07 February 2008

Violence flared in and around the Gaza Strip Wednesday as Hamas and the Israeli military exchanged rocket salvos and air strikes. Also Wednesday, the Israeli government divulged a plan to build a reinforced fence along parts of its border with Egypt, citing fears of infiltration by Palestinian resistance fighters.

Early Wednesday, Israeli aircraft fired at militants who were apparently part of a rocket launching squad, the Israeli military said. Hamas said that four of its men were lightly wounded in the attack.

The air strike followed assaults Tuesday which left nine Palestinians dead, including seven Hamas police officers.

Hamas responded in kind, firing upward of a dozen rockets into southern Israel. One exploded at Kibbutz Beeri, a communal village about 6 kilometers from the border fence, and wounded two young sisters, police said. They were not seriously hurt; Israeli casualty reports frequently include individuals described as suffering from "shock."

Citing recent breaches of the Egyptian border by Gazans seeking to obtain supplies denied to them under a crippling Israeli blockade, an Israeli official said Wednesday that his country would start building a reinforced barrier along the frontier in a bid to prevent infiltration attempts by militants.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni decided on the move after a three-hour meeting at the premier's office, the official said.

"Israel will soon begin constructing two sections of the fence" following a plan presented at the meeting by Barak, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The first section will be near the southern Red Sea resort town of Eilat and the second near the area of Nitzana in the center of the 250-kilometer desert border, he added.

Government spokesman Mark Regev declined to comment on the meeting.

The fighting in Gaza came a day after Hamas claimed joint responsibility - along with Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group tied to the Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose forces lost a violent power struggle with Hamas in the strip last summer - for Monday's deadly suicide bombing in Israel.

The attack, the first of its kind in a year, killed a 73-year-old woman in Dimona, seat of the Jewish state's illegal nuclear weapons program.

Hamas said Tuesday that two of its members from the Occupied West Bank had carried out the bombing, the first time that it claimed responsibility for a suicide blast inside Israel in three-and-a-half years.

At Wednesday's meeting between Israeli officials, security officials presented intelligence reports indicating that dozens of Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip had scattered across the Sinai Desert after militants blew open the border on January 23, the official said.

Livni recommended during the meeting that Israel accept Egypt's request to double its forces along its border with Gaza to 1,500, an official in her ministry told AFP. Egypt's troop numbers in Sinai are governed by a treaty with Israel. 

Israel has increasingly tightened restrictions on movement around Gaza since the second Palestinian uprising which began in September 2000.

The measures culminated in a full-scale lockdown imposed on January 17 that was eased five days later amid mounting international concern over a humanitarian crisis after Israel cut off supplies of food, fuel and medicine.

The latest violence in and around Gaza came after a two-week lull that accompanied the breach of the impoverished territory's border with Egypt.

Gaza militants blew open the border barrier on January 23 in a bid to counter the punishing Israeli blockade, but the frontier was resealed by Egyptian and Hamas forces over the weekend.

During the two-week breach hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are estimated to have entered Egypt from Gaza to stock up on supplies.

The idea of building a reinforced barrier along the Egyptian border was first raised in Israel several years ago, but was eventually abandoned because of the high cost.

A Defense Ministry spokesman told AFP that a reinforced border fence could cost at least $500 million and take up to two years to construct.

Hamas has garnered increased popularity among many Palestinians for breaking Israel's stranglehold on Gaza, if only temporarily.

In stark contrast, Abbas' administration has been strikebound - civil servants walked off the job Tuesday in a two-day protest against a new regulation aimed at forcing West Bank Palestinians to pay millions of dollars in overdue utility bills.

The strike showed that despite the renewal of foreign aid to Abbas' regime after he deposed the elected Hamas-led government of former Prime Minister Ismail Haniyya, Palestinians under his control are still in serious economic trouble.

So are Palestinians in Gaza. Israel, for its part, planned to keep up its economic pressure on Gaza. Last week Israel's Supreme Court cleared the way for reduction in electricity supplies starting Thursday.

"We need to understand there is a war," Vice Premier Haim Ramon told Israel Radio. "The war against Hamas has to be fought on all fronts." - AP, AFP

Copyright The Daily Star 2008.