Israel Presses Into Populated Gaza Areas

The din of machine guns and tank fire rattled through this farming village Thursday, and 19 Palestinians died as Israeli troops pushed into populated areas for the first time since mounting an offensive in the Gaza Strip last week.

An Israeli soldier also was killed Thursday during clashes reminiscent of the street fighting that broke out regularly during the years before Israel withdrew Jewish settlers and soldiers from the territory last summer. Dozens of Palestinians and two soldiers were reported wounded.

The soldier’s death was the first Israeli combat fatality of the 9-day-old incursion, launched after Palestinian militants abducted another soldier in a cross-border raid.

Amid the thunder of Israeli tank shells and circling attack helicopters, masked gunmen wired bombs on surrounding streets in preparation for an Israeli move deeper into Beit Lahiya, whose sparsely populated outskirts are frequently used by militants to launch Kassam rockets into southern Israel.

Israeli tanks, armored personnel carriers and bulldozers were operating in the village’s poor, run-down Atatra neighborhood, plowing up street surfaces and knocking down trees, witnesses said. Palestinian boys played cat and mouse with the Israeli tanks by hurling stones and then fleeing.

Israel’s incursion had mostly consisted of airstrikes on installations such as the territory’s power plant, artillery fire into open areas and deployment of troops and armor away from densely packed slums and refugee camps.

Although Amir Peretz, Israel’s defense minister, vowed that the country’s military would not become bogged down in what he called the “swamp” of Gaza, the developments Thursday represented a significant escalation in an offensive that many Israeli officials openly hope will result in the fall of the Palestinians’ Hamas-led government.

Israel increased the pressure on Hamas with the predawn arrests Thursday in East Jerusalem of five more senior members of the Islamist group’s political wing. Israeli police accused the five of assisting Hamas lawmakers in conducting political activities in Jerusalem.

Sixty-five Hamas officials, including eight Cabinet ministers and nearly two dozen members of parliament, were rounded up in arrest raids last week in the West Bank. The detentions of five of the officials, including a lawmaker, were extended Thursday by a military court, pending possible charges.

In the last week, Israel has destroyed the Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza, bombarded the empty office of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and threatened to assassinate senior Hamas figures.

On Thursday, a top official in the Hamas government for the first time urged members of the Palestinian security forces to fight alongside the militants.

“We believe that the responsibility is collective and all our Palestinian people in all their positions must participate in their duty of defending our nation,” said Khaled abu Hilal, a spokesman for Palestinian Interior Minister Said Siyam.

The day’s confrontation between troops and Palestinian militants began before dawn, when Israeli forces moved into three former Jewish settlements abandoned last summer. The sites form a belt along the border with Israel and are frequently used as launchpads for rocket attacks against Israelis.

As troops pushed deeper into northern Gaza, fierce fighting broke out and flared throughout the day, terrifying civilians who huddled inside their homes.

One of those killed in Beit Lahiya was 23-year-old Mohammed Atar, a farmer who was having coffee in his living room when an Israeli tank shell struck, followed by a burst of machine-gun fire, family members said.

“During this shooting my nephew said, ‘Uncle, save me!’ And then I saw a bullet coming out of his chest,” said Abdel Hadi Atar, 34, his blue shirt caked with blood as he recounted the incident hours later at a Beit Lahiya hospital. “Bullets were entering through the windows, a lot.”

The uncle said it took two hours to gain permission for an ambulance to enter the neighborhood. By then, he said, the young man was dying.

The incursion is partly an effort by Israel to stem the firing of Kassams by creating what officials call a “rocket-free zone” along the northern fringe of Gaza. The goal took on greater urgency for Israelis after Palestinian militants demonstrated that they had developed dual-engine rockets capable of striking the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon, seven miles to the north.

Rocket strikes Tuesday and Wednesday in Ashkelon caused no serious injuries but stoked fear that the city’s 110,000 residents would become the new primary target of Palestinian militants. Previously, rockets had struck mainly at a few small towns near Gaza, usually without causing injury.

Before the army’s drive into Beit Lahiya, Israeli officials promised what they described as a gradual intensification of the military response after militants tunneled under the border fence in southern Gaza on June 25 and killed two soldiers. The militants abducted Cpl. Gilad Shalit and took him back into Gaza, sparking a standoff that has grown increasingly tense.

As of Thursday, mediation efforts led by Egypt had failed to win Shalit’s release. The three militant groups that claim to hold him, including the military wing of Hamas, had said they would free the 19-year-old tank gunner only if Israel agreed to release more than 1,000 imprisoned Palestinians, though they later indicated through intermediaries that they would settle for a smaller number.

Israel’s leaders, insisting that they would not negotiate for Shalit’s release, rejected a Tuesday deadline set by the militants for a prisoner swap. But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government came under new pressure Thursday when Shalit’s father, Noam, said publicly for the first time that Israel should consider trading Palestinian prisoners for his son.

“Everything has a price. I don’t think there will be some sort of move to free Gilad without a price. That’s not the way it works in the Middle East,” the Associated Press quoted the elder Shalit as saying.

Traditionally in Israel, the families of captured soldiers wield enormous political clout, and officials keep them closely informed on the progress of efforts to free the captives.

The threats of an even more sweeping military assault, combined with the firing of hundreds of rounds of artillery and thunderous sonic booms caused by fighter jets, have jangled the nerves of many Gazans. Those living closest to the northern border with Israel have braced for days for a return to the sort of conflict that had become a regular feature of life in Gaza before Israel’s withdrawal.

Israel strongly disputes accounts of a looming humanitarian crisis, saying it has allowed adequate amounts of foodstuffs and fuel into the territory and that existing inventories would last for weeks.

“There is no humanitarian distress or humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip,” the military said in a statement.

But Palestinians readied themselves for greater hardship. By Thursday, hospitals had stocked up on supplies and made plans for handling the most seriously wounded.

“I expect the worst this time,” said a Palestinian ambulance driver, who gave his name as Abu Mohammed. He and a partner were stationed on a road leading to Atatra, where the air crackled with machine-gun fire much of the day. “This time the Israelis are really using power.”

Along an unpaved street in Atatra, a pair of militants connected what appeared to be a tripwire to a round canister that probably contained explosives.

Around Beit Lahiya, business as usual competed with an air of crisis. Some shopkeepers kept their doors open even as the sounds of battle peppered the air. Gunmen, dressed in fatigues and baseball caps and with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders, clustered on street corners. Other residents kept their distance, following the news with transistor radios.

Senior Israeli officials reiterated that the newly established military foothold in the territory was not a permanent one.

“We have no intention of remaining in Gaza and reoccupying it,” Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres told Israel Radio.

But critics suggested that a dangerous dynamic had already been set in motion.

“We must not get sucked into a renewed trap,” said lawmaker Yisrael Hasson of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party. “Israel must free itself from its role as a hostage of the Kassams ... but we started too late.”

Ellingwood reported from Beit Lahiya and King from Jerusalem.