As Israel ups the ante by killing 10 Palestinians and Hamas responds by firing rockets, another bloody Israeli incursion into Gaza looks ever more likely, reports Khaled Amayreh from East Jerusalem Implementing an order by the government, the Israeli army amassed troops and deployed tanks outside the Gaza Strip on Wednesday to carry out a "limited" operation in the beleaguered region, one of the most heavily populated spots on earth. The Israeli army carried out several large incursions into Gaza last year, killing and maiming thousands of Palestinians and destroying civilian infrastructure including streets, bridges and power stations. The expected invasion is likely to target northern Gaza from which Israel says Palestinian resistance fighters fire home-made Qassam rockets into nearby Israeli colonies. The mostly ineffectual projectiles are notoriously inaccurate and have rarely caused casualties among Israelis. On Tuesday Hamas's military wing took responsibility for the firing of 10 of these projectiles onto northern and eastern Gaza. The rockets, which fell in empty fields causing no harm or damage, followed the killing by the Israeli occupation army earlier in the week of 10 Palestinians, including a high-school girl killed by an Israeli death squad sniper while sitting in her classroom near Jenin in the northern West Bank. On Tuesday 24 April, a high-ranking Israeli army officer was quoted as saying that "we are very close to carrying out a harsh response against the Gaza Strip." The officer accused Hamas of having carried out a failed attempt aimed at kidnapping Israeli soldiers to swap them for Palestinian prisoners held hostage in Israeli jails and detention centres. "We want to show Hamas and other Palestinian groups that the price for even attempting to kidnap our soldiers will be too high," he added. Israeli helicopter gunships dropped leaflets in northern Gaza warning inhabitants of the impending army campaign. The Israeli media quoted "reliable military sources" as saying that the army was planning to ask Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for permission to carry out "pinpoint" operations against Hamas's leaders and infrastructure. Hamas denied charges that it had attempted to kidnap Israeli soldiers. The movement's spokesmen in Gaza said the firing of rockets was in response to the unprovoked and unjustified killing by Israeli death squads of innocent Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel has consistently refused to extend the ceasefire agreement to the West Bank and its occupation army continues to carry out incursions into Palestinian population centres on an almost daily basis. Earlier, a spokesman for Hamas's armed wing blamed Israel for the latest escalation, saying that Israel cannot continue to murder Palestinians on a daily basis and then blame Palestinians for defending themselves. "The ceasefire has been over for a long time, and Israel is responsible for that. This is a message to the Zionist regime that if you don't stop killing our children we are going to kill and kidnap your soldiers," he said. Israeli military officials have indicated that Israel might resume assassination attacks against Palestinian politicians, especially those affiliated with Hamas. Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz was quoted as saying that Israel "will not allow Hamas to hide behind its political entity". However, the Jerusalem Post of Tuesday, 24 April, quoted unnamed government officials as saying that Israel would wait to hear what Hamas's political wing had to say, noting that it was the organisation's military wing that had declared the ceasefire over. Meanwhile Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and other regional and international players have been making intensive behind-the-scene efforts to preserve the ceasefire and prevent its collapse and on Tuesday PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas called on Israel to exercise restraint in order to prevent any further deterioration in the situation on the ground. Speaking in Rome after meeting with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, Abbas said the firing of the Qassams was "an exceptional" response to the killing by Israel of 10 Palestinians in the northern West Bank earlier this week. Prime Minister Ismail Haniya has stressed that Palestinians are not interested in escalation. "We made great efforts to keep the truce and there was a positive Palestinian position, but unfortunately this position was met by more Israeli aggression against our people," he said. Rather than Israel's declared pretext of preventing the firing of home-made missiles, the real reason for any reinvasion of Gaza is likely to be an attempt to restore Israel's military deterrent following last summer's debacle in Lebanon. Since last August, Israeli politicians and military chiefs have been trading accusations over the failure of a war which led to the resignation of the former chief of staff, Dan Hallutz. Hallutz's successor, Gabi Ashkenazi, has promised that the army will not allow a repeat of the Lebanese scenario, words that so far have been translated into the killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. According to Israeli observers, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may be seeking another bloody rampage in Gaza in the hope it will win him some badly-needed popularity, and divert attention from the Winograd Committee (the Israeli government-appointed commission of inquiry to investigate Israel's failure in its war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006) report, due to be published next week. The report is expected to blame Olmert and his government for "mismanaging" the war and could well force Olmert to resign, paving the way for fresh general elections. The Olmert government is also seeking a way out of the political predicament posed by the Arab Peace Plan offering full normalisation of ties between Arab states and Israel, in return for withdrawal from land occupied in 1967. Another bloody incursion into Gaza by the Israeli army, believe observers, will create an atmosphere in which the Arab peace plan becomes little more than an irrelevance.
