The killing of six soldiers in Gaza has exposed the weakness of Ariel Sharon's leadership, writes Graham Usher in Jerusalem It began as another routine Israeli army incursion into Gaza. On Monday night dozens of armoured vehicles, flanked by tanks and helicopters, invaded Gaza City's Zeitoun neighbourhood in a forlorn hunt for "weapons factories", Palestinian guerrillas and "terrorists" generally. Three Palestinians were killed in this phase of the operation and scores wounded, most of them civilians, as Israeli soldiers went from vehicles to rooftops to metal workshops. Resistance was stiff and well coordinated. According to Palestinian sources, Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters purposely drew the army into areas freshly laid with roadside bombs. At around 6.15am Tuesday morning one bomb weighing 110 lbs detonated under an APC, leaving six soldiers dead, pulling down three four-storey buildings, spraying body parts and armour over a radius of several hundred metres. It was the deadliest attack on the Israeli army in the occupied territories since an Islamic Jihad ambush killed nine soldiers and three armed settlers in Hebron in November 2002. Still bleeding from Israel's assassinations of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdul-Aziz Al-Rantisi, Hamas claimed the hit as a victory. "This one is for Sheikh Yassin," said one Hamas man in Zeitoun, reportedly pulling a dismembered finger from a bag. "And for the rest, you'll [Israel] pay in liberated prisoners." The Palestinian Authority moved swiftly to prevent that denouement, torn -- as always -- between their people's perception that Hamas were "soldiers fighting against an invading army" and the fear that the Israeli soldiers remains would be paid for with the head of their leader. Yasser Arafat called on "our brothers in Gaza" to return the body parts to Israel "according to religious and humanitarian traditions". It is unclear whether Hamas and Jihad will listen, given the thousands of their men in Israeli jails and the precedents set by Hizbullah. It is already clear what the consequences will be if they don't. Following the death of the six soldiers, the army went house to house in Zeitoun in search for their remains, sparking skirmishes that left five more Palestinians dead and over a 100 wounded. Israel has announced the army will stay in Zeitoun until all of the remains are recovered. Few Palestinians believe Ariel Sharon will not be true to that vow. "We are fighting a cruel enemy that lacks any sense of humanity," he said on Tuesday. "We will continue to fight and harm that enemy everywhere it is active or hiding." But Sharon cannot mask the defeat Hamas has again inflicted on his leadership, perhaps at its lowest ebb since he was elected prime minister in 2001. Ten days after his Likud Party voted down his "disengagement plan", Israel's prime minister is not only stuck in Gaza but bereft of a political strategy that can allow exit from it. It is an impasse eloquently expressed by an Israeli army general, quoted in Israel's Ma'ariv newspaper on Tuesday, but spoken before the invasion of Gaza City. "After the failure of the [Likud] referendum [on the disengagement plan], we don't have the slightest idea of what we are doing [in Gaza], what is happening or what is on the agenda. Is there going to be a pull out? Is there disengagement? Over what are we fighting? What are we supposed to be doing?" That yawning vacuum was filled by the political acrimony that followed the Zeitoun debacle. Israeli lawmakers from the right urged Sharon to launch "aerial bombardments" on Gaza to "make up for the demoralisation caused by the disengagement plan". Those from the opposition called on him to "step down" since he "is unable to free himself from the shackles of the Likud and evacuate the settlements". The polarisation will be reinforced on Saturday when a mass rally in Tel Aviv organised by the Israeli left under the slogan "The majority decides -- Get out of Gaza and start to talk" will attack Sharon by essentially adopting his disengagement policies. It was sealed on Wednesday with the release of an opinion poll showing that 59 per cent of Israeli Jews supported a unilateral pullout from Gaza. There are some Israelis and Palestinians who viewed the disengagement plan as deliberate feint by Sharon to enable Israel to stay in Gaza indefinitely. But having won over George Bush, Tony Blair and a majority of Israelis to its terms his decision to present the plan to Likud for approval now looks like a colossal blunder, evincing the trait least associated with Sharon: weakness. In the meantime, his army flails around in Zeitoun, killing Palestinians, searching and destroying houses but underscoring a reality that most have long understood -- that there is nothing in Gaza for Israel except the remains of dead soldiers.
