Israel Launches airstrikes against Hamas

The escalation threatened to derail a shaky seven-month-old truce and quashed hopes that Israel's ceding the coastal strip to the Palestinians would invigorate peacemaking. Israel's reprisals drew fresh Hamas threats of vengeance. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas came under growing Israeli pressure to confront the militants.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told security chiefs in a meeting that "the ground of Gaza should shake" and that he wanted to exact a high price from Palestinians everywhere, not just Hamas. He promised a "crushing" response, including airstrikes, targeted killings and arrest raids, participants said afterward.

On Saturday evening, Sharon convened his Security Cabinet, a group of senior ministers, to approve a series of military operations proposed by Mofaz, culminating with a ground incursion into Gaza.

Security officials said the operation would begin with artillery fire, more airstrikes and other targeted attacks aimed at the "infrastructure" of the rocket launchers. The operation will grow in intensity, leading up to a ground operation unless the Palestinian security takes action to halt the rocket attacks or Hamas ends the attacks itself.

The officials said the army planned to create a "buffer zone" in northern Gaza, ordering residents to leave their homes, and planned a series of closures to limit movement in the West Bank as well.

The ground operation would require final approval from the full Cabinet, the officials added. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to publicize the operation's details.

Palestinian Interior Ministry spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khoussa called the plan a "serious escalation that will lead to a new era of violence."

Minutes after Israeli officials approved the retaliation measures, an explosion rocked the southern  Gaza Strip late Saturday. Palestinian officials said Israeli helicopters fired three missiles, including two that targeted a group of militants gathered in an open field. The men, belonging to the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, escaped unharmed, the officials said.

The Israeli army said it had targeted two weapons-storage facilities used by the brigades.

The crisis erupted amid a major challenge to Sharon's leadership in his hardline Likud Party and could strengthen the hand of his main rival,    Benjamin Netanyahu, who warned the Gaza pullout endangered Israel.

A Likud vote Monday could determine whether Sharon quits the party � a move that would likely bring early elections and prompt him to form a new centrist party to capture mainstream voters.

The heightened violence followed a chain of events starting Friday with an explosion at a Hamas rally in Gaza's Jebaliya refugee camp. At least 15 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded.

Hamas blamed Israel, claiming it fired missiles into the crowd, and said its rocket attacks were in retaliation. Israel denied involvement, and the Palestinian Authority said Islamic militants apparently caused the blast themselves by mishandling explosives.

A senior Palestinian security official confirmed Saturday that friction caused a rocket-propelled grenade in a truck to explode, which then ignited about 10 other grenades. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation.

In a speech Saturday, Abbas also blamed Hamas and renewed demands that armed groups stop flaunting weapons in public. "We are required more than ever before to end this frequent tragedy that resulted from chaos and military parades in residential areas," he said.

Islamic militants took center stage in Gaza after Israel's withdrawal, holding military-style victory parades. Many Palestinians endorsed the militants' claim that they drove Israel out by force.

But the latest bloodshed appeared to put Hamas on the defensive.

The group called Abbas' position "a stab in the back of the martyrs" and a blow to efforts to work out differences between militant factions. Abbas has been trying to co-opt Hamas, mainly through the lure of parliament elections, and has rejected calls by Israel and the international community to confront and disarm militants.

In a nod to Hamas, Abbas reiterated Saturday that elections would be held in January as scheduled and that he would not let outsiders dictate who can participate. Israel has demanded that Hamas be barred.

Under an informal agreement between Abbas and the militants, a ban on displaying weapons was to take effect later Saturday, though it was unclear whether Hamas would honor the deal after the Israeli strikes.

On Saturday afternoon, Israeli aircraft fired five missiles at two cars carrying Hamas militants in Gaza City, killing at least two militants and wounding nine people, officials said. Other officials put the death toll at four.

The strikes meant Israel has resumed targeted killings of Palestinian militants, a practice suspended during the truce. During more than four years of fighting, Israel has killed scores of militants and bystanders in such attacks.

Hamas identified two of the dead as Nafez Abu Hussein and Rwad Farhad, local field commanders. Several hundred gunmen, some firing into the air, joined a funeral procession for Farhad, who was 17.

Farhad's mother, known as Um Nidal, said all three of her sons have been killed in fighting with the Israelis. "I am so proud," she said. "I wish I had more sons to offer."

Vowing revenge, Hamas called on followers in a statement to strike Israel "in every spot of our occupied land." At least three more rockets fell in Israel after the airstrike.

Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Shaath denounced the strike as an "act of criminal aggression" and accused Israel of trying to destroy the cease-fire that had largely held since February.

On the other side of the border, Eli Moyal, the mayor of Sderot, the Israeli town hit by most of the rockets, criticized the Israeli response as "minimal and insulting." Israeli newscasts showed hysterical residents in Sderot crying and running for cover during an air-raid alarm.

Mofaz also ordered large numbers of ground forces to deploy near northern Gaza, the launching area for most Hamas rocket attacks. At one location, four armored personnel carriers, five tanks and four bulldozers joined a fleet of about 30 armored vehicles regularly deployed there.

Israel also set up five artillery cannons elsewhere on the border, an unprecedented step.

Past Israeli retaliation for Palestinian rocket fire has involved airstrikes or ground incursions. Artillery fire is less precise than missiles, and artillery shells fired into densely populated Gaza could cause many casualties.

Army aircraft also dropped fliers throughout Gaza saying that Hamas had sparked the escalation. Hamas' lies are "driving you to destruction and despair," the flier said. It also said the Palestinian Authority must "act immediately" to stop the violence and threatened a harsh response to further attacks.

Israel pulls out, and all Hamas does with this new freedom is launch attacks? This is why Hamas Is a terrorist group, and not as some say, "freedom fighters." This only makes further pullouts become more difficult.