GAZA, July 3 –Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, today rejected an ultimatum from Palestinian militants, who abducted an Israeli soldier, calling for Israel to begin releasing Palestinian prisoners before 6 a.m. on Tuesday.
“The government of Israel will not yield to the extortion of the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas government, which are led by murderous terrorist organizations,” Mr. Olmert said in a written statement released by his office after a quiet cabinet meeting. “We will not conduct any negotiations on a prisoner release.”
The three Palestinian groups holding the soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19, whom they captured a week ago, said in their ultimatum that unless Israel begins to release some 1,500 prisoners, Israel will “bear full responsibility for future consequences.”
A spokesman for one of the groups, the Popular Resistance Committees, told reporters on the street in Gaza: “If they don’t fulfill our demands, we will close the kidnapped soldier’s file.”
Asked if that meant he would be killed, the spokesman, who gave the name Abu Mujahed, said: “We will close the file. We have no comment beyond that.”
If they were to kill Corporal Shalit, they would have nothing to bargain with.
At dawn today, Israeli tanks and troops began to move into northern Gaza from massed positions on the border. An Israeli army official said that the operation was not large, calling it “a pinpoint operation, to reveal explosives and tunnels” prepared by Palestinians. “There’s no massive entrance of forces right now,” he said.
About 50 tanks, armored personnel carriers and armored D-9 bulldozers entered Gaza to protect the troops, most of them from engineering brigades, the official said. Still, such an operation would also be a logical preparation for a larger entry of forces later.
Witnesses said that special forces troops moved during the night into Beit Hanoun. An army spokesman said he was not allowed to comment under censorship regulations.
Overnight, Israeli aircraft intensified their attacks on Palestinian targets in Gaza, hitting the downtown offices of the Fatah political party here and sites in the northern part of the territory a day after Mr. Olmert ordered his military to do whatever was necessary to pressure militants to free Corporal Shalit.The strikes appeared to be a direct response to the instructions of Mr. Olmert, who told subordinates at a cabinet meeting on Sunday that he intended to make the lives of Gazans ever more miserable until the captured soldier is released. But Israel also yielded somewhat to outside pressure by allowing a limited supply of fuel and food into Gaza.
Mr. Olmert, whose air force has already bombed Gaza’s bridges, crippled its only power plant, shelled the Palestinian prime minister’s office here and subjected all 1.4 million Gaza residents to night after night of sleep-depriving sonic booms, said he had ordered the military and government “to do everything in order to bring Gilad back home.”
There were no immediate reports of casualties in the Israeli attacks early today, but Israeli soldiers killed three Palestinian gunmen near the airport on Sunday night, raising the total Palestinian death toll in the latest crisis to five.
At the same time, senior Israeli military officials counseled the Israelis to have patience and suggested that the operation to pressure the Hamas-led government to release the soldier could take some time.
On Saturday, the Israeli defense minister, Amir Peretz, approved a limited opening of two border crossings for the next four days to allow in basic supplies of food, fuel and medical supplies. By early Sunday evening, 50 trucks of wheat, corn, meat, cooking oil and other basics had passed through the Karni crossing, according to Capt. Jacob Dallal, an Israeli military spokesman. About 265,000 gallons of diesel fuel, 21,000 gallons of gasoline and 200,000 tons of natural gas were shipped through the fuel terminal at Nahal Oz, he said.
A week after Palestinian militants attacked an Israeli military post, capturing Corporal Shalit and killing two other soldiers, both sides appeared to be groping for a solution to the crisis, each caught by potentially competing aims.
Israel has repeatedly signaled that it does not want to harm civilians or reoccupy Gaza, which it vacated last year, but it is struggling to find increasingly punitive ways to prevent any future kidnappings of soldiers, while trying to weaken Hamas, which Israel considers a terrorist organization. At the same time, leaders of the Fatah faction have appeared stymied by the refusal by Hamas and allied groups to release the corporal, as Hamas leaders have sought not to appear to be capitulating to Israeli pressure.
