Israel pulls back from Gaza offensive

Palestinians retrieved belongings from the rubble of dozens of homes and work crews patched up roads and water pipes today – the aftermath of Israel’s 17-day military offensive, the deadliest in the Gaza Strip in four years of fighting.

Israel withdrew tanks and ground forces from populated areas in northern Gaza yesterday evening.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the pullback at the urging of Israeli military commanders, who argued the offensive had played itself out, and after calls from the United States to wrap up the operation.

During the campaign, launched in response to a deadly rocket attack on the southern Israeli border town of Sderot, 109 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more wounded.

Dozens of civilians, including 18 children, were among the dead. Five Israelis, including two pre-school children, also died.

The Israeli operation focused on the Jebaliya refugee camp and the towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, the main launching grounds for home-made Qassam rockets in the past four years.

Tanks and bulldozers razed dozens of homes, uprooted crops and tore up roads and water pipes.

The Palestinians say much of the destruction was wanton. The army said soldiers only destroyed homes from which militants attacked them.

In Jebaliya, at least 45 homes and a partially-built mosque were razed in the eastern area of the camp. On the ground floor of the mosque, which had been in use for the past five months, sand covered carpets and holy books.

Residents searched the rubble for belongings today.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza said that according to a preliminary count, at least 80 houses were demolished in northern Gaza during the offensive, including at least 60 in Jebaliya and 20 in Beit Lahiya. The group said dozens of homes, shops and public buildings were damaged.

Shortly before the pullback yesterday, a 65-year-old Palestinian woman was shot in the head and killed by Israeli tank fire while eating a traditional Ramadan dinner in her home, Palestinian hospital officials said.

Military sources said soldiers had opened fire in the area after being attacked by an anti-tank missile. The army also said Palestinians had fired a rocket.

For the most part, Israeli forces had remained outside of Jebaliya, a densely populated stronghold of Hamas militants.

Late yesterday, Palestinian gunmen in Jebaliya fired automatic rifles into the air, claiming victory.

In another development, 60 Israeli rabbis added their voices to a prominent rabbi’s call to Orthodox Jewish soldiers to refuse to obey orders to evacuate settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israeli media reported.

Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal plan calls for uprooting 21 Jewish settlements, as well as four enclaves in the West Bank, next year.

On Thursday Rabbi Avraham Shapira, a former chief rabbi of Israel, said the Gaza plan violates Jewish law.

Sharon faces growing opposition to his plan, including from religious settlers who consider the West Bank to be land promised to the Jews in the bible.