PM: IDF preparing 'massive operation' against Hamas in Gaza

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced Monday that Israel is "preparing to launch a massive operation in the Gaza Strip against the Hamas organization, the beginning of which we witnessed today."

Sharon, speaking at a Likud faction meeting in the Knesset, was referring to Monday morning's apparent assassination operation in the Gaza Strip in which missile-firing IAF helicopter gunships killed two senior Hamas military commanders and four other people.

Sharon said that due to the recent increase in terror attacks and warnings of attacks, "a number of measures in the territories, beginning with a massive incursion into cities and remaining there indefinitely," will be carried out.

According to Sharon, troops will remain in Palestinian towns in an effort to capture and arrest terrorists. Sharon emphasized that the operation is not meant as an invasion to occupy the territories but rather is meant to deal with those who carry out terror attacks and their commanders. Sharon said that "we do not intend to control the Palestinian's civilian lives."

The militant group Hamas on Monday vowed to step up its suicide attacks on Israelis following the IAF's missile attack.

"We emphasize our right to continue the jihad and resistance and to intensify the martyrdom operations as a reaction to the policy of the occupation and the (Palestinian) authority," the group said in a statement.

IDF Apache helicopter gunships attacked two taxis driving in the Rafah area of the southern Gaza Strip early Monday, killing two senior Hamas militants and four other people, and Israel Radio reported that Israel had confirmed the assassination operation.

One of the dead, and the intended target of the strike, was Yasser Rizak, the Rafah-area commander of the Hamas military arm. A second man, Amr Kouffa, who was described as a central activist of Hamas's military wing, was also killed.

Shin Bet security officials defined Rizak as a "ticking bomb," saying he had been involved in several attempts in recent weeks to dispatch suicide bombers into Israel. Also killed in the attack were two of Rizak's brothers, one of the taxi drivers and another man.

The copter raid in Rafah's Abu Sneina quarter came hours after IDF tanks and troops took over the key West Bank town of Ramallah and surrounded Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's headquarters compound in the city, as the army's Operation Determined Path went into its sixth day.

Assassinations, or "targeted killings," were a main weapon employed by Israel in earlier stages of the present conflict with the Palestinians. The IDF last week resumed assassination operations in the territories after a hiatus of more than a month, killing a senior Fatah activist in the Bethlehem area.

Palestinian security sources said one of the cars was turned into a pile of twisted wreckage and the body parts of the passengers were scattered amid the smoking remains of the vehicle.

Israeli forces also took control Monday of a Ramallah-area refugee camp, and arrested eight Palestinian suspects in Hebron as part of the operation, which Israeli officials have said will continue until Palestinian suicide bombings and shooting attacks end.

In Jenin, IDF troops carried out house-to-house searches Monday, arresting the head of military intelligence, Mohammed Abu Hanana, and four others, Palestinian security officials said. Troops also found an explosives lab, along with rockets and two explosives belts ready to be used by suicide attackers. The army destroyed the lab using a controlled detonation.

Witnesses in Ramallah said several explosions could be heard as a column of some 20 armored vehicles moved through the city, site of an number of incursions over the past year and a half.

A PA official in Arafat's Ramallah compound said IDF troops converged on it from several directions, but had not entered the perimeter, to which the Palestinian leader was confined earlier this year by Israeli order, later rescinded in a deal over the jailing of suspects in last year's assassination of then-tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi.

Witnesses said earlier that Palestinian gunmen had exchanged fire with soldiers stationed at Psagot settlement, just outside Ramallah.

Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said the Monday Ramallah incursion was the beginning of the end for the Palestinian Authority. "It is obvious that the Israelis have started that long-term occupation of the West Bank and abolishment of the Palestinian Authority."

The incursion came as the army called up reservists for what was expected to be a protracted operation, some two months after Operation Defensive Shield was launched in response to a deadly wave of suicide bombings.

IDF sources say that once the newly-drafted reservists finish a quick refresher training course, they will be added to the forces already deployed in Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilyah and Bethlehem, thereby freeing other troops to move into Ramallah and Hebron.

While troops are operating inside a number of Palestinian towns and cities, they are on the outskirts of others, such as Tul Karm, where a tight siege is in force, with troops mounting raids based on intelligence information that pinpoints a specific target for them.

Palestinian sources said that a 20-year-old man had been killed and five of his family members had been wounded when an IDF tank shell hit their house Sunday night. The IDF said it was investigating the report.

