Defense Minister Discusses a Gaza Strip Ground Offensive

In the latest and strongest signal by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Israel may intend to seize parts of the Gaza Strip, the country’s defense minister on Sunday explicitly raised the prospect of a ground offensive in the teeming Palestinian enclave.

For nearly two weeks, Gaza has been the scene of steadily escalating violence after the collapse of a self-declared truce by Palestinian militant groups and the near-snuffing out of hopes for the success of a U.S.-backed peace initiative.

The remarks of the defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, came hours after an Israeli truck driver was shot and seriously wounded by a Hamas gunman in southern Gaza, and thousands of Palestinians marched in furious funeral processions for an 8-year-old girl accidentally shot by Israeli troops and for two Hamas militants assassinated by Israeli helicopter-fired missiles a day earlier.

“We have the option of a ground operation in Gaza,” Mofaz told journalists as he, like several other top government officials, visited Israeli pupils on their first day back at school. “We will exercise it when we decide it is right to do so, at the appropriate time.”

Israel’s commander in the Gaza Strip, Col. Shuki Rimsky, told Israeli radio that in the last week, Palestinian militants in Gaza had staged 60 shooting attacks, 62 mortar firings and 14 attacks with homemade Kassam rockets.

Asked about the likelihood of an Israeli offensive, he replied: “We are always ready. We will go when we receive the order.”

Twice last week, Israel rattled the nerves of Palestinians when it sent armored vehicles and military earthmoving equipment into northern Gaza to uproot orchards that Israel said had served as cover for Palestinians firing Kassam rockets. Many Palestinians expressed fears then that the two brief incursions were a prelude to a larger-scale Gaza offensive.

Nearly all of the 10 Hamas leaders or operatives slain in an Israeli campaign of “targeted killings” that began Aug. 21, two days after a devastating bus bombing in Jerusalem, were said to have been involved in the manufacture and firing of mortars and rockets.

In recent days, Israel has employed unusually harsh rhetoric regarding Palestinians’ use of northern Gaza as a launchpad for Kassam rockets aimed at Jewish settlements inside Gaza and at Israeli towns and cities outside the strip.

The crude, homemade projectiles almost never cause injuries or damage, but Israel nonetheless regards them as a strategic threat, particularly in the wake of indications that Palestinians have succeeded in extending the rockets’ range.

Sharon hammered home that point with a visit to the southern coastal city of Ashkelon, where a Kassam rocket fired from Gaza fell harmlessly last week in an outlying industrial zone -- the farthest north yet that one has struck.

“Ashkelon will not become a front line, neither Ashkelon nor other places,” Sharon said. “When it comes to the security of Israel and its citizens, there will be no concession -- not now and not in the future.”

Traditionally, Israeli ground offensives in Gaza, even if short-lived, cause large numbers of Palestinian civilian casualties, because they generally involve the use of battlefield weapons -- tanks, helicopter gunships, F-16 fighter jets -- in crowded refugee camps and packed urban neighborhoods.

Israel engaged in a series of thrusts into Gaza late last year and early this year, but dramatically scaled back its presence in the seaside strip at the end of June, after the signing of the U.S.-sponsored peace initiative known as the “road map.” The talk of a new Israeli military campaign in Gaza is widely viewed as yet another indicator of the demise of the peace initiative.

In another sign of the deteriorating situation, Israeli authorities said Sunday that the number of intelligence warnings of terror attacks had significantly increased in recent days, particularly in Jerusalem and in northern Israel. The Jerusalem police chief, Mickey Levy, said officers had been yanked off desk duty and sent out to patrol the streets.

In the West Bank, sporadic shooting attacks continued. On Sunday, a foreign worker who was part of a construction crew for the security barrier running between the West Bank and Israel was shot and wounded, though not seriously. On Friday, a settler couple were ambushed while driving in the West Bank, killing the husband and wounding his wife.

Tensions have also been running high over the recent granting of access to non-Muslims at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque complex, known to Muslims as the Haram al Sharif, or “noble sanctuary.”

The top Muslim cleric in Jerusalem agreed several weeks ago to allow a renewal of visits to the site by Jews and Christians, but Palestinians have been angered by displays of religious fervor by Orthodox Jews, which are banned under terms of the accord.

On Sunday, police detained four Jewish men, all identified by authorities as right-wing activists, who threw themselves to the ground to pray.

They were to be banned from future visits, officials said.

The hilltop site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, is sacred in Judaism as the site of the Second Temple, of which the Western Wall is a remnant.

Against this troubled backdrop, Palestinians were seeking to paper over a rift between American-backed Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, who has lately been seeking to reclaim more power.

The Palestinians put off from today until Thursday what could be a highly charged session of the Palestinian parliament, which was to assess the performance of Abbas after 100 days in office.

There has been speculation that Arafat’s camp would seek to force a vote of no confidence, but mediators from both sides were said to be working to stave off such a confrontation.

The Palestinian information minister, Nabil Amr, speaking in the West Bank town of Ramallah, made a call Sunday for Palestinian unity in the face of what he called the Israeli threat.

“We must put an end to this internal crisis,” he said.