‘Days of Penitence’ sees Israeli tanks push on border

PALESTINIAN gunmen took up positions and Israeli tanks massed along the border with the Gaza Strip yesterday as Israel pushed ahead with a massive military operation in the strip’s largest refugee camp.

It has been code-named ‘Days of Penitence’.

Thirty-four Palestinians and five Israelis were killed in bloodshed that is drawing the Israeli army back into Gaza just as the government says it wants out.

The Israeli Cabinet approved what is shaping into one of the largest offensives of the four-year Palestinian uprising after a rocket launched by Hamas militants killed two Israeli toddlers in a border town on Wednesday. Underscoring the difficulty of stopping such attacks, another home-made Qassam rocket crashed into the town, Sderot, yesterday even as the Israeli army took control of a five-mile strip of Gaza to keep Israeli towns out of rocket range.

That device caused no injuries, but the Israeli incursion into Jebaliya refugee camp - one of the most densely populated places on earth - is already inflaming passions and escalating a conflict that has killed 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis in the past four years.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the security cabinet he was determined to stop the rocket fire.

“What can we do?” he said. “The Jews, too, have a right to live.”

Hospital officials said that all seven Palestinians killed by an Israeli tank shell on Thursday were boys between the ages of 13 and 17. Israel said most of the Palestinians killed so far were militants, but, as with previous bloody incursions, this too could descend into a public relations debacle for the Jewish state.

Israel took pains to explain how every government has the right to protect its citizens from rocket attacks. But the difficulty on the ground of stopping the launch-and-flee assaults has led some to conclude that the Israeli offensive is more about lesson teaching than rocket crushing.

Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, according to security officials, ordered troops to “exact a price” from the militants.

“The Israeli government is continuing to escalate, it is continuing to wreak havoc, it is continuing to destroy all opportunities for peace,” said Nabil Abu Rdeineh, a senior aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

The violence could embolden Sharon’s opponents who insist that leaving Gaza will only subject Israelis to further militant attacks.

Sharon has faced intense opposition from his own right-wing Likud Party over his announced plan to pull all Israeli troops and civilians out of Gaza by next year - part of a wider programme to unilaterally “disengage” from the Palestinians.

The Israeli leader is keenly aware that the rocket attacks could turn public opinion against the Gaza pullout and create the impression that Israel is fleeing under fire.

So for the first time in four years of conflict the Israeli army dared strike deep into Jebaliya, where until now it has avoided getting bogged down in urban combat.

Jebaliya - home to 106,000 Palestinians living in just 0.5 square miles - is the birthplace of the first Palestinian uprising, and the battle to control it could take on great symbolic value.

On Thursday, 28 Palestinians were killed and 139 wounded, most of them in Jebaliya. It was the highest single-day toll in fighting in 30 months.