JERUSALEM – Israel should shut off the Gaza Strip's electricity and water and impose a blockage of the territory until the Palestinians cease the regular firing of rockets into the Jewish state, former prime minister and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday.
"The government can do a lot to protect its people," said Netanyahu at a meeting of his Likud party. "It could evacuate whomever necessary, enact a closure on the Gaza Strip, stop providing services like electricity and water, or decide on a limited invasion of four or five kilometers to distance the range of the Qassams (rockets). But the government isn't doing anything to protect the people of Sderot, because it is paralyzed."
Netanyahu's comments came on the heels of a limited Israeli military incursion into Gaza initiated yesterday in response to the firing by Palestinian terror groups of nearly 100 deadly Qassam rockets into nearby Jewish population centers the past three days.
Military sources told WND the army operation would be limited and is not expected to dent the Palestinian rocket infrastructure inside Gaza.
"The incursion is more so (Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert can say he responded to the rocket attacks," said a military source.
The Israel Defense Forces today fired missiles at a Hamas installation in the central Gaza Strip and stationed artillery batteries along the Israel-Gaza border to fire at Palestinian crews caught attempting to launch rockets into Israel. Also, several IDF tanks entered into about a half mile into the northern tip of the Gaza Strip to aid in spotting rocket launch crews. Most Palestinian rockets are launched from northern Gaza.
The military strikes come after a week-long slew of rockets attacks aimed at Jewish cities near Gaza, including Sderot, a city of nearly 25,000 people located about three miles from gaza. More than 90 rockets slammed into Sderot and nearby towns, causing some injuries and the collapse of homes.
Yesterday, one rocket landed in Sderot school yard and a second slammed into a synagogue just after services. No one was injured in either attack. This morning, a least 10 rockets were fired, including one that hit a Sderot gas station, lightly wounding one person.
Dozens of residents of Sderot yesterday were evacuated by an Israeli billionaire for a weekend reprieve in a hotel in the south of the country.
Hamas, which took credit for most of the rocket fire, announced the attacks were in part meant to provoke an Israeli military response to distract from the daily Palestinian factional infighting in Gaza this week. Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party have been fighting in the streets in some of the deadliest clashes since the two forged a national unity government earlier this year. The fighting threatens to torpedo the unity deal.
The IDF's military operations in Gaza, which continue today, are not expected to deal a severe blow to the rocket infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli military sources.
The sources said the army has not been authorized to launch any major ground invasion into Gaza and is only allowed to hit select Hamas military installations after receiving direct approval from either Olmert or Defense Minister Amir Peretz.
The sources said that to dent Gaza's rocket capabilities, the army estimates it would need to mount a massive ground offensive to confiscate some of the hundreds of tons of weaponry smuggled into Gaza in recent months and temporarily reoccupy swaths of territory in the northern Strip, where most rockets have been launched. The army also said it recommended stationing troops along the Egypt-Gaza border, the site of rampant weapons smuggling. The border was controlled by Israel until the Jewish state's evacuation of Gaza in August 2005.
The IDF's incursions this week marked the first time the army operated in Gaza since a cease-fire was signed with Gaza militants in November in which Israel vowed to suspend anti-terror operations in exchange for quiet. Since then, more than 480 rockets have been fired from Gaza, but the IDF largely has ceased from operating in the territory.
Military officials said there have been indications for months Hamas and other major Palestinian terror groups used the cease-fire to improve the range of their rockets, smuggle in mass quantities of weapons, construct underground bunkers and build guerrilla-like armies.
"The longer we wait to deal with the Gaza threat, the more costly an operation in Gaza will be," a top military source said. "Hamas has been preparing for confrontations."
Last month, Yuval Diskin, head of Israel's General Security Services, warned the Knesset that Hamas was sending hundreds of Gaza-based militants to Iran for prolonged periods of advanced training. He announced smuggling of weaponry into Gaza from the neighboring Egyptian Sinai desert recently increased six-fold and that Palestinian terrorist groups were taking advantage of the cease-fire to enhance rockets and create a complex system of underground bunkers.
