials and the Israeli army said.

Israel declared an all-out campaign against Islamic Jihad after the group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing Wednesday in the northern coastal town of Hadera that killed five Israelis. But it has said that it will target other Palestinian militant groups as well, particularly if they are believed to be planning or carrying out attacks.

The Hadera bombing came two days after Israel killed an Islamic Jihad commander in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarm during what the army described as an arrest raid.

The week’s events have cast a heavy pall over hopes that the two sides might return to talks in the wake of Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, completed last month.

Underscoring the pessimistic mood, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, in an interview with an Israeli newspaper, spoke of a “governmental vacuum” in the Palestinian Authority.

Thousands of mourners packed the streets of Gaza on Friday for the funeral of Shadi Mohanna, the Islamic Jihad commander who was killed in Thursday’s missile strike. This was the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, and the mood was one of seething anger. Shouts of “Death to Israel!” rang out from the crowd.

In between missile strikes, Israeli warplanes have been setting off sonic booms over Gaza City, sending terrified Palestinian civilians scurrying for cover several times a day.

Israel, which has promised a wide-ranging offensive against the militants, seemed little inclined to heed a call for restraint from the Bush administration.

“Israel, of course, has a right to defend itself,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday. But he added that the Israeli government should “consider the consequences of its actions” on the goal of achieving a negotiated peace.

In recent months, senior Israeli officials have used increasingly derogatory terms to refer to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, but Mofaz’s comments, published Friday in Yediot Aharonot, were among the most scathing yet.

“Abu Mazen is a one-man show,” the newspaper quoted Mofaz as saying, using the nom de guerre by which Abbas is widely known. “There is no one to talk to.... The Palestinian Authority is not an address for us.”

Other Israeli officials asserted that even Palestinian militant factions that have observed a relative calm in recent months, such as Hamas, could expect to find themselves targeted in coming days and weeks.

“The message cannot be one of silence and restraint,” Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told Israel Radio. “The terror organizations must know that we will continue to hunt them everywhere, all the time.”

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Special correspondent Fayed abu Shammalah in Gaza City contributed to this report.