Hamas assists in deadly raid into Israel; reprisal vowed

JERUSALEM -- Palestinian militants, including several members of the ruling Hamas party, infiltrated Israel through a tunnel from the Gaza Strip yesterday, lobbed hand grenades into a tank, and hit it with a missile, killing two soldiers and abducting a third in a complex attack. Israeli officials threatened a fierce military response.

The attack marked the first time that Hamas militants declared they were directly involved in killing Israelis since the militant group won control of the Palestinian legislature five months ago.

The cross-border raid raised fears of an all-out war between Israel and the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

It brought tensions to the highest level yet in the standoff that has existed between the Jewish state and the Palestinian governing body ever since Hamas -- democratically elected, sworn to Israel's destruction, and considered a terrorist group by Israel and the United States -- took power.

Last night, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel asked the military to draw up wide-ranging military options in Gaza, less than a year after Israel pulled its troops and more than 8,000 Jewish settlers out of the coastal strip.

``The age of restraint has come to an end," Olmert told his Cabinet last night, the Ha'aretz newspaper reported on its website. ``We will respond forcefully, with an operation that will last more than a day or two."

Officials said they would focus first on diplomatic efforts to find the kidnapped soldier, identified as Corporal Gilad Shalit, 19.

Ghazi Hamad, the spokesman for the Hamas-led government, called on militants to treat the soldier well and keep him alive.

``We call on the resistance factions to protect him," he said, speaking to reporters in Hebrew, as well as Arabic, a rare move for a Hamas member.

An internal Palestinian drama unfolded as Israel declared that it would hold Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas government, whose factions are locked in a power struggle, responsible for the attack and the safety of the kidnapped soldier.

``We in Israel see the Palestinian Authority, headed by . . . Abu Mazen and the Palestinian government, as responsible for this event, with all that implies," Olmert told his Cabinet, referring to Abbas by his widely used nickname.

The raid deepened the rift between Hamas and Abbas's Fatah party, which favors negotiations with Israel, and created a crisis for each faction.

It undermined Abbas as he visited Gaza to press Hamas leaders to sign an agreement that would implicitly recognize Israel and limit violent attacks to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, rather than inside Israel.

And it dimmed his prospects for talks with Israel three days after Olmert hugged Abbas at a meeting in Jordan.

The raid also highlighted the precarious balancing act that Hamas is engaged in.

The group is trying to maintain the street popularity it built as the leading architect of suicide bombings and other attacks against Israel, while also hoping to win legitimacy as a governing power and to end economic sanctions the United States and European Union imposed against it.

Now, Palestinians face a new crisis, ranging from a possible invasion to more closures of Gaza's Israeli-controlled borders, unless Hamas or Abbas musters security forces that neither of them fully controls to free Shalit.

``This is Abbas's chance to step up to the plate," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry. ``If you're not a partner in combating violence, it's difficult to take you seriously as a partner in peace. . . . We are sure that he has all the necessary resources, including military resources."

But Shalom Harari, who tracked Hamas for years as the Israeli military's adviser on Arab affairs, said the situation is ``not that simple."

He said Shalit probably is in Rafah, the southern Gaza city closest to the raid location. He called Rafah ``the wild south," saying it is dominated by clans and factions who don't fully answer to any party.

Abbas and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh each control a few thousand official security troops, but neither can force Shalit's release easily, Harari said.

``I'm sorry to say they will do nothing," he said. ``Both of them are caught between so many contradictory forces."

Harari said there are real divisions between the hard-line Hamas leader, Damascus-based Khaled Mashal, and some Hamas figures within Gaza and the West Bank who want to succeed in government.

``The Israeli government knows," he said, that Haniyeh may not have known of the raid in advance and that Mashal could have ordered it ``over his head."

The quality that made Haniyeh a palatable choice for prime minister -- he was never involved in planning attacks -- also makes him relatively weak against militants, Harari added.

``The question is, he knows about it now -- what does he do now? Does he send 3,000 guys into Rafah?" Harari said. ``He is responsible."

Most likely, Haniyeh would work underground to try to secure the soldier's release, but would try to keep it secret, he said. Statements by Hamas yesterday showed how leery the group is of appearing to help Israel.

Hamad was careful, even in calling for the soldier's protection, to say ``the army of occupation" had reported a kidnapping that the Palestinian government had not confirmed.

Sami Abu Zuhri, the spokesman for the Hamas movement, endorsed the attack.

``It's a normal reply . . . against everything the Israeli government and army are doing against the Palestinian citizens and the Palestinian territories," he said, citing an Israeli air strike that killed Jamal Abu Samhadana, a militant leader who had recently taken a position in the Hamas government, and other Israeli attacks that have killed 13 civilians in the past three weeks.

Asked in an interview whether there was disagreement over the raid between Hamas's political wing and its militant Qassam Brigades, he said, ``No, there is no disagreement."

``Maybe people who thought that Hamas had changed were deluding themselves," Regev said.

Hamas has not carried out a suicide bombing since declaring a unilateral truce in February 2005, but it has refused to condemn bombings by the rival Islamic Jihad faction, and Hamas militants in recent weeks have fired numerous rockets into Israel.

At 5:30 a.m. yesterday, the Israeli military said, about seven gunmen entered Israel near the Kerem Shalom crossing point, through a 300-yard tunnel from somewhere near Rafah that would have taken months to build.

They split up, and some attacked an armored personnel carrier, which was empty, while others lobbed grenades through the open hatch of a tank, killing two soldiers instantly and seriously wounding another.

Both vehicles were then hit with shoulder-fired antitank missiles fired from inside Gaza. Militants also fired guns at an observation tower, sparking a gunfight that killed three of them.

The soldiers killed were Lieutenant Hanan Barak and First Sergeant Pavel Slutsker, both 20.

Three groups claimed responsibility for the operation they dubbed Vanishing Illusion: the Popular Resistance Committees, Hamas's Qassam Brigades, and the previously unknown Islamic Army.

The attack was sure to spark a political crisis within Israel, as well.

It was the first time that Palestinian gunmen launched a raid from Gaza since Israel's withdrawal in August from the 20-mile-long coastal strip that it occupied, along with the West Bank, during the 1967 Middle East war. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed that Israel would reinvade if Gaza became a launching pad for attacks.

But doing so now would put the government in a political bind.

Right-wing opponents of the pullout would paint a decision to send troops back in as proof that they should never have left and use it as ammunition against plans to pull out of parts of the West Bank, the centerpiece of the current government's platform.

Abbas's office blamed Hamas, saying it has given Israel a ``pretext" to reinvade Gaza.

Ghassan Khatib, the former planning minister in the defeated Fatah government, said Israel's unilateralism and recent air strikes undermined Abbas and any moderates inside Hamas.

``Israel has two choices," he said. ``Bilateral negotiations, or unilateralism and the use of force -- but not only by them."

Globe correspondents Sa'id Ghazali and Ahmed Abu Hamde contributed to this story from Jerusalem and Rafah.