Israel Launches Possible Protracted Offensive in Gaza

Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles into a slum building in Gaza City at dusk Tuesday, killing a member of the radical group Islamic Jihad and a Palestinian policeman, wounding more than a dozen bystanders and inaugurating what could be a broad and prolonged offensive against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

Before dawn Wednesday, at least two more Palestinians were killed when Israeli tanks and armored bulldozers swept into the volatile town of Rafah, in southern Gaza. The army said Israeli forces fired on gunmen who were trying to plant a bomb in the path of the Israeli vehicles.

The airstrike in Gaza City occurred less than four hours after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s security Cabinet, a small group of top advisors and ministers, authorized a sustained military operation in the crowded seaside territory to retaliate for dual suicide bombings Sunday at the bustling Israeli seaport of Ashdod that killed 10 workers.

One of those killed in Tuesday’s air raid was a member of Islamic Jihad, the group confirmed, but the man believed to be the Israelis’ primary target -- Mohammed Haroubi, a local Islamic Jihad commander -- escaped.

Several Palestinian children, including a 2-year-old girl, were among the injured, according to hospital officials. The policeman who was killed had been on his way home, neighbors said.

As Israeli tanks and other forces massed near the crossings into the Gaza Strip at nightfall, the streets of Gaza’s towns and refugee camps emptied swiftly. People hurried home from work and school, and some crowded into markets and bakeries to stock up on supplies.

A major Israeli strike in response to the Ashdod attack had been expected. However, Sharon -- himself a lifelong military man -- had waited for Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz to return from abroad and present the views of senior generals before deciding on a course of action.

At the security Cabinet meeting, Mofaz advocated a series of “surgical strikes” against militants believed responsible for planning or carrying out attacks, Israeli officials who were present said. They said the campaign, including ground and air assaults, could last weeks.

Officially, Sharon’s government said little, releasing only a terse statement: “Following discussion, the Cabinet decided on the security establishment’s method of action against terrorist organizations.”

Tuesday’s strikes marked the latest blows traded in what has been a rapidly escalating struggle in Gaza in the weeks since Sharon unexpectedly announced that Israel was weighing a plan to withdraw from the enclave, seized from Egypt in the 1967 Middle East War. About 7,500 Jewish settlers live among more than 1.2 million Palestinians in the densely populated and desperately poor territory.

The suicide bombings at Ashdod, which Palestinian militants and Israeli security officials said had been intended as a “mega-attack” targeting the port’s fuel and chemical tanks, galvanized calls in Israel for strikes against Gaza-based militant groups.

The assailants, who came from the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, were the first Palestinian suicide bombers of the current conflict known to have made their way out of fenced-in Gaza and into Israel proper to stage an attack.

“The first course of action following the horrible attack in Ashdod and the even more horrible attack which could have happened

In recent weeks, the main militant groups -- Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia loosely tied to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction -- have been teaming up to carry out attacks, an arrangement that militant leaders say will continue.

Israel and the Palestinians are each eager to paint the other as the defeated party if Israel proceeds with its withdrawal from Gaza. The militants promise bolder attacks, and Israeli forces have been making incursions into the area in pursuit of militant leaders.

Before Tuesday’s airstrike in the Nasser neighborhood of Gaza City, witnesses reported hearing the roar of F-16 fighter planes, commonly used by Israel to mask the sound of approaching attack helicopters. Some people on the crowded street sought shelter.

“I heard a big explosion, and saw the house full of white smoke,” said taxi driver Saad Madhoun, who helped ferry the injured to a nearby hospital.

Hamas leaders, who were targeted by Israel in raids last summer and in early fall, were reported to have gone into hiding. Hamas issued a statement saying that Israel would pay dearly for any strikes against Palestinian civilians or Hamas members in Gaza.

On the Israeli side, even some of those who supported the Gaza offensive did not appear to believe it was possible to wipe out the militants’ infrastructure.

“You never finish with terror -- you only fight terror,” Justice Minister Tommy Lapid told Israel Radio.

Palestinian officials expressed dismay over Sharon’s assertion Monday night that no new negotiations were possible, at least for now. The Israeli leader and his Palestinian counterpart, Ahmed Korei, had been scheduled to meet for the first time this week.

Israeli President Moshe Katsav said Tuesday he believed relations with the Palestinians were at their lowest ebb since the 1967 war. He blamed the Palestinians’ lack of “leadership capable of exploiting the historical opportunities for reconciliation and peace.”

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