Israel Views Raid on Camp in Gaza as ‘Purely Defensive’

Israel on Wednesday plunged deep into Palestinian-controlled territory for the first time in six months of strife, charging into a refugee camp here with tanks and bulldozers in a raid that exploded into some of the most intense fighting since the Palestinian uprising began.

Responding to a barrage of Palestinian mortar fire targeting Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and communities within Israel, army forces demolished more than two dozen homes and waged a ferocious four-hour ground battle with armed Palestinians before finally pulling out at dawn.

Israeli officials called the growing spate of mortar attacks “unacceptable.” Palestinian leaders branded the Khan Yunis attack an outrage and warned that they would escalate the conflict.

With violence seemingly spinning out of control, senior Israeli and Palestinian security officials nevertheless met late Wednesday in another U.S.-hosted attempt to ease tensions. Expectations were low.

Morning broke in Khan Yunis to reveal a disaster zone, with crowds of Palestinians picking through the debris of their homes. Women stacked clothes and pots and pans on their heads, weeping children looked for toys, and men angrily spoke of revenge as they loaded mattresses and blankets onto the backs of donkeys.

Two Palestinians were killed and nearly 30 were injured, including three journalists. The army said there were no Israeli casualties.

“We put all our money in this place, we had our dreams here, we had memories in every corner of this house,” a dejected Fatma Abulouz said, sitting on the beige stones that were all that remained of the home that her family had lived in since fleeing the Negev town of Beersheba during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. “And now everything is gone. We do not know where to sleep or where to go.”

Surrounded by a gaggle of children, her sister, Foraya, said: “Look at these kids. What have they done? How is it their fault?”

The incursion was launched in the wee hours of the morning, under cover of darkness. Firing shells and machine guns from tanks, Israeli forces advanced about 200 yards into Khan Yunis and began demolishing two blocks of buildings, witnesses said. Bulldozers rumbled and roared, toppling concrete walls and crumpling metal roofs.

As the Israelis pushed deeper into Palestinian territory, a wail sounded from the Khan Yunis mosque, calling on all residents with guns to take to the streets to repel “the invaders.” Hundreds of gunmen scrambled to duty, and the two sides traded fire for hours.

Israeli authorities said the raid was “purely defensive” and attacked positions that were being used by Palestinian fighters to shell Israeli targets.

Khan Yunis, home to about 60,000 refugees and an additional 100,000 residents, abuts the Gush Katif cluster of Jewish settlements, which have come under mortar attack in the last several days. Each mortar firing has drawn swift Israeli retaliation with missiles and rockets, crescendoing steadily until Wednesday morning’s operation.

“I ordered the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] to enter into the areas from which mortars have been fired at us nightly in all directions,” Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said. “Positions in which mortars were set up and fired, and from which our settlements were shelled--these are positions to which we don’t want the Palestinians to return.”

Palestinians fired 10 additional mortar shells toward other Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and communities in Israel on Wednesday night and early today.

Ben-Eliezer insisted that Israel has no interest in reoccupying Palestinian territory, noting that his troops had withdrawn.

Still, Wednesday’s raid, and the use of mortars by the Palestinians, marked a sharp escalation in a cycle of bloodshed that has already claimed more than 450 lives. The raid was precisely the sort of operation that members of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government have warned they would unleash.

Senior army officers have been urging the government to ignore the borders between Palestinian-ruled territory and Israel if necessary to effectively combat Palestinian militants.

During the campaign that led to his overwhelming electoral victory in February, the hawkish Sharon repeatedly assured Israelis that he would “know what to do” to halt Palestinian violence. He frequently cited his handling of the turbulent Gaza Strip of the 1970s, when, as military commander of the occupied zone, he launched an anti-terrorism campaign in which thousands of Palestinian homes were demolished and hundreds of Palestinian men and their families arrested or detained.

Troops were deployed into Khan Yunis just hours after Sharon toured Nahal Oz, an Israeli kibbutz near the border with Gaza that had been hit by Palestinian mortars. Residents there have been demanding better protection, and Sharon was briefed by military officials offering bleak assessments.

In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz to be published Friday, Sharon said his plan is to keep militants guessing about where Israeli forces would strike next.

“The goal of the plan is to place the terrorists in varying situations every day and to unbalance them so that they will be busy protecting themselves,” Sharon said in the interview. “In this government, we do not threaten--we act.”

Although Israeli special forces have conducted small-scale undercover operations into Palestinian territory, to kill or capture militants, Wednesday’s Khan Yunis raid was the first open operation, by far the largest and the only one to involve ground troops.

Palestinian leaders were furious. “They will pay the price,” said Hassan Asfour, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

“This is a cowardly action . . . that continues the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of our people,” said Saeb Erekat, who was the Palestinians’ chief negotiator, back when peace talks were taking place.

The Gaza Strip is a desolate, sandy coastal stretch about 25 miles long and only four miles wide in some areas. The Palestinian-controlled area is among the most densely populated land in the world. More than 1 million Palestinians--most of them refugees from the 1948 founding of the Jewish state--live in 60% of the strip. Fewer than 7,000 heavily guarded Jewish settlers inhabit the rest of the land.

Israel said it destroyed only 11 buildings and insisted that they were abandoned warehouses. Palestinian residents and the United Nations refugee agency said 29 buildings housing 51 families were flattened. Hundreds of people were reportedly left homeless.

Uzi Landau, Israel’s public security minister, praised the mission.

“I want to see this operation as the beginning, the very, very tip of the beginning of this struggle, and [I] will of course demand that the government [pursue] this policy of hitting at them all the time, everywhere, and not necessarily just where the mortars are,” Landau told Israel’s Army Radio.

“The Palestinian Authority will begin to pay such a heavy price that in the course of time it will become unbearable.”

*

Times staff writer Wilkinson reported from Jerusalem and special correspondent Abu Shammalah from Khan Yunis.