At least 70 Palestinians and 5 Israelis have been killed since September 29, when a Qassam missile fired by Hamas from Gaza into an Israeli border town killed 2 children. Tel Aviv used the rocket attack as the pretext to launch its military operation.

In the process, the Israeli troops dealt further blows to the Palestinian resistance, conducting widespread house-to-house searches and arresting many militants in the Jabalya refugee camp and other areas.

Over the last two years, the Israeli regime has assassinated hundreds of leaders and cadres of Hamas and other Palestinian groups that have carried out bombings and other armed attacks on Israeli military and civilian targets. Tel Aviv has also refused to negotiate with the leadership of the Palestinian Authority—whose president, Yasir Arafat, has been under virtual house arrest in Ramallah—insisting it will only deal with Palestinians who renounce “terrorism.” This offensive, carried out with little outcry around the world and with Washington’s backing, has dealt crippling blows to the Palestinian national liberation movement.

The latest assault has centered in the towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, and the Jabalya refugee camp. The half-mile square camp—one of the most densely populated places on earth—is home to 106,000 people. The camp has been the scene of the bloodiest fighting. This is the first time Israeli forces have invaded the site over the last four years of fighting.

According to an October 1 article in the Israeli daily Haaretz, the Israeli security cabinet approved operation “Days of Penitence,” a plan for the Israeli Defense Forces “to take control of a nine-kilometer swathe of northern Gaza up to the outskirts of Jabalya. Nine kilometers is the maximum range of a Qassam rocket. The troops will search for Qassam-launching cells and for workshops where the rockets are manufactured. They will demolish houses to eliminate cover for rocket launchers and prepare for a lengthy stay. The army will also increase pressure on Hamas, via assassinations and other operations.”

“We will continue with this operation…until there are no more Qassams fired at Sderot,” IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya’alon was quoted as saying in the Jerusalem Post, referring to the border town that was the target of the Hamas rocket attack. “This is not something we can accomplish in one day, and not an operation that will yield immediate results. This is an ongoing operation.”

The invasion came just days after the fourth anniversary of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which began Sept. 28, 2000. On that day Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon, who is now prime minister, with a force of 1,000 Israeli cops provocatively entered the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest shrines. The action sparked large demonstrations by Palestinians in the occupied territories and inside Israel.

In the last two years, Tel Aviv has taken measures that have turned the tide of the war decidedly in its favor. In 2002, the ratio of Palestinian deaths to Israeli deaths was two to one—452 of the 1,017 Israeli deaths in the four-year war occurred that year.

Since then, the Washington Post reported October 5, “In a pivotal shift in the conflict, Israel has crippled the effectiveness of the Palestinian militants’ primary strategic weapon—the suicide bomber—with frequent military operations in the Palestinian territories, assassinations of dozens of militant leaders, improved intelligence, and construction of a massive barrier through and around the West Bank.” The paper

goes on to report that the ratio so far this year is five Palestinians killed for every one Israeli. According to official Palestinian statistics, the Palestinian death toll in the intifada has reached 3,334, 80 percent of whom were civilians.

According to a report published in August by Shin Bet, the Israeli equivalent of the FBI, in the last four years Israeli forces have killed 466 members of Hamas; 408 members of military forces allied to Fatah, the ruling Palestinian party; 205 members of Islamic Jihad; and 334 members of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces.

Of those killed by Tel Aviv, 238 were targeted assassinations, according to Mustapha Bargouthi, head of the Health Development Information and Policy Institute, which has monitored the four-year conflict.

On September 26, a Tel Aviv hit squad set off a car bomb in Damascus, Syria, killing a Hamas operations officer and extending the reach of its assassination campaign. The Mossad, the main Israeli spy agency, has been credited with five such murders in Lebanon in the past two years. But this was a first in Syria, where a number of Palestinian organizations have offices.

Along with the military offensive against these groups, the Israeli government has completed one-third of a 420-mile wall around the majority of the Palestinian population on the West Bank.

The wall, along with the web of military checkpoints, bases, and daily incursions by occupation troops into Palestinian towns, are credited in a September 27 Shin Bet report for an 84 percent decrease in the number of Israelis killed in attacks mounted from the West Bank in the past year. The report states that 30 Israelis have been killed in 6 bomb attacks launched from the West Bank since August 2003, compared to 293 killed in 73 attacks from the territory in the previous three years of fighting.

The damage to Palestinian homes and economic infrastructure has been massive as well. In Gaza alone 5,897 homes have been either destroyed or damaged beyond repair in the last four years, according to the Mezan Center for Human Rights. Some 221 public facilities, among them 67 schools and 30 religious centers, have been destroyed, along with 477 businesses and 248 industrial facilities.

While Tel Aviv is moving to withdraw the 7,500 settlers, and large concentration of troops, who occupy one-fifth of the territory in Gaza, more than five times that many new settlers have been moved into Palestinian land on the West Bank. According to the Israeli Interior Ministry, the settlement population on the West Bank—which has climbed above 220,000—has increased by 39,000 in the four years of the intifada. During the same period, the regime approved construction for the construction of more than 6,500 new housing units for Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza.  
 
 
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