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Aharon Peretz has spent most of his 51 years in this cactus-fringed, working-class town, and he would like to stay.

But his wife and six children feel differently: Daily retreats to the basement during rocket strikes from the nearby Gaza Strip have frayed their nerves, and an attack that cost an uncle both his legs has convinced them it's time to go.

Peace will return for his family, Peretz has decided, only if Israel chooses to go to war with his neighbors.

"There is no other option," he said. "Israel must enter Gaza and deal seriously with those who are launching these Qassams," as the crude rockets are known.

That sentiment is gaining currency across Israel, and the political rhetoric is growing more bellicose. With each new barrage of rockets, the government comes under greater pressure to conduct a massive military operation that might improve conditions in Sderot, but could also entail heavy casualties on both sides and further undermine the already anemic U.S.-backed peace process.

The government has so far resisted the calls for a wider war beyond its present Gaza strategy of intense political pressure, a crushing economic embargo and frequent military strikes targeting those suspected of responsibility for the rockets. A full-scale invasion, officials say, could backfire and benefit Hamas, the armed Islamic movement that controls the territory. Israel also insists it does not want to be drawn back into Gaza less than three years after it withdrew its settlers and troops.

But Defense Minister Ehud Barak said this month that the military had been ordered to draw up plans for a ground assault in Gaza, and other top government officials have talked openly of toppling Hamas. Politicians on both the right and the left say that they expect a major operation and that all it will take to trigger one is for a Qassam to fall in the wrong place.

"Time is running out," said Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror. "One of these days, a Qassam will hit a bus, and then what do we do? Can the Israeli government stand against the people of Sderot?"

Still, Dror said, the cost of an invasion would be high. Gaza is one of the world's most densely populated places, with likely military targets scattered throughout civilian areas. The military estimates that in a full-scale invasion, about 100 Israeli soldiers and 1,000 Palestinians would die, he said.

The Qassams have made life difficult in Sderot, a desert town of 20,000, and other areas near the Gaza border. But so far, casualties have been limited.

By contrast, over the first two months of the year, Israeli military operations involving both ground troops and airstrikes have resulted in the deaths of 126 Palestinians, according to health officials in Gaza. The Israeli military says that in the past three months, 180 Palestinian fighters, as well as 13 civilians, have died during its operations.

"What's coming out of Gaza is not a strategic threat," said Shalom Harari, a former top Israeli military intelligence official. "It's terrible. It puts political pressure on the government. But it's not a strategic threat."

Harari is concerned it could soon become one, however, as Hamas gains military strength through support from Iran. That assistance could in time mean rockets with much longer range and far greater accuracy and lethality, he said. The government's critics on the right raise the same concern in arguing for the Israel Defense Forces to go into Gaza as soon as possible. The number of Israelis under threat from the rocket fire, they say, is bound to grow unless the military acts.
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"Soon enough, they'll also threaten Tel Aviv if we do nothing to stop them," said Yuval Steinitz, a lawmaker from the Likud Party, which advocates a hard-line policy in dealing with the Palestinians.

Steinitz said the military would have to occupy Gaza for, at most, a few months. In that time, he said, Israeli forces could eliminate Hamas's weapon stockpiles, destroy the rocket launch sites and reassert control over the Egyptian border, where explosives are smuggled in. The casualties may be high, he said, but the operation would save lives in the long run.

"I'm not saying it will be easy. The world, at the beginning, might condemn us," Steinitz said. "But this is the only real solution. This war of attrition is not good for us. No state would tolerate daily rocket attacks on its soil."

There is no guarantee, however, that a major military operation would succeed in stopping the attacks. It could increase them. Military analysts and government officials also worry that Israeli troops would get stuck in Gaza, locked in urban warfare with a guerrilla force that has been preparing for just such a fight.

"You start this operation, and I don't know how you can end it," said Dror, the Defense Ministry spokesman.

Matti Steinberg, a former adviser on Palestinian affairs to Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security agency, said there is a far less costly way to stop the attacks: a cease-fire.

Without one, Steinberg said, Israel is on a path toward war, which could have disastrous consequences for the U.S.-backed peace process that began in Annapolis late last year. "The entire rationale of Annapolis would be doomed," he said.

An invasion, he said, would ultimately strengthen support for Hamas and undercut Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the more secular Fatah movement.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum agreed. He said the group was expecting a major Israeli offensive and warned that it would only lead to more armed resistance. "Any military operation against Gaza will not give security to the occupation," he said. "It will just increase the popularity of Hamas."

Israeli military sources said that much about the invasion plan remains undecided, including its exact timing, size and duration. The plan would also hinge on support from the United States and key nations in Europe, officials said.

