GAZA CITY, 6 July 2007 — Israeli forces killed 11 Palestinians during an incursion into the Gaza Strip yesterday.

Gunbattles erupted after Hamas fighters opened fire on an Israeli undercover unit that was the vanguard of the Israeli forces that included tanks, bulldozers and aircraft. The troops had entered about a kilometer inside Gaza.

Witnesses reported a heavy exchange of fire as Israeli tanks and bulldozers moved in and soldiers took positions on rooftops. Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters hit back with small arms fire, laid mines against the soldiers and fired mortars at the Erez passenger crossing between Israel and Gaza.

Two of the mortars landed on the Israeli side of the passage, which has been closed to most traffic since Hamas wrested control of Gaza last month, the army said. No one was injured, but the mortar shells ignited fire in a road at the crossing, the army said.

Hospital officials said seven fighters were killed, and Hamas identified six as its members. The identity of the seventh armed man was not immediately known. Among the dead was Mohammed Siam, 37, the Hamas field commander in central Gaza, Hamas TV said.

Israeli aircraft later fired missiles at targets in central Gaza. Hospital officials said four people were killed. Hamas said two of them were its members.

The incident took place close to the Bureij refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip, a site of frequent clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli Army.

Deposed Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, and a spokesman for Fatah, Hamas’ bitter rival, both condemned the Israeli operation and urged Palestinians to fight back.

“We assert that our people have the full right to defend themselves and to confront these aggressions,” Haniyeh said.

Hamas officials said that in a separate military operation along Gaza’s northern border with Israel, about 15 tanks and three bulldozers moved into Palestinian farms and were leveling the land. The army denied knowledge of the operation.

Meanwhile, President Mahmoud Abbas decreed yesterday that the Palestinian Parliament would reconvene on July 11, in a tactical move that could consolidate his power over the sidelined chamber.

From his West Bank base of Ramallah, Abbas authorized that the Palestine Legislative Council, where Hamas lost its practical majority after Israel arrested 39 of its MPs, would meet next week for the first time in months.

The Western-backed president, who has ruled out dialogue with Hamas after it seized control of the Gaza Strip on June 15, decreed that a new speaker will be elected by secret ballot before any other parliamentary business.

However, experts say the current political crisis involving Abbas’ Fatah party and Hamas makes it unlikely that Parliament will meet as decreed. For any session to be held, at least 67 MPs need to attend. Although Hamas occupies 74 seats in the 132-member chamber to Fatah’s 45, 39 of its deputies are behind Israeli bars and therefore it has lost its effective majority.

Hamas has stopped Parliament meeting for months by keeping its MPs at home, fearing that Fatah will elect its own speaker to replace the arrested Aziz Dweik from Hamas, or adopt laws against the interests of the movement.

Senior Fatah MP Azzam Al-Ahmed told a news conference yesterday that if Parliament does not meet, Abbas will invoke “Article 43 of the basic law.”

That provision gives the president “the right in exceptional cases... and while the Legislative Council is not in session, to issue decisions and decrees that have the power of law.”

Abbas could therefore prolong the mandate of his emergency government, sworn in for one month on June 17, after he dismissed the previous Hamas-run Cabinet.

In Gaza, several thousand people took to the streets to call for dialogue between Fatah and Hamas to repair their ruptured relations. Around 3,000 protesters walked through Gaza City at the behest of factions in the Palestine Liberation Organization to the Saraya, the former headquarters of the vanquished Fatah loyalist security forces, now in Hamas hands.

— Additional input from agencies