JERUSALEM, 1 March 2005 — Israel’s defense minister warned yesterday that he would send large forces into Palestinian neighborhoods if Israeli troops and settlers come under fire during the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip this summer.

The military faces twin threats during the pullout — from extremist settlers and Palestinian militants. Settlers want to stop the evacuation of all 21 settlements from Gaza and four from the West Bank, while militants want to show that they are driving the Israelis out by force.

Also yesterday, Israeli officials said they might leave houses in Gaza settlements intact, reversing an earlier tendency to tear them down to spare the settlers the vision of Palestinians taking them over.

Palestinian attacks during the Gaza withdrawal “would require us to go into Palestinian Authority territory with very, very large forces to those places which overlook the areas to be evacuated,” Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said.

Israel, meanwhile, launched a diplomatic offensive against Damascus yesterday to lobby for international backing for its accusations of Syrian links to the Tel Aviv bombing that killed five Israelis.

The campaign, focusing on European countries and UN Security Council members, aims to pile pressure on Syria, already under fire from Washington after former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed by a bomb in Beirut.

Israel also hopes giving foreign diplomats a glimpse of its intelligence on Friday’s attack will encourage a London conference on Palestinian reforms, set to open today, to push Palestinians to crack down on militant groups.

Israel has pointed the finger at Damascus, saying Syria-based leaders of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad issued orders for the bombing and the Syrian government therefore shared responsibility for giving them shelter.

Syrian President Bashar Assad dismissed Israel’s accusation as “pointlessly offensive” and denied any role in the attack.

“What we are doing is trying in every capital of the world ... to show them the direct links from Syria to Islamic Jihad, which has a direct connection to what we saw on Friday evening in Tel Aviv,” said Ron Prosor, director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

Prosor and military intelligence chiefs met foreign ambassadors in Jerusalem to make Israel’s case. Similar presentations were scheduled for Washington, London and Paris.

Israeli officials said they were providing evidence of Syrian complicity in the bombing, the first in the Jewish state since November, but declined to elaborate.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday he would not tolerate attacks like the Tel Aviv bombing.

Abbas reaffirmed his commitment to finding peace and said it would be irresponsible to let the opportunity slip away because of Friday’s nightclub bombing, which shattered a truce he and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared on Feb. 8.

Sharon said on Sunday that Israel was escalating military measures and would make no further peace moves unless the Palestinian Authority “took vigorous action to wipe out the terror groups and their infrastructure”.

Abbas said the Palestinians were “exerting 100 percent efforts” to end violence but gave no indication of concrete steps planned in response to the bombing, the first in the Jewish state since November.

He said, however, that Israel had shared information with the Palestinian Authority in the hunt for the organizers of the Tel Aviv attack.

In another development, a car packed with explosives, allegedly rigged by the Islamic Jihad, was discovered in the northern West Bank yesterday, just three days after the group claimed a bombing in Israel.

The vehicle, found 50 meters from the Jewish settlement of Mevo Dotan, near the militant stronghold of Jenin, was packed with “tens of kilos of explosives”, said an Israeli military source.