He said Palestinian advances during the cease-fire period would make it more difficult for the IDF to confront Gaza's terror infrastructure.
Earlier, Yoav Galant, chief of the IDF's Gaza-area division, told reporters the Gaza truce enabled Hamas to grow from a ragtag terror group into a well-organized militia resembling an army – complete with battalions, companies, platoons, special forces for surveillance, snipers and explosive experts.
Galant compared Hamas to the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia which last summer engaged in 33 days of confrontations with the IDF, bombarding northern Israeli population centers with thousands of rockets.
Terror leaders admit copying Hezbollah
Three weeks after the November truce was forged, Palestinian terror leaders, including militants from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization, explained to WND they would use the cease-fire to create Hezbollah-like armies in the Gaza Strip.
"We are turning Gaza into south Lebanon," Abu Ahmed, northern Gaza leader for the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group told WND, referring to the area in Lebanon in which Hezbollah built military bases and a large rocket infrastructure.
"We learned from Hezbollah's victory that Israel can be defeated if we know how to hit them and if we are well prepared," Abu Ahmed said. "We are importing rockets and the knowledge to launch them, and we are also making many plans for battle."
The Brigades, the declared military wing of Abbas' Fatah party, took responsibility along with the Islamic Jihad terror group, for every suicide bombing in Israel the past two years.
Hamas' Abu Abdullah told WND in December his group is preparing for war against Israel.
"In the last 15 months, even though the fighters of Hamas kept the cease-fire, we did not stop making important advancements and professional training on the military level. In the future, after Hamas is obliged to stop the cease-fire, the world shall see our new military capabilities," said Abu Abdullah, considered one of the most important operational members of Hamas' Izzedine al-Qassam Martyrs Brigades, Hamas' declared "resistance" department.
Al Aqsa's Abu Ahmed said his group is receiving help from Hezbollah to import long-range rockets and train in guerrilla warfare tactics.
"We have warm relations with Hezbollah, which helps with some of the training programs," Abu Ahmed said. "We don't have anything to be ashamed of – that we are dealing with Hezbollah and that we are receiving training and information from them."
He said Hezbollah maintains cells in the Sinai.
"The Sinai is an excellent ground for training, the exchange of information and weapons and for meetings on how to turn every piece of land into usable territory for a confrontation with Israel," Abu Ahmed said.
Palestinians establish Gaza war bunkers
Abu Ahmed said Palestinian groups are developing war bunkers inside Gaza similar to the underground Hezbollah lairs Israel found during the war in Lebanon.
"Our preparations include the building of special bunkers. Of course, we are taking into consideration that Gaza is not the same topography as Lebanon," Abu Ahmed said in December.
During its confrontation with Hezbollah, Israel destroyed scores of complex bunkers that snaked along the Lebanese side of the Israel-Lebanon border. Military officials said they were surprised by the scale of the Hezbollah bunkers, in which Israeli troops reportedly found war rooms stocked with advanced eavesdropping and surveillance equipment they noted were made by Iran.
Abu Ahmed said the most important "tool" in the Palestinian resistance arsenal was rockets. He said his group learned from Hezbollah that Israel can be defeated with missiles.
"We saw that with the capacity to bombard the Israeli population with hundreds of rockets every day we can change the strategic balance with Israel," he said.
WND reported exclusively last month Palestinian terror groups in Gaza claim they manufactured improved rockets that can travel deeper into the Jewish state, placing hundreds of thousands more Israelis within firing range of the Gaza Strip.
Abu Muhammad, a spokesman for the Islamic Jihad terror group, which has been responsible for recent rocket fire, vowed his organization would continue launching rockets deeper into the Jewish state.
He told WND Israel would be "very surprised and astonished soon by our rocket capacities. We will not abide by any cease-fire."
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