Israel launches campaign against Islamic Jihad
JERUSALEM – Israel retaliated Thursday for a deadly suicide bombing in a crowded market area in the city of Hadera with a series of air strikes and arrests that Israel officials described as the first stage of a sustained military effort against the radical Palestinian faction Islamic Jihad.
In the early evening, an Israeli military aircraft fired on a car traveling in the Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, according to Israeli military officials and witnesses. Hospital officials said seven Palestinians were killed, including Shadi Mahanna, a senior military commander in northern Gaza, and his deputy, Mohammed Ghazaineh. The identities of the remaining dead were not immediately available, but Palestinian witnesses said at least some of them appeared to be civilians.
The operations came after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, facing heavy criticism from some quarters after Wednesday’s suicide attack that killed five Israelis, declared that the “Palestinian Authority has not taken any serious action to battle terrorism.” Sharon vowed that Israel would take up the task in a “broad and nonstop” military campaign, prompting Palestinian leaders to warn that the operation would dim prospects for a new peace process.
Sharon also announced during a meeting here with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that he would not hold talks with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas until Abbas’ government moved against the Palestinian armed groups. The two men had planned to hold a summit, the first since Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, no later than the first week in November.
“Israel would very much have wanted to advance the peace process,” Sharon told Lavrov, according to an adviser present at the meeting. “But due to the Palestinian Authority’s utter failure in the struggle against terror, unfortunately, for as long as terror continues, we will not be able to move forward as we wanted.”
As Israelis gathered by the hundreds to bury the dead, the military response unfolded in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The chief target of the operation is Islamic Jihad, which is at war with Israel and which asserted responsibility for the Hadera bombing. Israeli soldiers also arrested three members of the larger Hamas movement that, like Islamic Jihad, refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Israel closed the West Bank, which it has occupied since the 1967 Middle East War, and sealed two crossing points between Gaza and Israel. Israel ended its 38-year presence in the strip last month, a withdrawal that the Bush administration, Russia and other members of the so-called Quartet working to promote a new Israeli-Palestinian peace process had hoped would revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The process has been dormant since the outbreak of the most recent uprising five years ago.