Meanwhile, aid groups have warned of a looming humanitarian crisis in Gaza, completely sealed off for a week. The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, added his voice to the concern on Sunday, telling reporters at an African Union summit meeting in Gambia that Israel’s actions appeared counterproductive. “I remain very concerned about the need to preserve Palestinian institutions and infrastructure,” he was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse. “They will be the basis for an eventual two-state solution and that’s in the interest of both Israel and the Palestinians.”
With Israel’s limited reopening of two Gaza crossings, fuel began arriving by late morning at gas stations, many of them dry for days, but the relief did not necessarily ease anxiety here. With short tempers bursting into shouting matches, drivers waited for two hours at one station in Gaza City, which had received about 500 gallons of diesel – less than one-tenth the capacity of a fuel tanker. “Their aim is just to cause panic,” said Sabem Bhar, an employee at the station. “They can’t cut it off completely. But they want to pressure us, to play with our nerves.”
Early on Wednesday, the Israeli military began its military operations to free Corporal Shalit, striking the power station, bridges, training camps for militants and suspected bomb-making factories.
Israeli artillery fire – suspended on June 9 after seven members of a Palestinian family were killed on a beach in Gaza – resumed in force, with hundreds of rounds fired every day from the land and sea. The Israeli military said it had fired 1,500 shells since the operation began and carried out more than 40 airstrikes.
But for all the pyrotechnics, the operation has been relatively restrained. Part of that restraint seems to reflect worry for Corporal Shalit’s life. And part is over pressure from outside, including from the United States, not to endanger civilians’ lives.
The shells have been aimed at open areas, many of them places in the north of Gaza where militants had been firing homemade Qassam rockets at civilians in Israel.
But the Israel military has been steadily increasing the pressure, on both the militant groups and Palestinians generally, in the hope that their discomfort forces the prisoner’s release.
In addition to the cuts in power – which has also limited water and air-conditioning on sweltering days – Israeli jets have scorched over the skies at night setting off sonic booms that jolt people out of bed. Overnight on Sunday, Israeli aircraft hit the empty office of the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya, who is also a top member of Hamas, which led the attack through a secret tunnel into Israel that ended with the capture of Corporal Shalit.
The message, underscored regularly by Israeli officials, is that Israel would not hesitate to assassinate top Hamas leaders, and that they hold the Hamas government responsible for the actions of Hamas’s military wing.
Mr. Haniya visited his office after the strike. “This is the policy of the jungle and arrogance,” Reuters quoted him as saying. “Nothing will affect our spirit and nothing will affect our steadfastness.”
Despite the small number of casualties, Israel has been coming under strong criticism for its attacks on the infrastructure in Gaza, especially for the bombing of the power plant, which is partly owned by an American company.
The plant – still smoking four days after all six of its transformers were hit – was visited Sunday both by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Álvaro de Soto.
Two days ago, Israeli warplanes also bombed the entrances to all four access roads to the plant, which is insured by the United States Overseas Private Investment Corporation, or OPIC.
Meantime on Sunday, hopes for any negotiated end to the standoff looked increasingly bleak.
Egypt has taken the lead in trying to find some compromise, but according to news media reports, it has been frustrated by apparent divisions inside Hamas, split into parts in Gaza and in Syria, where its political leader, Khaled Meshal, lives. Hamas has demanded the release of all women and people under 18 years old in Israeli jails in exchange for Corporal Shalit, who Palestinian officials say is alive and in good health.
“Efforts are continuing without results,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a top aide to Mr. Abbas, who has also been working on a deal, told reporters. “We are close to a dead end.”
On Saturday, Mr. Abbas told The Associated Press, “The Egyptian efforts have encountered difficulties because there is no partner in Hamas capable of making decisions.”
“The Hamas leadership abroad says that the decision is in the hands of the military wing in Gaza,” he added, “while the military wing says that the decision must be made by the leadership abroad.”
It is uncertain what kind of deal might be acceptable to Israel. Mr. Olmert has ruled out any prisoner exchange with Hamas, and did so again in the cabinet meeting on Sunday. “Surrendering today means inviting more extortion,” he said.
It is possible, however, that in a wider summit meeting later with Mr. Abbas, Mr. Olmert might be willing to release Palestinian prisoners, as former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did in his summit meeting with Mr. Abbas in Egypt in February 2005.