Israel on brink of Gaza invasion

Israel today threatened to invade Gaza if Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas does not control militants who have stepped up rocket and mortar attacks ahead of Israel’s pullout from the territory next month.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said all restraints are off and thousands of Israeli troops have massed along the Gaza border.

The sudden escalation is the most serious threat yet to a truce that had drastically reduced violence after more than four years of Palestinian-Israeli violence.

More than 100 rockets and mortars have rained down on Gaza settlements and Israeli villages just outside the territory in the last four days.

Hamas leaders say they are retaliating for Israeli violations of the truce, declared February 8, but one leader said the main reason for the barrage was to show that Israeli settlers were fleeing Gaza because of the rockets and not Israel’s decision to evacuate the territory.

In violence today, Israeli soldiers killed a Hamas leader and Palestinian infiltrator, and the Israeli air force fired on a car in northern Gaza, wounding a bystander.

Two Israelis were seriously wounded in a Palestinian mortar strike on a Gaza settlement.

Soldiers and tanks were poised to cross the Gaza border fence. Large-scale raids have often followed rocket and mortar barrages, but not since the truce went into effect.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his ministers at the start of a weekly Cabinet meeting: “I spoke to the heads of the defence establishment … and informed them that there are to be no restraints on our operations.”

Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz told the meeting that Israel would launch a “massive, prolonged and intricate” military strike if the Palestinian Authority does not stop the attacks.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat warned that an Israeli invasion of Gaza “will have a disastrous impact on the disengagement plan, and all efforts to make it a successful and smooth and peaceful disengagement,” referring to the planned pull-out.

Despite the tough talk, there were signs that both sides prefer to Abbas called publicly on militant groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad to stop their attacks, and Israeli officials said Israel is reluctant to stage a full-scale military strike for fear of being bogged down in the coastal strip before the evacuation.

Egyptian officials were mediating, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was planning a quick trip to the region to salvage the truce.

A confrontation was developing in another front: Police refused to give a permit for a mass march of settlers and their backers toward Gaza on Monday. Settler leaders say tens of thousands are to converge on Gaza to try to block the pullout.

Police and settlers negotiated through the day, but the talks broke down when settlers refused to declare a time when the protest would end.

Defiant settler leaders said today they plan to go ahead with the march, and that could set off violent clashes.

There have been scuffles between at the main crossing point into Gush Katif, the main bloc of settlements, every day since Israel declared Gaza off limits to non-residents last week, to prevent thousands from reinforcing the 9,000 Gaza settlers. Many of them are planning to resist the removal of all 21 settlements from the territory.

The evacuation has also touched off dissidence within army ranks. The army chief ordered a 40-member platoon of Orthodox Jewish soldiers disbanded Sunday after nine of its soldiers disobeyed orders to stop demonstrators from entering Gaza, the military said in a statement. Many Orthodox Jews reject the pull-out, calling Gaza part of the biblical Promised Land.

Palestinian police, meanwhile, began removing Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah flags from the streets of Gaza early today, leaving only the Palestinian national flag. On Saturday, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said he would brook no challenges to his government’s authority and called on militants to stop their attacks.

Rockets and mortar rounds continued to hit Israeli targets on today. Two Israelis were wounded seriously by a mortar that landed on a house in the Gaza settlement of Neve Dekalim. An Israeli sniper shot and killed a senior Hamas field commander in a targeted strike earlier in the day after another mortar round hit the same community, the army and Hamas officials said.

Hamas claimed responsibility for both attacks.