Israeli raid leaves 8 Palestinians dead

Israeli troops backed by tanks and helicopter gunships killed eight Palestinians on Wednesday after surrounding a Gaza Strip town and clashing with militants who had made it the prime launching ground for rockets into Israel.

An Israeli soldier also died and 58 Palestinians were reported wounded in the early morning assault on Beit Hanoun, one of the biggest Israeli raids since the summer. The Israelis gained control of the town of 37,000 people after several hours of fighting and remained there early today, residents said.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said the operation had a “limited objective” -- to stop the daily firing of crude Kassam rockets into southern Israel. He said it did not mark an escalation of the Gaza campaign or the start of a reoccupation of the strip, from which Israeli troops and settlers had unilaterally withdrawn 14 months ago.

Israel’s forces have been entering and withdrawing from Gaza since late June after the capture of an Israeli soldier by gunmen from several armed groups, including the military wing of the governing Hamas movement. The soldier is still missing.

Meeting as Wednesday’s fighting was underway, Israel’s “security Cabinet” decided to shelve a range of proposals to intensify the 4-month-old offensive, including a long-term placement of troops along Gaza’s southern border to combat arms smuggling through tunnels from Egypt.

Peretz prevailed over hawkish members of the senior ministers group after a lengthy debate, participants in the meeting said.

“There are enough extremists [in Israel] arguing that if the Palestinians are firing indiscriminately at Israeli towns, then Israel must do the same in its military operations,” Peretz said later in an interview at Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv. “I strongly oppose this.”

In Wednesday’s raid, hundreds of Israeli infantry soldiers and dozens of tanks surrounded the farming town and four helicopters flew overhead, firing at suspected militant strongholds but wounding civilians as well. Hospital officials in Beit Hanoun identified two of the dead as noncombatants -- a policeman and a 24-year-old male pedestrian.

The Israeli staff sergeant killed was wounded in the thigh and bled to death, army officials said. He was the third Israeli to die in the Gaza offensive. More than 260 Palestinians, including militants and noncombatants, have been killed.

Once in control of the town Wednesday, Israeli soldiers used loudspeakers to order people to stay indoors, residents said. The troops went house to house looking for ammunition and militants.

“There is no way to resist because the tanks are on every corner,” Mahmoud Bayed said in a telephone interview from his home in Beit Hanoun.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called the assault a “despicable” act of “all-out war.”

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, whose militant Hamas movement is waging its own bloody feud against Abbas’ Fatah party, called the raid a “massacre.”

Hamas’ military wing issued a statement saying it had no intention of halting the rocket attacks, which have resulted in relatively few deaths but have kept several Israeli communities on edge. Haniyeh said, however, that he hoped the violence would not derail Egyptian-sponsored talks aimed at swapping hundreds of Hamas prisoners for the Israeli soldier seized in late June.

Beit Hanoun lies in the northeast corner of Gaza, less than three miles from Sderot, an Israeli town of 24,000 people. Israeli officials say about 300 of the 800 rockets fired into southern Israel this year were launched from Beit Hanoun. Israeli officials worry more about the smuggling of sophisticated weapons into southern Gaza. Government officials want to avoid a repeat of the summer experience in southern Lebanon, where, in the eyes of many Israelis, too little had been done over the years to prevent the Shiite militant group Hezbollah from building up a lethal arsenal.

Moving into the border zone between Gaza and Egypt last month, Israeli forces closed 15 tunnels they said were being used to bring in Russian-made Concourse antitank missiles, 122-millimeter Grad rockets and more than 15 tons of TNT.

The troops later withdrew, but their findings ignited debate in the government and armed forces over what to do next.

A group represented by Maj. Gen. Yoav Gallant, head of Israeli southern military command, has pushed a plan for a long-term reoccupation of the Gaza-Egypt border. Gallant told a parliamentary committee Tuesday that Hamas was quickly on its way to creating a full division of commandos specializing in the use of antitank missiles.

Avigdor Lieberman, who joined the Cabinet this week, was quoted as saying at Wednesday’s meeting that Israel should apply the “Russia-in-Chechnya model,” meaning that it should overthrow Hamas and install a puppet regime in the Palestinian territories.

Peretz, the defense minister, acknowledged in the interview that “advanced war material has been rapidly pouring into the Gaza Strip.” But he said he had insisted at Wednesday’s meeting that there was still hope of persuading Egypt and the European Union, which were left in charge of border checkpoints under a U.S.-brokered plan, to stop the arms traffic.

He also expressed hope that a deal to release the Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, would lead to a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Such faith in diplomacy is now a minority view among Israeli leaders. “We should not delude ourselves that the Egyptians will do our work for us,” said Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the parliament’s security and foreign affairs committee.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is expected to discuss military options in Gaza with President Bush when they meet in Washington this month, and Israeli commentators have predicted that any significant Israeli escalation will have to wait until after those talks.

“The military option will always be there, but it must be the last option, not the first,” Peretz said. “If there is a diplomatic option, it must be exhausted, and currently there is still enough diplomatic room for maneuver.”

boudreaux@latimes.com

Times special correspondent Rushdi abu Alouf in Gaza City contributed to this report.