Israeli Troops and Armor Surge Into Gaza

Israeli troops and tanks, backed by fierce aerial bombardment, punched their way into the southern Gaza Strip early today, hours after Israel declared that time was running out for Palestinian militants to free an Israeli soldier seized in a cross-border raid.

The offensive was by far the largest since Israel unilaterally pulled its troops out of the seaside territory more than nine months ago. In the intervening months, Israel has responded to Palestinian militants’ rocket attacks with airstrikes and artillery barrages.

But this is the first time since the withdrawal that large concentrations of Israeli forces have entered the restive, densely populated coastal territory.

The attack began late Tuesday when Israeli warplanes blew up a bridge in central Gaza, with loud booms reverberating across Gaza City -- a move Israeli military officials said was meant to prevent the captors of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19, from moving him.

Later, two other bridges and a power plant were struck, sending billows of white smoke into a night sky lighted by flames and flares.

The air offensive in effect sliced Gaza into three sectors and knocked out power to large swaths, though electricity was restored at least temporarily in Gaza City and other northern areas. There was no immediate word on any Palestinian casualties or the number of Israeli troops that crossed into Gaza.

Military analysts said the incursion was the first phase of an operation that would intensify, possibly to include targeting Hamas leaders, unless Shalit is released.

“We are trying to make it clear to the Palestinian Authority and terrorist organizations that we’re very serious about this and about Cpl. Shalit’s safety and quick return home,” said Capt. Noa Meir, an Israeli military spokeswoman.

Officials said Israel did not want to seize the Gaza Strip, which it occupied for 38 years.

“We have no interest in returning to a place we have left. We seek dialogue, not a bloodbath,” Israel’s infrastructure minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, said early today. “If they return the soldier, sit down at the negotiating table -- we’re out. There’s nothing for us there.”

In the hours before the strike, Palestinians girded for attack, topping bulldozed mounds of sand along urban thoroughfares with barbed wire and laying what appeared to be homemade explosives in the expected path of Israeli tanks massed just across the border.

Against the backdrop of battle preparations by both sides, the Palestinians’ ruling Hamas movement and the rival Fatah faction announced Tuesday that they had tentatively agreed on a political platform that could lead to negotiations with Israel.

However, the move appeared to be more of an effort to present a symbolic united front at a time of crisis than to genuinely alter the hard-line stance that has led to the Hamas-dominated government’s diplomatic and economic isolation. The Islamist Hamas movement emphasized that it was still not willing to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

The offensive was sparked by an audacious cross-border raid Sunday in which Palestinian militants captured Shalit and killed two other soldiers. Two of the Palestinian attackers were killed.

The consortium of Hamas-linked groups claiming to hold Shalit warned Tuesday against any attempt to rescue him, saying it would result in failure and bloodshed. That was a chilling and probably deliberate reminder to Israelis that the last time Palestinian militants managed to seize an Israeli soldier, in 1994, he was subsequently killed in an Israeli rescue raid.

“The soldier is in a secure location to which the Zionists’ reach does not extend,” Mohammed Abdelal, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, one of three groups thought to have taken part in the raid, told reporters in Gaza City.

The purported captors have demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners who are female or younger than 18 in exchange for information about Shalit, but have provided no proof he is alive.

Israel said no prisoner exchange was being contemplated.

Israeli military sources said they believed Shalit was being held in southern Gaza, a stronghold for militant Palestinian groups that have engaged in abductions of foreigners and Palestinian political rivals.

The Israeli troop incursion was concentrated east of the southern border town of Rafah. But the scale and intended duration of the military push were not clear.

In the initial offensive, Israeli soldiers did not enter Gaza City or its immediate environs, where in some neighborhoods masked militants flooded the streets and mosque loudspeakers called on people to resist.

“Take up your rifles and fight!” a senior leader of Hamas’ military wing, Nizar Rayan, said in a broadcast exhortation.

Complex mediation efforts led by Egypt continued Tuesday. Because Shalit holds dual French-Israeli citizenship, French diplomats were also involved, but they were close-mouthed about their role.

The United States also urged restraint on Israel’s part.

“There really needs to be an effort now to try and calm the situation,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters en route to Pakistan.

Seeking to step up the pressure on the Hamas government, Israel closed its border crossings with Gaza on Monday. Combined with a naval blockade, the closure has effectively barred the importation of food, fuel and other goods. Israeli media reported that government leaders also were considering cutting off electricity and water.

Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Israel was asking governments to withhold donations to the Palestinian Authority until the soldier is freed.

Peres also said it appeared that Hamas’ political leader, Khaled Meshaal, a hard-liner who is based in Damascus, the Syrian capital, was responsible for Sunday’s attack -- the most explicit public accusation against Meshaal from a senior Israeli official.

“It’s clear that Khaled Meshaal gave the order for this operation, and he wants to destroy prospects for peace,” Peres told reporters after visiting Shalit’s parents in the Galilee region.

In the streets of Gaza City on Tuesday, the mood was one of anger and defiance, with many saying that Palestinians should not free the Israeli soldier without getting something in return.

Atop makeshift barricades of sand, concrete blocks and debris, young Palestinian boys played with toy rifles. Aerial drones and other aircraft could be heard circling overhead, and Israeli gunships were visible through the heat haze offshore in the Mediterranean.

Adding to the jittery atmosphere, a car exploded Tuesday close to the Gaza City residence of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who was not in the building at the time.

One man, described as a Hamas militant, was killed and several others were wounded. Palestinians called it an assassination by Israel, but the Israeli military denied any involvement.

The announcement of a political agreement by Hamas and Fatah came after weeks of negotiations, and after Abbas said last month that he would put the question of whether to recognize Israel to Palestinian voters in a referendum.

Under the tentative agreement, Abbas would be empowered to hold negotiations with Israel but any agreements reached would require the approval of the Hamas-dominated parliament.

The document appeared to fall far short of international and Israeli demands on Hamas. Israel dismissed the accord as a “diplomatic non-starter.”

The negotiations over a Hamas-Fatah political pact and the capture of Shalit have laid bare the divisions within Hamas.

The group’s military wing, thought to report primarily to exiled leaders in Damascus, said it took part in the raid that brought about the soldier’s capture. The Hamas-led government, meanwhile, urged that the soldier not be harmed.

“We ... don’t want to reach a situation of bloodshed,” government spokesman Ghazi Hamad, who speaks fluent Hebrew, told Israel’s Army Radio.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said during a visit Tuesday to the agricultural community of Kerem Shalom, where the Palestinian attack took place, that Israel had no choice but to respond decisively to a raid on its soil.

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King reported from Gaza City and Ellingwood from Jerusalem.