GAZA, 3 January 2005 — Israeli tanks rumbled into the northern Gaza Strip yesterday to try to stop cross-border rocket attacks described by front-running Palestinian presidential candidate Mahmoud Abbas as useless.
The offensive into the town of Beit Hanun began just hours after Israeli forces ended a three-day-long incursion into Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza aimed at halting mortar and rocket attacks by Palestinian groups against nearby Jewish settlements.
“I have ordered the army to act decisively against mortar and Qassam rocket squads,” Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told reporters after the new raid got under way.
Witnesses said about 50 Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers moved into the northern Gaza Strip.
Abbas again urged Palestinian groups yesterday to stop firing rockets at Israel as he addressed supporters close to the site of the new incursion in Gaza.
“I say to them (Palestinian groups) this is not the time for this kind of act,” he told residents of the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of Gaza as troops operated in the town of Beit Hanun. Tanks and armored vehicles poured into Beit Hanun in the morning after Hamas unleashed a series of Qassam rockets on southern Israel.
Abbas, who has been a consistent critic of the use of weapons in the four-year-old Palestinian uprising, said that the Israeli offensives in northern Gaza would not break the resolve of the people.
“I send my regards to those people who cannot be with us today,” he said. “I say to our people who are suffering in the north — the Israeli aggression may be strong but it will not break us.”
In an interview with AFP, Abbas had accused the Israelis of deliberately trying to disrupt the election with its raids inside Gaza.
The offensive in Beit Hanun was launched just hours after a deadly raid in the southern Khan Younis area, also designed to stop rocket attacks on nearby settlements, was wrapped up.
The violence, a week before Palestinians elect a successor to Yasser Arafat, posed a particular challenge to Abbas, who has called for an end to bloodshed but also promised not to abandon Palestinians wanted by Israel.
In a Reuters interview on Saturday, Abbas said rocket attacks against Israelis were counterproductive because they drew strong retaliation. Palestinian groups have vowed to continue them.
