Israeli Ground Forces Push Into Gaza

JERUSALEM (By, Isabel Kershner and Liz Robbins, NYTimes) January 4, 2009 — Israel moved its troops into Gaza starting a ground offensive eight days after launching an airstrike campaign in efforts to end rocket attacks from Hamas militants.

A statement from the Israel Defense Forces said that this second stage of the operation was intended to “bring about an improved and more stable security situation for residents of Southern Israel over the long term.”

The statement added that “large numbers of forces are taking part in this stage of the operation including infantry, tanks, engineering forces, artillery and intelligence with the support of the Israel Air Force, Israel navy, Israel Security Agency and other security agencies.”

“We have just a short while ago launched the second stage,” a spokeswoman for Israel Defense Forces Maj. Avital Leibovich, said in an interview broadcast on CNN.

She said that troops were targeting areas responsible for the launching of rockets into Israel, as well as tunnels, bunkers, and training facilities — “everything that is affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target,” Major Leibovich said.

“We have many, many targets, and therefore to my estimate it’s going to be a lengthy operation,” she added, with specifying how long the ground war could last.

Ms. Leibovich said the Israel Defense Forces were avoiding targeting civilians and were trying to give people leaflets and messages warning of the strikes. “Hamas is not putting any efforts to avoid targeting civilian deaths,” she said, referring to rockets launched by Hamas into Israel.

“For us, people that don’t recognize the right for Israel to exist, terrorists which train day after day and try to target as many Israeli civilians as possible, are for us a legitimate target for self defense.”

Saeb Erakat, a Palestinian negotiator, criticized the action in an interview on CNN. “This will undermine all efforts being exerted to revive hope in the region. And at the end of the day, who are you fighting? What are you trying to achieve? We don’t have an army. We don’t have a navy. We don’t have an air force. We have called upon Israel and everybody to help the Egyptians in order to sustain the cease-fire in Gaza, because this problem requires political solutions, not military solutions.”

The ground offensive had been building for days, with tanks and troops waiting at the border.

Before the move into Gaza began, Israeli planes pounded Hamas targets on Saturday while Israel allowed hundreds of foreigners, many of them married to Palestinians, to leave the enclave.

Tensions spread to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where Palestinian anger at reports of civilian casualties in Gaza seemed to be translating into at least a temporary increase in popular sympathy for Hamas.

Israel has vowed to press its offensive until there is no more rocket fire out of Gaza.

On Friday, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East, Robert Serry, told reporters that he was deeply worried that Israel would decide to move into Gaza.

“We are gravely concerned about that prospect because that would just mean another cycle of violence and a further escalation of the conflict,” he said. “This must stop. With Israeli tanks on Gaza’s border, it is absolutely imperative now that we find an immediate and lasting way out to avoid an even deeper and deadlier conflict.”

Israeli analysts and experts have said that any ground operation should be brief but powerful.

Alex Fishman, the military analyst of the popular daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot, wrote Friday, “Since the name of the game is killing and destruction, the ground operation has to be quick, with a lot of firepower at friction points with Hamas.” He added, “The goal is to exact a high price in the early stages of the ground operation and to end it quickly.”

Palestinian militants continued to launch salvos of rockets at southern Israel on Friday, with several hitting the coastal city of Ashkelon, lightly injuring two Israeli women there.

Israeli air and naval forces pummeled more bases of Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza. The military said it hit the houses of several Hamas militants that also served as weapons depots as well as tunnels used for weapons smuggling and missile launching sites. Warplanes also bombed a mosque in Jabaliya, in northern Gaza. The military said that Hamas was using the mosque as a terrorist base and that it was storing rockets there.

It was the mosque where Nizar Rayyan, the senior Hamas militant leader killed in an Israeli strike on Thursday, used to preach. Mr. Rayyan’s four wives, at least nine of his children and several neighbors were also killed when his home was bombed.

About 2,000 Gazans turned out for the funeral in Jabaliya on Friday. Speakers called for revenge as Israeli fighter jets swooped threateningly overhead.

