Israeli Forces Storm Into Gaza Town, Killing 5 Palestinians

Israeli tanks and helicopters stormed into a northern precinct of the Gaza Strip Thursday, killing five Palestinians and triggering charges that Israel is trying to sink peace prospects days before the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers are to meet.

Witnesses said 30 tanks and four bulldozers rolled into the ramshackle town of Beit Hanoun before dawn and ordered residents to stay indoors before firing tank shells at four houses. Two Palestinian gunmen died in sporadic shooting during the incursion, along with three youths aged 13, 15 and 16. More than a dozen residents were wounded.

The Israel Defense Forces said the operation was aimed at razing houses used by Palestinian militants to fire dozens of homemade rockets into a nearby Israeli settlement and town during the last two weeks, injuring 10 soldiers and four civilians.

The attack came as Palestinians took to the streets in their annual mourning over the establishment of Israel in 1948. It also came as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, prepare to meet and renew peace efforts.

The meeting, the first between the men as prime ministers, is tentatively scheduled for Saturday evening and has been billed as the most tangible advance since U.S. and international mediators unveiled a three-phase peace plan, or “road map,” last month.

Thursday’s incursion, however, along with the arrests of top leaders of a prominent Arab organization earlier in the week, were seen by many Palestinians as a provocation aimed at sabotaging peace efforts.

“This is a road map written in blood,” Palestinian lawmaker Jamal Shati said. “From the day they released the road map, Israel has escalated its aggression against the Palestinian people.”

At its core, the initiative envisions a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank by 2005, security guarantees for Israel and a halt to Jewish settlement activity in Palestinian territory. The conflict’s thorniest issues -- including the right to return to land that some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were chased off of when Israel won statehood 55 years ago -- are left until the final stages of negotiations.

Even before the plan can get off the ground, it has become a source of strife. The Palestinian side has formally accepted the road map and insists that it is already complying with key initiatives. They say it was U.S. pressure for government reforms that rocketed Abbas into office in the first place.

Israel has not accepted the peace plan, and says it won’t make concessions until Abbas neutralizes militant Palestinian organizations responsible for continued suicide bombings.

Sharon is expected to raise more than a dozen reservations to the plan on a Tuesday visit to Washington.

“The key words here are dismantle and disarm,” Raanan Gissin, Sharon’s senior advisor, said of the demand that Abbas eliminate terror before peace talks begin. “First we have to stabilize the patient, and the patient is very sick.”

He defended Thursday’s attack. “We’re responding to continued raining of [Palestinian militant] missiles and continued terror because of a lack of action by the Palestinians,” he said.

More than 700 Israelis have died from Palestinian suicide bombings and armed attacks since the current uprising, or intifada, was launched 31 months ago. Some 2,100 Palestinians have died in Israeli military incursions and “targeted killings” during the same period.

Militant groups such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad enjoy widespread support in the simmering, poverty-stricken Palestinian territories, and analysts say Abbas would become wildly unpopular if he cracks down on them without first winning concessions from Israel.

Abbas also faces pressure from within the Palestinian government, where aging Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has been reluctant to loosen his grip on power. Seen as a father figure in the decades-old push for Palestinian statehood, Arafat has been sidelined by the United States and Israel for alleged links to terrorism campaigns -- a charge he denies.

Thursday’s raid also coincided with Palestinians’ commemoration of what they call the Nakba, or catastrophe -- Israel’s founding. It is a day when Palestinians protest by the thousands and renew their demand for the right to return. Sharon and previous Israeli governments have rejected this call. There are roughly 4 million Palestinian refugees worldwide.

In Gaza City, a few miles from the military incursion, Palestinians marched with banners bearing the names of the Arab villages their families left in 1948. At a tent in front of legislative offices, 88-year-old Jouda Abu Rokba produced yellowing land deeds for a plot in Sderot, an Israeli town just across the border.

“I am still hopeful that I will return to my homeland,” he said. “It’s better to eat the sand than to live as a refugee and eat honey.”

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