Israeli Airstrike Sets Ministry in Gaza on Fire

Widening its offensive against the Hamas-dominated government, Israel early today bombarded the Palestinian Interior Ministry building in downtown Gaza City, setting it ablaze. The airstrike came a day after Israeli troops detained more than two dozen Hamas legislators and Cabinet ministers.

Israel’s roundup of Hamas elected officials, together with the targeting of a Hamas ministry for the first time since Israel moved tanks and troops into the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday, brought a complex new dimension to the standoff over a captured Israeli soldier.

The detentions drew expressions of international concern, and even Hamas’ rival, the Fatah faction, weighed in with sharp criticism, calling the arrests an effort by Israel to topple the Palestinian administration.

Israeli troops and armor remained massed at a disused airport at Gaza’s southern tip, but the military held off Thursday on what had been an expected ground offensive in northern Gaza, instead aiming intense artillery barrages at the territory’s northern swath.

In addition to the office of Interior Minister Said Siyam, a Hamas loyalist in charge of security forces, among them a controversial Hamas-dominated police unit, targets in today’s predawn airstrikes included a building the Israeli military said was used by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia with links to Fatah.

Israeli officials indicated that the delay in moving troops and armor into northern Gaza was at the behest of Egyptian mediators, who reportedly asked for more time to try to achieve a peaceful resolution of the crisis. Egypt reported progress toward reaching terms for the soldier’s release, but Israeli officials said they could not confirm any accord was in sight.

No deaths had been reported since the offensive began, but human rights groups have warned of a looming humanitarian emergency after airstrikes on Gaza knocked out infrastructure, including the Palestinian territory’s main power transformer, and left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity and with sharply curtailed water service.

There was no word on the fate of 19-year-old Cpl. Gilad Shalit, whose seizure Sunday by Palestinian militants sparked Israel’s first large-scale incursion into Gaza since it pulled out of the seaside strip more than nine months ago.

The Popular Resistance Committees, one of the militant factions purportedly holding Shalit, refused Thursday to offer any assurances that the missing soldier was still alive.

“Maybe there is a morgue waiting for his body, and maybe not,” a spokesman for the group, who goes by the nom de guerre of Abu Mujahed, told reporters in Gaza.

Israel has rejected demands by the militants and the Hamas-led government to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit’s freedom.

In Israel, anger and anxiety over Shalit’s fate grew after the discovery of the body of 18-year-old West Bank settler Eliyahu Asheri, kidnapped by the same group Sunday and apparently executed shortly thereafter. Asheri was buried Thursday in Jerusalem.

Israeli officials said a further roundup of Hamas activists was expected, after raids early Thursday resulted in the detention of 64 members of the radical Islamic group and of 23 people belonging to other Palestinian militant groups.

Those in custody included at least seven members of the Hamas-led Cabinet and at least 21 Hamas lawmakers, or nearly 30% of the group’s delegation in the Palestinian parliament, which it dominates.

Hours after the raids, confusion persisted as to whether Palestinian Authority Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer was in custody or had dropped out of sight. Hamas said he was not among those jailed.

Israeli officials said those detained could be charged with terrorism-related crimes. Israel, along with the United States, classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization, and its members can be charged under an Israeli law that bans membership in the group.

“We’re talking about Hamas members, which is an illegal association in legal parlance, but that phrase conceals, for all intents and purposes, people who are involved in terrorism,” Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh, who heads the Israeli army’s central command, told Army Radio.

Palestinian officials denounced the Israeli operation, with some referring to it as an “abduction” and others charging that the jailing of so many Hamas politicians at once could paralyze a government already beset by an international aid boycott.

The Group of 8 foreign ministers, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, issued a statement in Moscow expressing “particular concern” about the jailing of parliament members and Cabinet ministers. But Israel was unapologetic.

“We’re not involved in nation-building in the Palestinian Authority,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. “We are only involved in defending ourselves against terrorism.”

Some Fatah members said their leader, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, should act to fill a sudden vacuum in leadership.

“The Palestinian Authority is now crippled and is unable to carry out its duties,” Azzam Ahmed, a leading Fatah lawmaker, told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator with Israel and a Fatah legislator, said detention of Hamas politicians was unlikely to gain Shalit’s release. In a statement, Erekat said, “Kidnapping Palestinian lawmakers and holding the Palestinian government hostage will neither strengthen Israel’s hand ... nor bring any good to anyone in the region.”

Israeli officials denied that the roundup was intended to provide Israel with bargaining chips in possible negotiations over the soldier’s release.

“This was a security operation of law enforcement, the objective of which was to apprehend terror suspects,” Israeli Interior Minister Ronnie Bar-On told Israel Radio. Bar-On said suggestions that Israel might swap the Hamas figures for Shalit were “completely groundless.”

The detentions set off debate among Israelis over whether the tactic would help achieve what Israeli leaders have described as their central goal in stepping up military activities in the Gaza Strip and West Bank this week: freeing Shalit.

“Arresting Hamas people as members of a terror organization is legitimate, even if some are ministers and hide behind various titles. But I don’t see how this brings us closer to the missing soldier or helps us create a better tomorrow for both sides,” Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, a former army chief and Israeli negotiator, told Israel Radio.

Some analysts suggested that the new military offensive, dubbed “Summer Rains,” already has taken on a wider significance than freeing the abducted soldier.

Those expanded goals now include stopping Palestinians from firing Kassam rockets into Israel from northern Gaza, journalists Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff wrote in the daily Haaretz newspaper.

“Cpl. Shalit is the symbol, the justification for the planned Israeli attack, but the kidnapping is being exploited for a much broader campaign: ending Kassam fire on Sderot, undermining the status of Hamas’ Damascus [Syria] headquarters, and later, maybe even toppling the Hamas government,” they wrote.

In northern Gaza, word that Israel’s military would apparently hold off on an offensive -- at least for the moment -- brought little relief to frightened residents. In the agricultural villages of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, people hoarded supplies and took to sleeping in interior rooms that they believed offered the best protection if battles erupted outside.

Wednesday’s push by troops and tanks into southern Gaza met with little real resistance, but in Gaza’s north, militants built emplacements and laid homemade explosives in preparation for battle.

Rival gunmen with Hamas and Fatah appeared to have patched up their differences, teaming up on patrols and dividing positions to be defended -- a probably unintended consequence of the Israeli incursion.

In southern Gaza, Palestinian police struggled to keep order after masked militants blasted a 12-foot hole in the concrete barricade that runs along the frontier with Egypt.

King reported from Gaza City and Ellingwood from Jerusalem. Special correspondent Maher Abukhater in Ramallah contributed to this report.