The Israeli siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's devastated office complex in the West Bank is now at the center of international attention.

But Israel appears to be incrementally opening a new front in Gaza City, taking the battle to the senior leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who are based here.

Almost nightly, Israeli forces stage raids into this densely populated coastal city. Tuesday's attack – with helicopters, dozens of tanks and armored vehicles – was by far the largest and most dramatic in the two years since the intifada started.

Israeli troops moved a half-mile into the Zeitoun and Sajaiya neighborhoods, killing nine Palestinians. Six were civilians and three belonged to militant groups, according to hos- pital sources and family members. The raid's stated aim, however, was the destruction of 13 metal-working factories which the Israeli army said were making weaponry and the demolition of a house belonging to a slain Hamas militant.

But Israeli analysts point to a larger agenda: The raid, they say, signals that Gaza is likely to follow in the footsteps of the West Bank, whose cities have been reoccupied by Israeli forces and placed under protracted curfew. "I would say this is inevitable even though it will be a disaster for both sides," says Reuven Pedhatzur, a political scientist at Tel Aviv University. "This action was partly to prepare public opinion for a major attack and partly to say, 'We are doing something against terrorism.' "

The reconquest of Gaza would be the last nail in the coffin of the Oslo Agreement and Palestinian self-rule, with the territories Israel captured in 1967 reverting to the full de facto Israeli occupation that was in place until 1993.

Hours before the raid was launched, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hinted that a comprehensive incursion into Gaza's urban areas was only a matter of time, saying: "When the day comes that we can concentrate the relevant forces, we will certainly need to act to harm the terrorist structure in the Gaza Strip."

A senior Israeli official says that the focus on Gaza comes as a natural follow up to the conquest of the West Bank cities last spring in an operation launched after a series of devastating suicide bombings. "Now that we have a good control of the major cities in Judea and Samaria, we are focusing on Gaza," he says. "Our idea is to go in every night, blow up houses of terrorists and destroy the factories they use to make rockets, and to make arrests. No one can have immunity. Thus far, the people in Gaza and the Hamas leadership there have believed that they have immunity."

The official adds that the question of an all-out onslaught through the cities of the Strip is complicated by American plans to strike at Iraq.

Depending on its timing, an Israeli push could prompt demonstrations throughout the region, thereby complicating the American effort, he says.

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