Tensions Hit Peak Over Gaza Clashes

TENSIONS IN the Gaza Strip reached 'an unprecedented high' yesterday as Palestinians prepared for an expected Israeli military onslaught

In an overnight operation three members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad were killed at the border fence while trying to plant bombs along a security road on the outskirts of Gaza city.

At yesterday's funeral of two of them, Abdel Khalim Al-Sayoumi and Said Helas, thousands of demonstrators took to the street, shooting guns in the air and throwing hand grenades into an open field vowing revenge against Israel.

Israeli tanks were massing at the border, fresh from a huge exercise to practise reoccupying the strip, while the Palestinians were making preparations of their own.

Militants were flooding into the border town of Beit Hanoun, building bunkers, stretching tarpaulins across streets to block Israeli reconnaissance drones and planting roadside bombs.

Daylight yesterday found the streets empty. Many residents had fled, knowing that the town is always the first stop for any Israeli invasion. But, in a difference from past operations, the militants said they did not plan to move to nearby Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp. The militants - from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups - planned to use the lessons and equipment developed last summer in south Lebanon by Hizbollah and meet the enemy at the border.

Residents said militants have shut off sections of Beit Hanoun on recent nights as they built defences and set up anti-tank rockets and planted roadside bombs, used so effectively last summer by Hizbollah. Israel has long contended that Islamic Jihad and Hamas have been sending militants to Syria and Iran to train alongside Hizbollah for just this eventuality, an accusation that 'Khalid', a top Islamic Jihad commander confirmed last week to The Observer.

Despite a six-month ceasefire honoured by most militant groups - the exception was last Tuesday's Hamas-led rocket attack, where 30 shells were launched in response to an Israeli operation in the West Bank - Islamic Jihad has refused to follow any such agreements.

They have sent hundreds of short-range rockets into Israeli land surrounding Gaza over the past year. It is this campaign of mostly ineffectual homemade rockets that has Israel on the brink of reinvading Gaza for the second time since the 2005 withdrawal.

Heavily funded and trained by Iran and Syria, Islamic Jihad is the most recalcitrant of Palestinian militant groups, refusing to accept the Jewish state on any level and completely ignoring Palestinian politics and the stalled 'peace process' that even some Hamas factions tepidly accept.

'We are not like Hamas, we want all the Jews out and the Palestinian people back in their lands,' explains Abu Hamza, who commands the group's rocket programme.

And barring an actual invasion, which embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seems to want to avoid, Islamic Jihad recently announced it has developed a rocket with an 18km range able to hit the Israeli city of Ashkelon. 'Soon, we will have one capable of firing 30km. Then the tanks will have to come and stop us,' Hamza said.