With Hamas calling for Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to make Friday a “day of wrath,” a few thousand turned out in Ramallah, the administrative headquarters of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. In Israeli-controlled East Jerusalem, the police came out in force to prevent disturbances after noon prayers. Small riots broke out in some Arab neighborhoods around the city, but most were quickly dispersed. And in Hebron, protesters clashed with the Palestinian police, leaving at least 10 injured.

In Gaza, local residents went out to pray at mosques and to shop for essentials, but did not linger. Medical officials in Gaza said 430 Palestinians had been killed and some 2,200 wounded since the Israeli campaign began last Saturday. The casualty figures include many Hamas security personnel members, but the United Nations has estimated that a quarter of those killed were civilians.

Three Israeli civilians and one soldier have been killed in rocket attacks in the past week, as Hamas deployed its more advanced, longer-range projectiles capable of hitting Israeli cities more than 20 miles away.

Hundreds of spouses of Palestinians, including women from Russia, Romania, Ukraine and Western Europe, left Gaza on Friday with the help of diplomats from their countries.

Alla Semaks, a 34-year-old Ukrainian married to a Palestinian, and her four children were among around 300 people who came in buses to the Erez checkpoint in northern Gaza to cross into Israel. Her husband, Mohammed Atawneh, 36, was not leaving because he had only Palestinian identity papers, she said in a telephone interview.

“I want to come back when the situation allows it,” she said. “I have nothing in Ukraine. My children are very afraid for their father. We fear there will be an Israeli ground offensive.”

A Gaza teenager, Jawaher Hajji, who said she had lost two close relatives in the past week, described a scene of growing desperation in the enclave. “There is no water, no electricity, no medicine,”Jawaher, a 14-year-old who has United States citizenship, told The Associated Press. “It’s hard to survive. Gaza is destroyed.”

At the United Nations, officials moved beyond calls for an immediate cease-fire, saying that an international monitoring mechanism needed to be established in Gaza to prevent future outbreaks of violence. “We will need a monitoring mechanism if we do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past,” said Mr. Serry, the Middle East envoy.

His comments were echoed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “We are working toward a cease-fire that would not allow a reestablishment of the status quo ante where Hamas can continue to launch rockets out of Gaza,” she said in Washington. “It is obvious that that cease-fire should take place as soon as possible, but we need a cease-fire that is durable and sustainable.”

Both Israel and the Western-backed Palestinian Authority have been working assiduously to subdue Hamas in the West Bank since the Islamic group took over Gaza in 2007.

But the events in Gaza and the gruesome images broadcast repeatedly by the Arabic television networks are stirring strong emotions among West Bank Palestinians, who are directing most of their anger at Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The authority’s security forces had been instructed to prevent any popular displays of support for Hamas and clashes with Israeli forces, by keeping protesters away from Israeli Army checkpoints and other flash points, leading some Palestinians to accuse the authority of colluding with Israel.

Muneer al-Zughair, a spokesman in Jerusalem for the families of Palestinian prisoners, said Hamas had been strengthened by what he called “the massacre” in Gaza. “People feel that they are the only ones who are doing something for the Palestinian people,” he said.

At the entrance to the Shuafat refugee camp on the edge of Jerusalem, Palestinian youths burned tires and threw stones at an Israeli checkpoint where soldiers stood in full riot gear. A man from the camp, who identified himself only as Qassem, said: “Everyone is against what is happening in Gaza. The Israeli Army are the terrorists.”

Many denounced the bombing of mosques and the deaths of civilians. “Let them go in on the ground and take out Hamas, but spare the children,” said a taxi driver from the camp who identified himself by his first name, Yasir. The missiles from the air “do not differentiate,” he said.

At a news briefing at the White House on Friday, the deputy press secretary, Gordon D. Johndroe, said Israel had a right to defend itself from the rocket attacks out of Gaza. But he added that Israel also needed to “avoid unnecessary civilian casualties,” and to continue the flow into Gaza of humanitarian goods.