In bid to stop rockets, Israel said to plan Gaza security zone

JERUSALEM -- Israel plans to establish a 3-mile-deep security zone in the northern Gaza Strip, with hundreds of troops patrolling the area in coming months to prevent Palestinian rocket fire on Israeli border towns, security officials said yesterday.

The army and the Defense Ministry declined comment.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon intends to withdraw all troops and settlers from Gaza by September 2005. But after an Israeli man and a 3-year-old boy were killed by a Palestinian rocket attack on the Israeli town of Sderot this week, Sharon asked the military to come up with a quick plan to stop further rocketing.

In a first response, Israeli forces encircled the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, the main rocket launching area, to prevent more attacks. Security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said yesterday that Israeli troops will remain in northern Gaza for an unspecified period.

Structures will be built to serve the Israeli forces, including fortified troop positions and ramps for tanks and other armored vehicles, the officials said. New roads will also be built.

More than 1,000 soldiers will be deployed in the zone, which would extend from Gaza's northern border and encompass Beit Hanoun, home to 21,000 Palestinians.

The town's residents would have to pass through an Israeli checkpoint to reach other areas of Gaza, the officials said. Beit Hanoun's industrial zone in the outskirts of town has been temporarily closed, and farmers are not able to reach their fields while soldiers are deployed in the area.

The military hopes the security zone will move Sderot beyond the 5-mile rocket range.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said the plan appeared to conflict with plans for a withdrawal.

"I don't understand the Israeli government's behavior," Shaath said. "Either it's not serious about the withdrawal from Gaza, or it wants to destroy Palestinian land before withdrawing."

The current Israeli military operation is the eighth major one in Beit Hanoun in nearly four years of fighting. In previous raids, more than half of the town's 3,000 acres of farmland were flattened, said the mayor, Ibrahim Hamad.

An extended army stay "will mean people are living in a prison," he said.

Yesterday evening, army bulldozers uprooted hundreds of olive trees east of Beit Hanoun, residents said. The army had no immediate comment.

Abdullah Hamad, a Beit Hanoun farmer, said he had pleaded with militants not to fire rockets.

"We stab ourselves in the back when militants use the homemade rockets," the farmer said. "In May last year, I saw them firing rockets from my farm. I begged them not to shoot, but they did and they brought damage to my farm and to my house, and now they have done it again.

"We are not against resistance, but we should think if this way is useful and what it is going to bring for the people," Hamad said.