Human shields thwart Gaza strike

Israel said Sunday that it had called off a planned aerial bombardment of a Palestinian militant’s home after about 200 of his supporters, in a new defensive tactic, rushed to form a human shield around the residence.

The mass mobilization in the Gaza Strip is believed to be the first employed by Palestinians to prevent an Israeli airstrike. It is part of a growing use of civilians, including women and children, to counter an Israeli offensive aimed at halting rocket fire into Israel from Gaza.

Israeli officials said the tactic spells a new difficulty for their 5-month-old offensive, which largely has been ineffective.

Saved by the action late Saturday night was the home of Mohammed Wael Baroud, identified by both sides as an operative of the Popular Resistance Committees who has overseen some of the ongoing rocket attacks. Israel considers him a wanted terrorist.

Capt. Noa Meir, an Israeli army spokeswoman, said the military targeted the home as part of a “terrorist infrastructure” but canceled the planned airstrike because of the large crowd.

She said the military would continue fighting to root out weapons caches and logistical centers of Baroud’s organization, as well as those of Islamic Jihad and the armed wing of the Hamas movement that leads the Palestinian Authority.

All three militant groups are involved in launching crude Kassam rockets, nearly 1,000 of which have fallen in or near Israeli cities and towns this year. On Sunday, one rocket wounded a taxi driver in Sderot, near the border with Gaza. Another killed a 70-year-old woman there Wednesday.

At midday Sunday, an Israeli aircraft attacked a car carrying two Hamas gunmen in Gaza City, killing an 80-year-old man and wounding six other passersby, hospital officials said. The Hamas members, identified by Israel as rocket makers, escaped unharmed, fleeing on foot into a nearby mosque after the first missile missed the car.

The Israeli army often attacks the vehicles of Palestinian militants without warning, aiming to kill, but says it routinely orders occupants out of targeted buildings before striking, in case civilians are among them.

Such a warning came by telephone to Baroud’s two-story home in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, giving the 15 members of his and his brothers’ families half an hour to get out.

Instead, Baroud holed up inside with relatives and informed his superiors and the local mosque. The Barouds were quickly joined by neighbors and supporters responding to appeals from the mosque and on Palestinian radio and television.

“Death to Israel! Death to America!” the demonstrators shouted from the roof of the house and the streets outside.

Nizar Rayan, a Hamas leader in northern Gaza, said that the demonstration was part of a new method of “popular action to protect the fighters and their homes” and that it would be repeated whenever a Palestinian home was threatened by Israeli bombardment.

Supportive crowds remained at the Baroud home Sunday and formed preemptively around the residences of several other Gaza militants previously targeted by Israel.

On Nov. 3, Hamas orchestrated a similar rescue when about 200 unarmed women swarmed past an Israeli military cordon around a mosque in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun and provided a human shield that enabled 73 Palestinian gunmen trapped inside to escape. Two women were killed by Israeli gunfire that the military said was aimed at armed men in their midst.

Meir, the army spokeswoman, said the mosque incident and the demonstration at Baroud’s home “are part of the same cynical use of Palestinian civilians as human shields.”

“They’re forcing us to face a very difficult dilemma,” she said. “While they have no regard for their own civilians, we’re the ones who have to make the choice of how to defend our civilians on the one hand and keep theirs out of harm’s way on the other.”

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas leader, portrayed Saturday night’s demonstration as an act of self-preservation. “Those people intervened to protect their own houses as well,” he told reporters outside the Baroud home.

The demonstrators included members of Hamas, Fatah and other rivals of Baroud’s organization.

Nassem abu Ajena, a 45-year-old local commander in Hamas’ military wing, climbed to the roof of Baroud’s home Saturday night with two of his sons, Khalil, 17, and Samer, 19.

“If I protect my neighbor’s house today, he will protect my house tomorrow,” Ajena said.

Palestinian officials say Israeli warplanes have destroyed nine homes in Gaza in stepped-up strikes since Wednesday’s deadly rocket attack on Sderot.

Israel has turned increasingly to its air force since a long-range artillery barrage killed 19 civilians in Beit Hanoun on Nov. 8. Israel said the shells went off course because of problems with the targeting system.

Israel unilaterally withdrew troops and Jewish settlers from Gaza in September 2005 but has made frequent military incursions into the coastal territory since the capture of one of its soldiers in a cross-border raid in late June. The soldier is still missing.

As the incursions have become longer and more frequent, Israeli officials have debated whether to intervene even more aggressively in Gaza. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said last week that although Israel would continue its targeted attacks, a large-scale assault would not necessarily stop the rockets.

On Sunday, Olmert criticized a United Nations General Assembly resolution that calls on Israel to pull its troops from the Gaza Strip and requests a fact-finding mission on the Beit Hanoun deaths.

“The state of Israel is not the one that has to provide answers about hitting civilians,” Olmert said. “We have expressed our deepest regret over this. But those who preach morality and roll their eyes have yet to condemn those [Palestinians] who are shooting with the goal of hitting civilians as a systematic policy.”

boudreaux@latimes.com

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Times staff writer Boudreaux reported from Jerusalem and special correspondent Alouf from Jabaliya.