Palestinians Flee Israeli Army in Gaza

By foot, by rattletrap truck and by donkey-drawn cart, hundreds of Palestinians fled their homes in a volatile refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday as the Israeli military tightened its grip on the area.

At least seven Palestinians were killed in a wave of Israeli missile strikes late Monday and early today in the Rafah camp, including one that hit near a mosque, Palestinian witnesses said. Three more Palestinians were killed in an early morning skirmish with Israeli troops on the outskirts of the camp, but it was not clear whether an expected large-scale Israeli incursion was underway.

Senior Israeli officials have signaled that a major military operation is in the works in the frontier zone around Rafah.

Expected measures included a ground offensive to hunt wanted Palestinian militants, possibly in concert with the demolition of hundreds of Palestinian homes.

On Monday, Israeli infantry forces, tanks and armored vehicles massed on the outskirts of the refugee camp, commandeering homes, closing back roads and erecting military outposts with camouflage netting and makeshift earthen fortifications.

Rafah, which lies close to the Egyptian border and abuts an Israeli patrol road, has been the scene of recent bloody confrontations between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen.

The army said its cordon was meant to halt the movement of guerrillas and weaponry in the area. Palestinian civilians, however, saw the military activity as a definitive sign that they should flee while they had the chance.

Hundreds of Palestinians found shelter in schools, mosques and other public buildings, said community leaders and international aid agencies.

“Thousands of people have nowhere to stay,” said Adnan Abu Hassneh, a spokesman in Gaza for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which oversees Palestinian refugee camps.

Mustafa Jamal, 72, who lives about 300 yards from the border, said he and his wife had decided to stay with one of their sons, who lives a quarter of a mile farther from the frontier. He hoped the extra distance would provide some safety. “People are so scared,” he said. “But we will stay in the camp -- we have nowhere else to go.”

In Berlin, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Korei appealed to Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. national security advisor, to help secure a cease-fire, restart negotiations with Israel and block the mass demolition of homes, according to Palestinian officials.

Despite the burgeoning tensions in Rafah -- which come on the heels of the most lethal week for the Israeli army in Gaza during the 3 1/2-year conflict, coupled with the deaths of nearly three dozen Palestinians -- Rice said she saw the atmosphere as “suddenly ripe” for progress toward Middle East peace.

The Bush administration is eager to capitalize on momentum generated by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s initiative for an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Although voters from Sharon’s conservative Likud Party rejected the plan in a May 2 referendum, the prime minister has indicated that he will keep trying to push it through with only minor changes.

“When things start to move, they can move very rapidly,” Rice said. Sharon’s plan, she said, could “unlock a process that has been pretty locked up” for several years.

Echoing weekend remarks by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Rice said Palestinian security services must be overhauled to prevent militant groups such as Hamas from moving to the fore.

Like Powell, Rice criticized Israel for destroying Palestinian homes in Gaza, although Sharon’s government says the demolitions are meant to deprive Palestinian militants of cover for attacks.

Israel says many of the buildings destroyed thus far served as endpoints for weapons-smuggling tunnels that run beneath the frontier.

The razing of homes, Rice said, is “a subject of conversation and a subject of concern.” Many Palestinians fleeing the Rafah camp Monday piled everything of value onto whatever transport they had been able to organize. Wooden carts teetered under loads of furniture, carpets, light fixtures, toilet bowls and kitchen sinks.

The Palestinian governor of Rafah, Majid Aga, said emergency stores of food and medical supplies were being readied in case large numbers of people wound up as long-term residents of tent cities that have already sprung up.

In the northern West Bank, meanwhile, Israeli troops clashed with hundreds of Jewish settlers Monday who tried to stop them from tearing down an unauthorized offshoot of a nearby settlement.

Hundreds of Israeli security forces battled settler demonstrators as they tore down a small stone structure at Mitzpe Yitzhar, an extension of the Yitzhar settlement near the Palestinian city of Nablus.

Israel pledged under the U.S.-backed “road map” peace plan to remove illegal offshoots to existing Jewish settlements. Peace groups say that only a handful were taken down, and almost all were quickly reestablished.

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Times staff writer Jeffrey Fleishman in Berlin and special correspondent Fayed abu Shammalah in Gaza City contributed to this report.