Barak Says Israel Is ‘close’ To Gaza Operation
At least two civilians were reportedly among eight Palestinians killed in Gaza yesterday by Israeli forces as Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, warned that a “widespread” military operation in the Strip was “getting closer”.
Five militants were killed when a missile fired from the air hit the car in which they were travelling and which the Israeli military said was also carrying missiles ready for launching into Israel. Unconfirmed reports said that the men killed were from the Army of Islam, the group that kidnapped the BBC journalist Alan Johnston this year.
But Palestinian witnesses were quoted by Reuters as saying a gunman and two bystanders were also killed by a tank shell, which also wounded 21 Palestinians in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, where Israeli ground forces were attempting to halt the firing of Qassam rockets by Gaza’s militants.
Mr Barak said in an interview with Army Radio yesterday: “We are getting closer to carrying out a widespread operation in Gaza, which, for many reasons, has not taken place in the past weeks.”
But the minister also warned that such a large-scale operation, which has been demanded by right-wing politicians in response to the rocket attacks into Israel, was “not simple, not in terms of the forces and the amount of time which we will have to stay there or in terms of the operational challenges which the troops will have to meet”.
A large-scale operation against Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza was originally rejected by the cabinet last month in favour of the plans to cut fuel and power to the Strip, which the cabinet endorsed last week when it declared it a “hostile entity”.
Ministers resolved on more limited operations of the kind which resulted in the Palestinian deaths yesterday. There have been conflicting signals about the possibility of a large-scale military operation in Gaza. Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, a member of the inner security cabinet, told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz this week that he was opposed to such an operation, which had to be “the very last alternative there is”.
