Israel looks to secure Gaza prior to pull out

Israeli officials say that they are trying to minimize the number of Palestinian homes destroyed in order to clear the area, but insist they had no choice but to launch this operation. According to Israeli media reports, the weapons flowing in through the tunnels are now being used for attacks on Israeli soldiers and citizens, and also to arm a future Hamas force that may try to take over the Gaza Strip in case of an Israeli withdrawal.

Since the weekend, residents of the Rafah refugee camp - home to some 91,000 Palestinians - have fled as rumors of an offensive spread. In demolitions carried out last Thursday and Friday, 1,064 people were made homeless, according to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The organization was preparing for the possibility that thousands more could follow.

"We're providing food, water, mattresses, and blankets to people, and we have positioned tents in a sports field on the outskirts of Rafah," says Paul McCann, a spokesman for UNRWA. More than 400 people are staying in UNRWA schools, he says, while others are taking shelter with relatives.

Many Israelis, observers says, will view the raids as classic Sharon - the father of dangerous adventurism to some, and to others, the architect of brave preemptive moves that are necessary, even if not palatable. On the eve of Tuesday's invasion, the Israeli army was told to evacuate a small Israeli settlement outpost in the northern West Bank, where young settlers wrestled with soldiers trying to remove them from the land. The image of Sharon taking on the wayward settlers was aimed at showing the public he remains serious about his disengagement plan and at tempering the predictable ire from abroad.

"The evacuation of outposts is another attempt to sell this," Mr. Eldar says. "Sharon had to weigh the balance between criticism from outside and the criticism from inside.... He needed to show that he's not totally helpless. When there is one funeral after the other, and this awful footage [of dismembered soldiers] came out of Gaza, Sharon knew it was the right time to act."

Palestinians, however, roundly disregard Israel's explanation for the campaign.

"There isn't any truth that this area is being used to smuggle weapons," says Ghassan Khatib, the Palestinian minister of labor and a close adviser to Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestinian Authority. "The scope of this campaign goes beyond any need to reinforce the border. I don't think the activities of Israel indicate the possibility of an evacuation of Gaza. They're not talking about withdrawal; they're talking about making rearrangements for keeping Gaza under a siege of the Israeli army."

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