Israel's Gaza policy has already drawn intense international criticism, particularly for its reliance on economic pressure, which U.N. and European Union observers have warned could lead to a humanitarian crisis.

Mark Regev, spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Israel's response has been "proportionate and, within the confines of international law, what is considered justifiable self-defense."
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But it has not stopped the rocket fire.

On Friday, thousands of Israelis demonstrated their solidarity with Sderot's residents by streaming into the city to shop. Despite the threat, the cloudless winter day took on a carnival-like atmosphere, with DJs spinning dance music and shoppers walking the streets seemingly unconcerned by the possibility of an attack.

"We don't have many days like this," said Michael Amsalam, 58, a town councilman. But he was not optimistic there would be many more.

When a nearby motorcyclist unexpectedly revved his engine, Amsalam flinched, then described what it was like to hear a rocket fall on his town, with nothing to do afterward but brace for the next one.

"Only the ones who live here know the feeling of the Qassam, the feeling of fear," he said.

Israel appeared to face a heightened threat from Palestinian suicide bombings on Tuesday after the military wing of Hamas officially claimed responsibility for a lethal blast the day before at a shopping center in the southern town of Dimona.
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Police inspected the body of one of two suicide bombers following a double bombing attempt in the southern Israeli town of Dimona on Monday.
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Israeli police at the scene of a suicide bombing in Dimona, Israel, on Monday.
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No suicide bombings had ever before occurred in Dimona.
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The mother of Louai al-Aghwani, one of the attackers.

The claim by the Qassam Brigades wing of Hamas, the militant Islamic group, signaled a possible end to its self-imposed moratorium on such attacks that had lasted more than three years.

Hamas said its bombers came from the city of Hebron in the southern West Bank, contradicting earlier accounts that the Dimona bombers were from Gaza. But Israeli officials also expressed concern that potential attackers may be making their way into the country from the Egyptian Sinai, taking advantage of a recent 11-day breach of the border between Gaza and Egypt. Egyptian forces resealed the border on Sunday.

Shortly before the Hamas claim was made public, seven of the group’s policemen were killed in an Israeli airstrike against a Hamas police post near Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. Israeli soldiers killed two more Hamas militants before dawn in the south of the strip. Army officials said the soldiers had shot two suspicious people who approached them while they were on a routine operation inside the strip, which is controlled by Hamas.

An Israeli Army spokesman said the airstrike was a response to Qassam rockets fired from Gaza at Israel on Tuesday morning. Those rockets damaged two factories in the Israeli border town of Sderot. After the airstrike, militants from Gaza fired another barrage of rockets, hitting a house in Sderot. A teenage girl was wounded by shrapnel and several other residents were slightly hurt, Israeli officials said.

The Dimona attack, in which one Israeli woman was killed along with two bombers, was the first to hit Israel in a year.

The last suicide bombing claimed by Hamas was in August 2004. A smaller group, Islamic Jihad, has been behind the attacks carried out since then, Israeli officials have said.

The Hamas claim was made amid growing confusion in Israel and in Palestinian cities and towns over the true identity of the Dimona bombers and their dispatchers. Soon after the bombing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades militia in Gaza, which is loosely affiliated with Fatah, the mainstream rival of Hamas, claimed responsibility for the attack in conjunction with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and a third, unknown group.

The Aksa Martyrs Brigades, particularly in Gaza, often contravene the instructions of Fatah leaders in the West Bank who are engaged in peace talks with Israel.

Those groups identified the bombers as two Gaza residents: Louai al-Aghwani, 21, a resident of Gaza City, who was said by his family to have been a Fatah supporter; and Musa Arafat, 23, a Popular Front activist from a village near Khan Yunis.

There were conflicting statements from the Aksa Martyrs Brigades about whether the two bombers had entered Israel via Egyptian territory or directly from Gaza.

But Hamas identified the bombers as Muhammad al-Hirbawi and Shadi al-Zaghair, both from Hebron.

While Israel had not disclosed the results of its own investigation by Tuesday evening, officials hinted during the day that the bombers had indeed come from Hebron. Speaking to army cadets at a base in southern Israel, the defense minister, Ehud Barak, said the defense establishment would find solutions to “terror from Hebron and Qassams from Gaza.â€

(Remember the Durban resolution?).

Cynical Cat wrote:Israel kills its fair share of Palestinians to keep the cycle of violence fed. That many of the casualties are collateral rather than targeted doesn't mean much to those who are losing friends and relatives. Of course their enemies are going to hide among civilians. Israel crushed Arab armies en masse until the Arabs got tired of losing and stopped coming. If fighting head on only results in defeat then your enemies are eventually going to learn to fight another way. That makes the whole thing messier, but when neither side is ready to give up that's the way things are going to be.