In Gaza, Hamas is down but not out, says Israeli official

The military power of Hamas has been weakened and its political leadership is divided over plans for a possible cease-fire, but an Israeli intelligence official said Tuesday that the radical group remains dangerous, with 15,000 fighters, tunnels and a sophisticated arsenal of rockets and antitank weapons.

The senior official’s assessment was delivered in a news briefing on a day when Israeli ground forces and Hamas militants battled in a neighborhood of high-rise apartments in southeastern Gaza City. Civilians fled as Israeli units, backed by shelling from warships near the seaside enclave, edged deeper into the city but appeared to stop short of Hamas strongholds.

Israel’s push into the Tal al Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City, about a mile from the city center, increased pressure on Hamas fighters and on humanitarian groups and hospitals trying to cope with rising numbers of homeless and wounded Palestinians. More than 971 Gazans, including 311 children and 76 women, had been killed and 4,418 wounded in 18 days of fighting, according to the United Nations.

Israeli forces invaded Tal al Hawa “and started to shell from the sky and from the ground,” said Khader Dahdouh, whose home was badly damaged in fighting that began after midnight and lasted until dawn. “The resistance fighters were firing rocket-propelled grenades, and the soldiers took cover in nearby villas.”

The Israeli intelligence official, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity because of security concerns, did not underestimate Hamas but indicated that the group had been overwhelmed by 18 days of bombardment. The official said Hamas was not significantly tapping its caches of antitank and antiaircraft missiles but was occasionally using suicide bombers to spearhead combat missions.

“The level of damage to Hamas’ military wing is less than the damage” to its civil infrastructure, the official said. “I think they will try to do their best to hit us, to come up with some symbolic achievement, a suicide operation or the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier.”

Hamas officials have said the Islamic militant group’s fighters are resilient and that its military wing is choosing when it will engage Israeli forces.

But the intelligence official said Israeli airstrikes had destroyed much of Hamas’ rocket-launching capability. Two weeks ago, Hamas was firing about 80 missiles a day into southern Israel; the number has dropped to about 20 in recent days, and on Tuesday, only two rockets were reported.

“The civilian populations in some cases are trying to prevent the rocket squads from launching in their areas,” the official said, suggesting that Palestinians were weary of the Israeli incursion, which on Tuesday included about 60 airstrikes. “They’re trying actively and physically to prevent it.”

An Israeli army lieutenant colonel in Gaza told a Reuters reporter:

“I think Hamas has already folded. A couple days ago, an armed squad popped up from a tunnel that was concealed by a nearby building. We took them out with tank fire and a bulldozer. Another time, a suicide bomber came in on a bicycle. We spotted him in time. He ran off to take cover in a building, presumably to draw us in. We demolished the building on top of him with a bulldozer.”

Human Rights Watch and other international organizations have called for Israel to allow civilians to escape the fighting and for humanitarian groups to be permitted to enter with medical supplies, food, fuel and equipment. Israel said it has allowed humanitarian aid into Gaza, but much of the enclave remains without electricity. Pleas for donations and shelter echo from the loudspeakers of mosques in the 140-square-mile coastal territory.

The U.N. has reported that at least 60,000 Palestinians have fled their homes. The number of displaced people is expected to rise as Israeli forces squeeze Gaza City’s outlying neighborhoods to further isolate Hamas militants. Palestinian medical authorities reported that at least 50 Gazans were killed and 150 wounded in Tuesday’s fighting.

“We don’t know the full extent of what’s happening inside Gaza because we are blocked [by the Israelis] from getting in,” said Fred Abrahams, senior emergencies researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch. “But what we are observing is a deeply disturbing disregard for human life.”

Tuesday’s military action came as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia renewed calls for an immediate cease-fire, a prospect that has remained elusive since the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip began Dec. 27. The failure of Arab leaders to stop the bloodshed in Gaza has led to violent street protests across the Middle East.

Israeli political leaders, including Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, said Israel was still seeking an agreement on an Egyptian-backed cease-fire plan. There was no announcement that Israel was moving to the third phase of its military strategy, which would entail taking over all of Gaza City. Israeli security officials were expected to return to Cairo for talks this week.

A Hamas delegation met with Egyptian officials Tuesday, but there was no word of a breakthrough on key points: demands by Hamas that Israel withdraw its forces and lift its 18-month blockade, and Israeli conditions that Hamas stop firing rockets and that Egypt do more to destroy the group’s arms-smuggling network, including tunnels, along the Gazan-Egyptian border.

Early today, two more rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel, landing near the town of Kiryat Shemona, Israel Radio reported.

Channel 10 news said the rockets were Katyushas and that mortar shells were fired as well. There did not appear to be any casualties.

A similar attack last week that caused two minor injuries was believed to have been carried out by a small Palestinian faction, not the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah.

Speaking of cease-fire prospects Tuesday, Shaul Mofaz, an Israeli deputy prime minister and former minister of defense, said, “We are not hungry for more fighting. We want to reach an arrangement that will cement the goals of the operation: removing the threat over the south and putting an end to the smuggling of weaponry.”

Israeli Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said the Egyptians weren’t doing enough to stop the weapons smuggling.

Thirteen Israelis, 10 soldiers and three civilians, have been reported killed since the offensive began.

Israeli political and military officials described Hamas’ leadership as being in disarray and under increasing pressure by the Egyptians to accept a truce. They spoke of a widening split between the group’s leaders in Gaza, such as Ismail Haniyeh, and more radical elements in the diaspora, including top political figure Khaled Meshaal in Syria, who is influenced by Iran and the Islamic militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Meshaal’s faction is opposed to deals with Israel.

Hamas denies that its leadership is fracturing, but the Israelis interpreted a videotaped speech by Haniyeh on Monday as a sign that key figures in Gaza were ready for a truce.

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jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

sebastian.rotella@latimes.com

Times staff writer Richard Boudreaux in Jerusalem and special correspondents Rushdi abu Alouf in Gaza City and Fayed abu Shammaleh in Cairo contributed to this report.