Israeli Forces Send Tanks Into Gaza City

July 26, 2002
By Shahdi al-Kashif

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli forces pushed into Gaza City on Friday, blowing up three buildings housing workshops where rockets were allegedly being made, the Israeli army said.

Palestinian security officials said four Palestinians were wounded in the first Israeli incursion since an air strike on Tuesday in Gaza City killed 15 Palestinians, including Hamas military commander Salah Shehada and nine children.

Palestinian gunmen on Thursday shot dead a rabbi from a Jewish settlement in the West Bank in the first response by militants to the air raid that drew international condemnation and touched off a debate in Israel itself.

In New York, Arab delegates put off introducing a U.N. Security Council resolution on Tuesday's bombing in a teeming Gaza City neighborhood, with diplomats saying there were divisions among ambassadors over the text.

Commenting on the ground assault, the army said: "During the night in south Gaza City, an Israeli military force discovered three buildings that were used as Qassam rocket factories. The three buildings housed 22 rocket-manufacturing workshops.

"Israeli soldiers exploded the workshops in a controlled manner. When finished, the forces left the Palestinian-controlled area," it said.

Three thunderous explosions shook Gaza before Israeli tanks rumbled back to Israeli-occupied territory about three km (two miles) away.

The army statement said dozens of mortar bombs and Qassam rockets -- short-range weapons improvised by Palestinians -- had been fired at Israeli military posts and communities inside and outside the Gaza Strip in the past few days. There have been no casualties.

SETTLER-RABBI KILLED IN REVENGE ATTACK

Two groups claimed responsibility for Thursday's killing of Rabbi Elimelech Shapira, 43, and wounding another man in an ambush as they drove along a road near a Jewish settlement close to the West Bank city of Qalqilya.

"The operation is part of the armed struggle and in response to the assassination of our people in Gaza and Salah Shehada," the Popular Army Front-Return Battalions, a coalition of militant groups, said in a statement.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group which is part of the coalition and is linked to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, also took responsibility for the ambush. The Islamic organization Hamas has vowed to kill hundreds of Israelis to avenge Tuesday's attack by an F-16 fighter-bomber which fired a one-ton guided missile at Shehada's house.

Israel said Shehada had the blood of 200 Israelis on his hands and was planning a "mega-terror" attack.

In New York, Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian U.N. observer, said Arab ambassadors would meet again on Friday and then seek reactions among council members.

"We don't want to push anyone before we know that something is possible," he told Reuters, in an apparent reference to the United States, which opposes the resolution.

Syria, the only Arab nation with a seat on the council, reportedly believed the text, circulated informally by Saudi Arabia as current head of the Arab group of nations, was not worded strongly enough, council sources said.

Damascus was said to believe that language used by speakers in a late Wednesday Security Council meeting was a more forceful message to Israel than any resolution the 15-member council, especially the United States, could accept.

Most Arab ambassadors wanted the 15-member council to adopt a resolution demanding the "withdrawal of the Israeli occupying forces from Palestinian cities."

Israeli forces reoccupied seven of eight West Bank cities last month after back-to-back suicide attacks in Jerusalem killed 26 Israelis.

U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte told the council that its past resolutions formed a "more than adequate basis to guide efforts to achieve a negotiated solution."

ISRAEL SLAMMED AT U.N.

Israel was roundly criticized during the debate, with nation after nation saying Tuesday's attack was unreasonable and unacceptable.

Israel's deputy ambassador, Aaron Jacob, expressed regret at the deaths, but said the action was precipitated by the failure of the Palestinian Authority to stop Shehada, "one of the most prolific and brutal terrorists."

"Had we known the result beforehand, we would never have carried out the operation," he said. "Our regret is sincere and profound."

But Kidwa said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his "lieutenants" should be tried for war crimes and that the world needed to stop Israeli actions, whether on the ground or in the political sphere.

At least 1,467 Palestinians and 560 Israelis have been killed since Palestinians began an uprising for independence in September 2000 after peace talks stalled. Israel reoccupied West Bank cities last month in response to suicide bombings.

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