Israelis arrest Hamas officials
Dozens held in bid to free soldier
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Israel yesterday arrested more than 60 members of the ruling Palestinian party, Hamas, including one-third of the Cabinet ministers and 20 legislators, and declared that it might charge them as members of a terrorist organization. It was the latest in an escalating series of measures since Hamas militants abducted an Israeli soldier on Sunday.
Early today, Israeli helicopter gunships fired on the Palestinian Interior Ministry building in Gaza City, which burst into flames. There was no immediate word on casualties.
In neighboring Egypt, which is attempting to mediate a peaceful end to the crisis, President Hosni Mubarak was quoted as saying that Hamas militants had made an offer to hand over the soldier to Israel.
``Egyptian contacts with several Hamas leaders resulted in preliminary, positive results in the shape of a conditional agreement to hand over the Israeli soldier as soon as possible to avoid an escalation," Mubarak said, according to the Al Ahram newspaper.
Israeli officials said they had no information about the offer, insisting they would not negotiate and demanding the soldier's unconditional release.
Palestinians officials from Hamas and the rival Fatah party denounced the Hamas party arrests, saying the detention of elected government leaders would raise tensions and dangerously weaken the already struggling Palestinian Authority, the governing body for the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
But Israeli officials said the Hamas members were fair game under ordinances against membership in terrorist organizations. The arrests came as the body of Eliyahu Asheri, 18, was found in the West Bank two days after a militant group kidnapped him and threatened to kill him if Israel did not cease military operations in the Gaza Strip in pursuit of the captured soldier.
Israeli troops took over a patch of territory in southeastern Gaza on Wednesday to use for a staging area, the first such seizure of land in Gaza since they withdrew from the territory last summer.
Gaza's 1.3 million residents braced for Israeli troops to push farther into the coastal strip, in an operation the military says aims to rescue the abducted soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, 19, and to deal a blow to Hamas militants who have staged rocket attacks against Israel.
Yesterday, Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets over Gaza warning residents to stay away from military operations and not to interfere as three Israeli Army brigades massed at the northern and southern borders.
It was unclear whether Israel knew where the abducted soldier was being held.
The arrests brought into focus the challenge that Israel, Palestinians, and the international community have confronted since Hamas won control of the Palestinian legislature in January elections: how to deal with a democratically elected government led by a group that has carried out scores of suicide bombings and is listed as a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States.
Among those Palestinians arrested -- all in the West Bank and Jerusalem -- was Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer, who had been the first Hamas official to call publicly on militants to keep Shalit alive and safe, as well as the ministers of finance, religious affairs, planning, Jerusalem affairs, and labor.
Among those held were more than 30 militants and rank and file members. Many were arrested at their homes; they were being held at unspecified locations in Israel.
Members of the G-8 group of major economic powers, in a joint statement issued yesterday by their foreign ministers, called for Shalit's immediate release but also for Israel to ``exercise utmost restraint" and warned, ``The detention of elected members of the Palestinian government and legislature raises particular concerns."
Nabil Amr, the former information minister under the defeated Fatah government, said the arrests would undermine not only Hamas but its more moderate rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, as well as the governance infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority, created as a prototype for a future Palestinian state.
``These efforts may lead to the destruction of the PA," he said.
Though Israel has in the past freed prisoners in exchange for the return of captive Israeli soldiers or their remains, Israeli officials denied the arrests were a bid to use the Hamas members as bargaining chips for Shalit. Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said Hamas members could have been arrested at any point for belonging to an illegal organization in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
``There was a period of time where Hamas was taking a timeout from terrorist operations," he said, referring to the past 16 months that Hamas refrained from staging attacks inside Israel. ``They kept a sort of low profile for their own tactical reasons, so there was less of a need to defend ourselves and act against them."
But with Sunday's attack, he said, Hamas had escalated its activities against Israel. He said the detainees would be questioned and then charged or released ``based on the evidence."
The arrestees include eight of the 23-member Cabinet, one-fifth of Hamas's 72-seat parliamentary bloc, the mayors of Jenin and Qalqilya and the mufti of Bethlehem.
Ghassan Khatib, who was planning minister in the previous Fatah government, said the arrests seemed to be part of an Israeli plan to undermine Palestinian governance.
``The arrest of the ministers will weaken the government more," he said. ``The ordinary people will pay the price."
Fatah legislator Azzam al-Ahmed called for the formation of a new government under Fatah leadership. ``The Palestinian Authority has been paralyzed and there is a need to fill the political vacuum," he said.
But most Palestinian officials, both supporters and opponents of Hamas, said the crisis was unlikely to spur the formation of a new non-Hamas government. Amr, the former information minister from Fatah, said, ``Nobody is thinking about this matter under the current situation. There is no need for such thinking when the Israeli tanks are in Gaza."
Right-wing Israeli commentators said the military operation would be a failure unless it ended Hamas rule. Effi Eitam, a leader of the National Religious Party-National Union, said: ``If it is just a show of strength on our part, then nothing will have been accomplished. . . . The main goal must be to topple the Hamas government."
Critics on the Israeli left worried that the operation risked further alienating Palestinians and committing the Israelis to a long stay in Gaza.
Yossi Beilin, head of the left-wing Meretz Party, said: ``It doesn't appear to be a `surgical strike' in order to release the kidnapped soldier, which, by the way, none of us would have any complaints about . . . I do have one prayer -- that whoever started this action knows how to end it."
In Gaza City, residents were defiant even as they worried about an Israeli invasion.
They said they believed Israel's bombing of three bridges and a power station were meant to increase Palestinian suffering and prompt them to push Hamas to release Shalit or even leave government.
Israel has said the bombings were meant to make it more difficult for militants to move Shalit from place to place.
Gaza City Mayor Maged Abu Ramadan said that 70 percent of residents were without electricity and more than half without water as a result of the Israeli air strike, which knocked out power to pumps that deliver water and pump out sewage. They can run only part time on generators, which also could run out of fuel within days because Israel has closed the crossings in and out of Gaza.
Barnard reported from Gaza, Ghazali from Jerusalem. Globe correspondent Matthew Kalman contributed to this story. 