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Nighttime Tank Charge Into Gaza Powder Keg

(New York Times) Lt. Col. Ron, commander of an IDF special forces battalion who also received training at Fort Benning, Ga., leads some of the army's more delicate missions in Gaza. "It's important just to hit the terrorists, not the civilians," he said before the raid. "Most of the time we succeed. But the terrorists sometimes use the women and children as human shields, and it makes our job very difficult." Israeli officials say that with Mr. Abbas still failing to act to stop the violence, they have no choice but to carry out raids such as this one, aimed at preventing Palestinian rocket fire. In Beit Hanun, in the northeast corner of Gaza, the militant Hamas movement used the lush orange groves there for cover when launching homemade rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot. "We want the people to understand that if they let the terrorists operate from their neighborhoods, we will be there," Ron said. At 3 a.m., the column of armored vehicles encircled two houses the IDF said belonged to Hamas members accused of involvement in the rocket fire, and prepared to blow them up. Speaking in Arabic, a soldier on a megaphone told residents to get out of the two houses, as well as those nearby. But Beit Hanun, like many Palestinian communities, is awash in weapons, and the call was greeted almost immediately with bursts of gunfire from elsewhere in the neighborhood, prompting shooting exchanges that lasted 15 minutes. Palestinians also hurled grenades and set off two roadside bombs, the Israelis said. As the shooting died down, small bands of soldiers slipped into the two homes and the neighboring ones to confirm that they had been evacuated and to plant explosives.
2003-05-16 00:00:00
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