Israel increases pressure on Palestinians

Israeli aircraft struck northern and southern Gaza today as thousands of troops, backed by warplanes and tanks, forged into the coastal strip in an operation meant to pummel Palestinian militants into releasing an Israeli soldier.

The Hamas-led Palestinian government called for a prisoner swap with Israel to solve the Gaza crisis – a solution Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected when militant groups holding the soldier proposed it.

Gaza residents, bracing for a major strike, stockpiled food, water, batteries and candles after warplanes destroyed the coastal strip’s only power plant, and main roads linking north to south. Others, near the tanks and troops in southern Gaza, holed up in their homes.

No casualties were reported.

The ground offensive was Israel’s first since pulling all of its soldiers and settlers out of Gaza over the summer.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel wouldn’t balk at “extreme action” to bring the soldier home, but had no intention of reoccupying Gaza.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas deplored the incursion as a “crime against humanity.”

Warplanes launched missiles repeatedly at open fields in northern and southern Gaza in a show of force meant to intimidate militants affiliated with the Palestinians’ ruling Hamas party, the military said.

Witnesses said two of the missiles in the southern Gaza Strip hit empty Hamas training camps. Separately, Israel attacked a rocket-making factory in southern Gaza.

Meanwhile, concerns about the fate of a missing West Bank settler grew after militants who purport to hold him displayed what they said was a copy of his identification card.

Israeli tanks and soldiers began taking up positions east of Rafah overnight under cover of tank shells, witnesses and Palestinian security officials said. Capt. Jacob Dallal, a military spokesman, said today that troops moved one mile inside the coastal strip.

Witnesses reported heavy artillery shelling near the long-closed Gaza airport outside of Rafah, just over the border with Israel. In Rafah, a shack where militants produced and stored rockets was on fire after Israel attacked it, witnesses said.

Warplanes, meanwhile, flew low over the strip, rocking it with sonic booms and shattering windows. And troops in Israel backed up the assault, firing artillery into Gaza.

Residents of northern Gaza, preparing for what they feared could be a long military operation, stocked up on food, batteries for radios and candles.

The normally bustling streets in southern Gaza, where the invasion was launched, were eerily deserted, with people taking refuge inside their homes.

The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt – Gaza’s main link to the outside world – has been closed since the attack on Sunday on the Israeli military post. Usually, there is some activity in the area, even when the passage is closed, but today, it was empty.

Israeli troops, backed by tanks, took over the Gaza airport. Dozens of people living near the airport left their homes, seeking sanctuary in nearby Rafah.

A small grocery shop near the airport was open, but no one was inside except the owner, 45-year-old Allah Abu Jazr.

“All options are open, but let’s hope this crisis will pass,” Abu Jazr said. “We want the soldier to return home, just as we want our prisoners to come home.”

At the start of the invasion, Israeli warplanes fired at least nine missiles at Gaza’s only power station, cutting electricity to 65% of the Gaza Strip, engineers said. The attack raised the spectre of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, because water pumps there are powered by electricity.

Three bridges were also taken out, cutting Gaza in two, Palestinian security officials said. The Israeli military said in a statement that three bridges were attacked “to impair the ability of the terrorists to transfer the kidnapped soldier,” Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19.

“We won’t hesitate to carry out extreme action to bring Gilad back to his family,” Olmert said. “All the military activity that started overnight will continue in the coming days.”

“We do not intend to reoccupy Gaza. We do not intend to stay there,” he added.

Olmert repeated that Israel will not negotiate Shalit’s release with militant groups.

Shalit was taken captive on Sunday during an attack on a southern Israeli military post by militants with links to Hamas. The Palestinian government has called for the soldier’s release, but Israel thinks the group’s Syria-based leaders ordered the operation.

Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said Israel would try to assassinate Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’ Syria-based political chief.

“Khaled Mashaal, as someone who is overseeing, actually commanding the terror acts, is definitely a target,” Ramon, an Olmert confidant, told Army Radio.

Israel tried to kill Mashaal in a botched assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997. Two Mossad agents injected Mashaal with poison, but were caught. As Mashaal lay dying in a Jordanian hospital, King Hussein of Jordan forced Israel to provide the antidote in return for the release of the Mossad agents.

Abbas deplored the Israeli invasion in a statement.

“The president considers the aggression that targeted the civilian infrastructures to be collective punishment and a crime against humanity,” the statement said.

An Abbas aide said the Palestinian President called Syrian President Bashar Assad to ask him to persuade Mashaal to free the soldier. Assad promised to do so, but there have been no results, the aide said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing private talks.

Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer of Hamas said his government, too, was continuing to try to resolve the situation diplomatically, but would not say whether that involved direct contact with Israel.

“We call for an immediate halt to the invasion, and urge that the soldier’s life be spared,” Shaer added.

The European Union urged both Israel and the Palestinians to “step back from the brink” and allow diplomacy to resolve the crisis.

Dallal said the army was prepared for a long operation, if necessary.

“We have a vast variety of military options available to us and everything is on the table,” Dallal said.

Militants said they fired rockets early today at the Israeli village of Nahal Oz, the Israeli forces’ staging area, and at other Israeli targets.

The militants who seized Shalit have demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails in exchange for information about the captured soldier.

Trying to defuse building tensions, negotiators from the ruling Hamas movement said yesterday they had accepted a document that Abbas allies say implicitly recognises Israel. But Mashaal’s No. 2, Moussa Abu Marzouk, denied a final deal had been reached.

Shalit’s abduction on Sunday by Hamas’ military wing and two other Hamas-linked groups has threatened to turn already devastated relations between Israel and the Hamas-led government into all-out war. Hamas took over the Palestinian Authority after winning parliamentary elections in January, and has been under international pressure to renounce violence and recognise Israel.

Complicating matters was a new claim by the Hamas-linked Popular Resistance Committees, one of the three groups that carried out Sunday’s assault, that it had also kidnapped a Jewish settler, 18-year-old Eliahu Asheri, in the West Bank.

At a news conference at a Gaza City mosque today, PRC militants displayed what they said was a copy of Asheri’s identification card, and reiterated threats to kill him if Israel didn’t end its Gaza invasion.

A spokesman for the group also warned that the PRC had just begun its campaign to seize soldiers.

“The operation of kidnapping soldiers has started and is in a countdown,” spokesman Mohammed Abdel Al said.

Asheri’s mother appealed to militants to release him alive.

“We turn to those who are holding Eliahu and really, really request that they take care of him,” Miriam Asheri told Israeli radio stations. “We really hope that they will return him alive.”