TEL AVIV, May 9: Israel geared up on Thursday to attack the Gaza Strip in the wake of a deadly suicide bombing as it hit a new snag in trying to end its last major West Bank standoff at Bethlehem’s Nativity Church.
Officials had hoped to evacuate most of the 123 Palestinians besieged in one of Christianity’s holiest sites for five weeks, but an unexplained hitch at the last minute kept the birthplace of Jesus Christ still on the boil.
While the Israelis wound down their six-week-old West Bank offensive, they were fired to go into Gaza, the main base of the Hamas, which claimed Tuesday’s suicide bombing in Israel.
Israel’s security cabinet met on Wednesday night after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rushed back from Washington, and authorized a Gaza operation to “avenge” the attack on a pool hall outside Tel Aviv that left 17 dead and 55 wounded.
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Israeli troops would not seize land but hit at “nests of terror”.
“The aim is to get to those places where there is an isolated concentration of suicide terrorists,” he said.
One of the other options facing the cabinet was the possible expulsion of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Israeli state radio said Finance Minister Sylvan Shalom proposed the idea but it was not put to a vote.
Arafat scrambled to stave off a major Israeli attack, going on Palestinian television on Wednesday to read a statement in Arabic ordering his security forces to “prevent all terrorist operations against Israeli civilians”.
He pledged to hunt down those responsible for organizing Tuesday’s attack and told EU Middle East peace envoy Miguel Moratinos that Palestinian police had arrested “around 14” people in Gaza in connection with the incident.
A senior aide also said top Hamas leaders may be detained to avert an Israeli riposte.
The army called up reservist soldiers, military sources said, but they did not give any numbers. The government had authorized the mobilization of 20,000 reserve troops for the West Bank but not all were used.
The scope and duration of the threatened Gaza strike was unclear.
Effie Eytam, minister without portfolio from the extreme-right National Union, told Israeli radio the offensive would “have to combine air attacks with timely and well-targeted ground operations.”
But Israeli security sources said Sharon’s generals had presented him with a plan for a major, one-shot assault in Gaza, where Hamas had been spared the brunt of Israel’s drive to crack down on the suicide bombings.
General Abdel Razaq al-Majeida, the Palestinian head of public security in the densely populated Gaza Strip, expected Israeli forces to strike “at any time” but said: “We think it will be a limited response.”
Majeida said he expected “some clashes” during the operation, but for the most part Palestinians were preparing for targeted strikes against strategic locations such as police stations and Hamas headquarters.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on its Internet site that the Israeli army was massing on the edge of the Gaza Strip. But an Israeli military spokesman denied any buildup.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat tried to warn the Israelis off a major retaliatory move in Gaza, saying “nothing justifies the war they are about to wage on us.
“It will result in bloodshed. It will add fuel to the fire. It will not result in peace and security, and undermine efforts to revive hopes in the minds of Israelis and Palestinians,” Erakat said.
A dozen tanks and two bulldozers rolled into the southern Gaza town of Rafah early in the morning. A house was burned and another shelled, while bulldozers levelled the ground.
Egyptian police said one of their officers across the border was hit in the leg by a stray bullet after Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinians during the Rafah incursion.
The Israelis also rounded up 15 Palestinians, including a Hamas guerilla, and arrested another Hamas member after surrounding his house and raking it with helicopter machinegun fire in operations in the northern West Bank, witnesses said.
President George W. Bush called Arafat’s statement “an incredibly positive sign.” His spokesman Ari Fleischer said Thursday that a successful clearing of the case would be a “very key test” of Arafat’s commitment to peace.
CHURCH SIEGE: In Bethlehem, the only major West Bank town still under Israeli occupation, negotiators thought they had a deal in hand to end the often-deadly siege of the Nativity Church. But the fine points again proved elusive.
Sources close to the Palestinian negotiators said they sought to place a British diplomat in the church to guarantee the safety of 13 wanted hard-core militants who are destined for exile once a country is found to take them.
An Israeli spokesman confirmed 26 other Palestinian militants would be sent to jail in Gaza and 84 civilians holed up with them since April 2 would be released.—AFP