EHUD BARAK

IDF gears up for Gaza incursion

By Roi Eitan

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TEL AVIV—Even as Israel’s government prepares to talk peace with the Palestinians, Israel’s army is girding for war in the Gaza Strip.

Information from senior sources in the Israel Defense Forces indicates that Israeli troops have been training and stockpiling equipment at a pace that would suggest a major Gaza action is weeks away, at most.

With small-scale Israeli military operations having had only a limited effect on curbing Palestinian rocket attacks across the border, Israeli officials are speaking more bluntly than ever of the need to invade the Hamas-controlled territory with full force.
   
“Each day that passes brings us closer to a broad operation in Gaza,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said last week. “We are not looking forward to it and we would be happy if circumstances prevented it.”
   
Timing would be critical.
   
The U.S.-led peace conference between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to take place at the end of this month, and Olmert may find it hard to make his case in Annapolis, Md., if CNN is broadcasting images of Israeli tanks barreling through Gaza refugee camps.
   
Abbas would be forced to condemn Israel in a show of Palestinian solidarity, despite his hostility toward Hamas, and peace negotiations likely would fall apart.
   
Speculation has been rife.
   
“The army is prepared to enter the Gaza Strip. The orders exist,” wrote Alex Fishman and Ronni Shaked in Yediot Achronot. “But a massive military incursion and seizure of parts of the Gaza Strip prior to the Annapolis conference are contrary to Israel’s interests.”
   
The problem is that Israel appears to have exhausted all its other options. Israel’s airstrikes and commando raids have made but a small dent in Palestinian terrorist capabilities.
   
Barak spearheaded an Israeli initiative to cut power and fuel supplies to Gaza in order to pressure Hamas into stopping the rocket fire, but the sanctions ran into censure abroad and at home due to the perception that they constituted collective punishment for Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinian residents.
   
Despite the potential diplomatic price of a major Gaza operation, the Palestinian threat from Gaza may be too pressing a priority for Israel to ignore.
   
There is broad consensus in Israel on the need to crack down on Hamas before the group builds up a military presence in Gaza.
   
Israeli officials say Hamas has smuggled 70 tons of high explosives into Gaza since it violently wrested control of the territory from Abbas’ Fatah faction in June.
   
Military analysts agree that if Israeli forces go into Gaza, their main objective will be to clear areas used by Palestinian rocket crews, killing and capturing as many militants as possible.
   
But that would raise two problems: How to avoid a reoccupation of the territor and what to do with the Hamas leadership once its members are in Israel’s gunsights.
   
Privately, some Israeli officials have suggested a Gaza invasion would be an opportunity to topple Hamas on behalf of Abbas.
   
It would be a familiar gambit: Many Israelis remember the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which aimed to crush the PLO and install a friendly government in Beirut. That failed spectacularly.