Israeli assault on Gaza could last two weeks
Forces search for tunnels, rocket firing sites
GAZA , GAZA STRIP • Israeli troops pushed deeper into Gaza Friday in a ground offensive officials said could last up to two weeks and the prime minister ordered the military to prepare for a “significantly” wider campaign.
The assault raised risks of a bloodier conflict amid rising Palestinian civilian casualties and the first Israeli military death — and brought questions of how far Israel will go to cripple Gaza’s Hamas rulers. Officially, the goal remains to destroy a network of tunnels insurgents use to infiltrate Israel and attack civilians.
In its fi rst day on the ground in Gaza, the military took up positions beyond the border, encountered little resistance from Hamas fighters and made steady progress in destroying the tunnels.
Military officials said the quick work means Israeli leaders may soon have to decide whether to expand the operation. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the military to prepare for a “significant expansion.”
“It is not possible to deal with tunnels only from the air. It needs to be done also from the ground,” he told a special cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv. “We chose to begin this operation after the other options were exhausted and with the understanding that without the operation, the price we will pay can be very high.”
Frustrated by Hamas’s refusal to accept an Egyptianbrokered truce agreement and the failure of a 10 days of airstrikes to halt rocket fire, Israel launched a ground offensive it had been reticent to undertake to further weaken Hamas militarily.
Although Israeli hardliners are calling on the military to crush Hamas, it is unclear how far Israel will go in an operation that has already killed 274 Palestinians, 20% of them children.
“It won’t end that quickly,” said Yitzhak Aharonovitch, Israel’s minister of public security. “Anything can happen. If we need to keep going, we will keep going. We won’t stop. We need quiet for the citizens of the south and the citizens of Israel.”
The Israeli military said it had killed nearly 20 militants in exchanges of fire. Gaza health officials said more than 30 Palestinians have been killed since the ground operation began, including three siblings from the Abu Musallam family who were killed when a tank shell hit their home.
Israel says it is going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties and blames Hamas, accusing it of firing from residential neighbourhoods and using civilians as “human shields.”
Critics say the intense fire itself in such a densely populated area leads to the deaths of innocent civilians.
Most countries have expressed support for Israel’s right to defend itself, while urging it to minimize civilian deaths. U.S. president Barack Obama spoke with Mr. Netanyahu Friday and expressed his concern “about the risks of further escalation and the loss of more innocent life.”
The operation also brought Israel’s first military casualty. The circumstances behind the death of Staff Sgt. Eitan Barak, 20, were not made clear: Hamas’s military wing said it ambushed Israeli units in Beit Lahiya, but Israeli media said Sgt. Barak was likely killed by friendly fire. Earlier in the week, an Israeli civilian died from Palestinian mortar fire.
“The ground offensive does not scare us and we pledge to drown the occupation army in Gaza mud,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement.
Israeli public opinion strongly supports the offensive after days of unrelenting rocket fire from Gaza. More than 1,500 rockets have been fired from the territory over the past 11 days, and rocket fire continued Friday.
The order to launch the ground operation was triggered by a Hamas attempt to infiltrate Israel early Thursday, when 13 armed militants sneaked through a tunnel and were killed by an airstrike as they emerged.
The military, which has mobilized more than 50,000 reservists, said paratroopers had uncovered eight tunnel access points across the Gaza Strip and engaged in several gun battles with Hamas militants who ambushed them.
Israeli forces are expected to spend a day or two staking ground within three kilometres of the border in the north, east and south of the Gaza Strip.
Then, they are expected to begin destroying tunnels, an operation that could take up to two weeks.