Israel Kills Another Hamas Member, Targets Two More

Israel pressed ahead Sunday with a campaign of “targeted killings” of members of Hamas, assassinating a local commander in the Gaza Strip with a sniper’s bullet and launching a missile strike that narrowly missed two other members of the radical Islamist group.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, said he had ordered the Israeli army to act unrestrainedly to halt Hamas rocket and mortar fire that killed an Israeli woman last week. Israeli troops and armor remained massed on the border with Gaza, poised for a possible ground offensive.

Israel’s killing of eight Hamas members since Friday in the West Bank and Gaza drew threats from the group to abandon a cease-fire it and other Palestinian militant organizations declared in February.

Israel “has opened the gates of hell, and if they enter Gaza, we are not going to just stand by with our hands tied,” Hamas spokesman Mushir Masri told reporters in Gaza City.

Hamas’ attacks have been an embarrassment for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who persuaded the militant groups to declare an informal truce that was to last until the year’s end.

On Sunday night, the Palestinian leader pledged to act to contain militants’ attacks.

“We will do all we can do to prevent these rockets,” he told reporters at his Gaza City office.

Hours before he spoke, Hamas carried out a new round of mortar and rocket strikes. Two Israelis were wounded when a mortar shell hit a house in the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim near the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis.

The Hamas military commander killed by a single sniper’s bullet in Khan Yunis was identified as Saeed Seyam. Later, a missile fired by an Israeli aircraft struck a car carrying two Hamas members in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, but they managed to flee the vehicle. A Palestinian bystander was wounded.

Despite tensions, it appeared unlikely that the flare-up with Hamas would bring about any delay in Israel’s planned withdrawal from the 21 Jewish settlements of the Gaza Strip, which is to begin in about one month. Senior Israeli officials expressed determination to adhere to the schedule despite an escalating campaign of protests by Israeli opponents of the pullout.

In a melee that began Saturday night and lasted into the early hours of Sunday, hundreds of settlers and their supporters brawled with Israeli soldiers guarding the main road that leads to the Gaza settlements. Israeli authorities last week sealed off Gaza to nonresidents, and settlers are furiously protesting that edict.

Sharon and his top lieutenants accused the settlers and their supporters of sapping army manpower when soldiers were trying to protect Israeli civilians against Palestinian attacks.

“We shouldn’t let the settlers tie the army’s hands -- this behavior is intolerable,” Deputy Premier Shimon Peres told Israel Radio.

Settler leaders said they would try to mobilize tens of thousands of supporters for a march to begin today in a Negev desert town adjoining Gaza, with the aim of forcing their way into the strip. Sharon ordered military commanders to prevent the protesters from breaking through army lines.

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