GAZA CITY, 23 February 2003 — The question hung over the concrete rubble and twisted iron support rods, the ruined buildings where Palestinians said three young men were killed when the Israeli army demolished them this week.

Is the Israeli military taking advantage of a time when the world is not paying attention to what is going on here, when media coverage is focusing on Iraq, to step up its campaign in the Occupied Territories?

In the past week, while the world’s press focused on the UN Security Council and Baghdad, the violence has suddenly surged here. In six days, at least 30 Palestinians have been killed in a series of Israeli operations, chiefly in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Nablus.

The dead have been a combination of unarmed civilians, armed militants, members of the legitimate Palestinian security forces and one a medic trying to reach a sick patient.

Unlike previous Israeli offensives in the Occupied Territories, this week’s violence was not a response to a suicide bombing or an attack by Palestinian gunmen in Israel.

Inside Israel, the situation has been at its calmest for months. There have been no suicide bombings. Nobody has been killed in a militant attack.

The Israeli army began this week’s offensive after four Israeli soldiers were killed when Hamas set fire to an Israeli tank guarding a Jewish settlement inside the occupied Gaza Strip.

“As soon as it became clear to us that there were going to be elections in Israel followed by a probable war in Iraq it was very clear to us that these months would be very difficult in the Occupied Territories,” Lior Yavne, a spokesman for B’Tselem, one of Israel’s most respected human rights organizations said yesterday. “One of the only things that can restrain Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories is international public opinion.”

The upsurge in violence this week has been so drastic that it has attracted some international attention. Sergio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement yesterday he was “extremely concerned” about recent Palestinian deaths in the Gaza Strip.

“Such indiscriminate use of force in civilian areas can never be justified,” the statement said, and urged Israel “to cease such actions which can only damage any possible peace process in the region, and he appeals to all parties to refrain from any further violent action”.

Even the US State Department was critical of this week’s Israeli military operations. “We remain very concerned about civilian casualties ... from the ongoing violence, especially among Palestinian children and young people,” said Richard Boucher, a State Department spokesman. “These casualties continue to result from Israeli military actions in the West Bank and Gaza.”

A week of bloodshed began last Saturday when Hamas militants succeeded in setting fire to an Israeli tank outside the Jewish settlement of Dugit in the Gaza Strip with a massive explosive charge hidden by the roadside.

Desperate attempts by the Israeli army to put the fire out could not save four Israeli soldiers trapped inside. Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Defense Minister, promised Israel would “strike hard at our enemy Hamas”.

In the past the Israeli army has openly admitted a policy of assassinating Palestinian militants. “I can’t be certain,” said Yavne of B’Tselem, “but I have noticed over the last few months that the army has claimed a lot more people have been killed while trying to escape.” On the same day, 35 Israeli tanks and helicopters entered the Gaza Strip and soldiers demolished the house of Ahmad Ghadnour, another Hamas militant.

Two Palestinians were killed in the gun battle as militants attacked the soldiers, one reportedly a suspected militant, the other a Palestinian policeman, legitimately armed under the Oslo peace accords.

Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper reported that the Israeli army was starting a new offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and that instead of trying to reoccupy the densely populated strip, as it has Palestinian cities in the West Bank, it would stick to assassinations and raids.

On Wednesday, the bloodiest day of the week, 11 Palestinians died in an Israeli incursion into Gaza City. The dead included Mundur Safadi, a Palestinian medic shot dead as he accompanied his brother, Dr Ra’ed Safadi, who was trying to reach a patient with heart problems. According to Dr Safadi, who was injured, they were deliberately shot by a sniper.

They also included three young men killed when the Israeli army demolished two buildings, according to Palestinian witnesses, who said the men had evacuated the buildings when ordered to by the Israeli army, but returned too soon to a third building next door which was also damaged.

Accounts of how the three died differed — some said there was a second explosion at the building, others that a helicopter fired at them — but there was a smear of blood amid the ruins.

The Israeli army said the aim of the incursion was to destroy metal workshops in buildings like these it claimed were used by Hamas to build rockets to fire at Israeli towns near Gaza.

That evening Hamas fired three rockets at the nearby town of Sderot, injuring three Israelis.

The dead in the raid also included two Hamas militants and one from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who were killed in fighting, and three members of Palestinian intelligence, a legitimate security force, reportedly killed when their car was hit by machine-gunfire.

The same day in Nablus, 93-year-old Mustafa abu Safieh accused an Israeli soldier of shooting his son Nasser dead in cold blood. Abu Safieh said they were stopped and searched by soldiers, then ordered to move on. As they moved away a soldier killed his son. The Israeli said was shot dead because he did not halt when ordered to.

A second Palestinian was shot dead throwing stones at soldiers, according to Palestinians. The army said he threw a firebomb.

Also in Nablus, a Welsh medical volunteer, 65-year-old Anne Gwynne, said an Israeli soldier deliberately fired at her and a Palestinian ambulance driver she was accompanying.

On Thursday, in Nablus, 61-year-old Ahmad abu Zahra and his 17-year-old grandson of the same name were shot dead while on the streets of Nablus old city during a curfew, according to Palestinian witnesses.