Military sources say that a weak point in the current operation is the amount of available intelligence. The Shin Bet security service's depth of knowledge about the new terror cells that have emerged in the territories in the wake of Operation Defensive Shield, during which many wanted individuals were arrested, is not at the same level as it was then.

In at least some of the areas where it is now deployed, say the sources, the army does not have enough information about wanted terrorists and their locations.

More information on preparations for a long visit by the IDF to the land of the Islamowackos. This from Israel Insider.

The Israeli army issued a limited number of emergency call-up notices to reservists to beef up troops currently patrolling Palestinian cities in the West Bank. On Friday, the security cabinet decided that the troops would operate there "as long as it is required." The cabinet also decided, in principle, to expel terrorist activists and the families of suicide bombers from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip, pending legal review.

"We have to take much more massive action than we have until now," Amos Yaron, director general of the Defense Ministry, told Israel Radio. "If this means entering the territories and staying there for a long time then we will have to consider it," he said, describing the potential action as a "crushing offensive."

The number of reservists being called up on the emergency orders is expected to be less than those who served during Operation Defensive Shield in March and April. Following "training exercises," the reservists "will assist regular military forces in the battle against Palestinian terror," the army said in a statement.

Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer reportedly said at Friday's cabinet meeting that the "IDF could remain in the territories two weeks, or it could remain there half a year." Ben-Eliezer told Maariv, "We are there as long as necessary."

IDF forces operate in Palestinian cities Palestinian sources said that some 60 IDF tanks and armored personnel carriers again advanced into Kalkilya Sunday morning, after operating there last week. A curfew was imposed on the town, as soldiers launched house-to-house searches for terror suspects.

Israeli troops continued operations in Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm, Bethlehem and Beituniya, near Ramallah. Israel's military offensive, titled "Determined Path," was launched on Thursday following two suicide bombings in Jerusalem, in which 26 Israelis were killed. After Thursday night's terrorist infiltration into the settlement of Itamar, in which a mother and three of her children and the settlement's security officer were murdered, at least 50 Israeli tanks entered Nablus, witnesses said.

An army commander told the mayor of Beituniya that the IDF had taken full responsibility for security there, the Jerusalem Post reported. "From now on," said Lt.-Col. Aviv Reshef, commander of the Nahal's Granit battalion, "responsibility for security in this town returns to Israel. We could be staying here for some time."

Responding to media reports, Ben-Eliezer issued a statement "to make it clear that there is no intention to establish IDF civil-administrative control over the residents of the Palestinian cities in which the IDF is present in order to fight terror." Ben-Eliezer said the army would "facilitate routine activities by Palestinian civilian institutions and international organizations regarding the Palestinian population's needs in the fields of infrastructure, education, health, commerce and the ongoing supply of food and water."

A Palestinian man, 60, and three children were killed in Jenin on Friday, when an Israeli tank fired at a group of civilians who left their homes to go to the city's marketplace, believing that the curfew there had been lifted. " An initial investigation revealed that the force erred in the course of action it took," the IDF said in an official statement.

Security forces arrested terror suspects throughout the West Bank. Muhammad Lufti, acting secretary general of Fatah in the West Bank, who took over from Marwan Barghouti after he was arrested in April, was arrested in his home in Beituniya. A PFLP member suspected of terror activities was captured a roadblock near Surda, the army said.

Arafat's expulsion reportedly not discussed At Friday's meeting, ministers reportedly did not discuss the expulsion of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat from the West Bank. Security officials told the cabinet that the expulsion of suicide bombers' families entails legal problems, while expelling terror operatives themselves is less complicated legally, Ha'aretz reported.

Security officials believe that the cabinet will move to expel Arafat's close associates, terrorist leaders and some of the suicide bombers' families from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip, Yediot Aharonot reported. The Justice Ministry began checking into the legal implications of such expulsions. "I don't want to get to a situation where the courts tell us to stop," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the cabinet, the newspaper reported.

The cabinet is due to discuss today the planned security fence, after construction of the fence began formally last week. Ministers from the National Religious Party are expected to object to the fence, which will be built roughly along the lines of the Green Line, but the cabinet still is likely to approve the fence, Army Radio reported.

Finance Minister Silvan Shalom told Channel Two television that the fence's construction, along with the IDF's extended presence in the West Bank, provided the best security arrangements possible for Israeli citizens.

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