Israel poised for conflict on Gaza border

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Israeli tanks and soldiers began massing near the southern border of the Gaza Strip yesterday as Palestinian politicians and militants wrangled over whether to release an Israeli soldier kidnapped Sunday by Palestinian gunmen, including some from the ruling Hamas party.

The cross-border raid from Gaza into Israel and the impasse over the kidnapped soldier raised fears of all-out conflict that would end 16 months of relative calm between Palestinians and Israelis.

The three militant groups that claim to have staged the raid, which killed two other Israeli soldiers, last night demanded that Israel release all Palestinian women and children prisoners as a condition for releasing the soldier. Israel is holding about 100 women and 300 people under age 18 among more than 8,000 Palestinian prisoners.

But Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, ruled out negotiations with the groups holding 19-year-old Corporal Gilad Shalit, and said he had authorized ``broad and continuing" military operations in response to the raid.

Israeli officials said they were focusing first on a diplomatic solution to avoid harming the soldier, but that Palestinians had hours, not days, to avert an Israeli invasion of Gaza.

Palestinian politicians appeared to be in a deadlock. Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad said its officials were meeting with all factions ``to put an end to this problem very quickly," and repeated his call to ``keep the soldier alive and treat him well," but Hamad declined to call for his release.

Politicians close to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said they were pushing for a deal under which Israel, in exchange for Shalit's release, would promise not to invade Gaza or kill Hamas leaders. But they said they weren't sure they could persuade the militants to agree to any compromise or if Israel would agree to such a deal.

Abbas, who has been locked in a power struggle with Hamas since the militant group won control of the Palestinian legislature in elections five months ago, spent the day in Gaza scrambling to find a solution, making a flurry of telephone calls to Arab leaders and meeting for three hours with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.

But Hamas hardliners who live abroad, including Damascus-based Hamas chief Khaled Mashal, have more sway over militants than Haniyeh and most other members of the Hamas government, and appear to have ordered the attack over Haniyeh's head, said the Abbas adviser, Nabil Abu Rdeineh.

``It seems everything is in their hands," Rdeineh said in an interview outside his hotel in Gaza City.

Abbas called Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, as well as Qatari and Libyan leaders, asking them to pressure Hamas leaders in their countries to release Shalit, Rdeineh said. Egyptian mediators were called in to help with the negotiations. Abbas also spoke with Saudi, Jordanian and other Arab leaders.

Rdeineh said Haniyeh pledged to help and agreed with Abbas that the Israeli response -- closing the borders of Gaza and a possible invasion -- harms Palestinians already subjected to economic hardship by an international boycott of the Hamas government. But Rdeineh said Haniyeh has little control over the militants.

Israeli officials have said they hold Abbas, head of the rival Fatah movement who was elected president in 2004, equally responsible for the attack, and that he has ample military and political resources to free Shalit immediately.

But Palestinian politicians were skeptical that Abbas could force a solution without igniting conflict between Hamas and Fatah. Asked if Abbas could force Shalit's release, Qais Abdelkarim, a legislator from a leftist faction who was assisting Abbas in the negotiations, said: ``If he is ready to have a civil war -- and I don't think he is ready for that."

Rdeineh said he believed hard-line Hamas elements staged the attack to disrupt an imminent agreement between the government and Abbas on implicitly recognizing Israel. Waving a piece of paper with notes about the final details of the agreement that had been under discussion Saturday, he said both he and Hamas government officials were shocked to wake up Sunday morning and learn of the attacks. ``We are back to the zero point."

Two armored Israeli brigades were ordered to prepare for operations near the border of southern Gaza, where the Palestinian raid took place. Flatbed trucks carrying more than 30 Israeli armored vehicles could be seen traveling south toward Gaza yesterday evening. Israeli gunboats patrolled the waters off Gaza City, coming closer to the beach than usual.

``I gave the orders to our military commanders to prepare the army for a broad and ongoing military operation to strike the terrorist leaders and all those involved," Olmert told a conference on tourism. ``There will be immunity for no one."

The attack was the first time Palestinan gunmen infiltrated Israel from Gaza since the Jewish state pulled out its troops and more than 8,000 settlers from the coastal strip last summer. Seven gunmen, from the Popular Resistance Committees, Hamas' Qassam Brigades, and a new group called the Islamic Army, entered Israel through a 300-yard tunnel and attacked a tank with missiles and grenades, killing two soldiers and kidnapping Shalit.

A spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, Abu Mujahid, was defiant yesterday. ``With our simple weapons we can beat the unbeatable army," he said in an interview. ``We are not afraid of the consequences."

But on the beach, at the Sunset Café, families sat, shaded by woven palm fronds, playing cards and drinking tea and said they were nervous about an Israeli invasion. Still, many said they had little to lose.

``It's like a pot boiling on the stove,"' said Mohammed Abu Shawareh, 42. ``The person on the bottom gets boiled before the person on the top, but in the end they all get boiled and burned."

Many supported Sunday's attack, which they called a natural response to a wave of Israeli air strikes that has claimed 13 Palestinian civilians in the past three weeks in addition to several militants.

Gilad Shalit's father, Noam, called on the kidnappers to take care of him.

``We believe that all the kidnappers, all those involved in the kidnapping have families and probably many have children and know how we feel in this situation and understand the pain of the parents," he told Israel Radio.