Gaza land operation inevitable

From JPost Mar. 8, 2006 By YAAKOV KATZ ...

Acknowledging the IDF's failure to eradicate the firing of Kassam rockets into Israel, senior IDF officers told The Jerusalem Post Tuesday that Israel would have no choice but to launch a massive ground operation into the Gaza Strip in the near future.

... while officers said artillery fire on launch sites, as well as the targeted assassinations of key terror figures, did deter attacks to some degree, it was "only a matter of time" before the IDF would need to reenter Gaza which it left this past summer under the disengagement plan.... "The exact timing depends on the developments and when we will be fed up with the rocket attacks." ...(the) forecast backed up former chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya'alon's call last month to "escalate military action against the Kassam launchers, even if it means entering the Gaza Strip."

.... Northern Gaza was completely sealed off with an electrical fence following disengagement and in some parts - opposite Netiv Ha'asara - with a ninemeter cement wall. Since the IDF's withdrawal, not a single suicide bomber has succeeded in infiltrating into Israel from the Strip.

..."Gaza is sealed," one officer said. "There is no such thing, however, as 100 percent, but we are fairly confident that terrorists will not succeed in infiltrating into Israel from here." Hamas, he revealed, was no longer involved in Kassam attacks, which were now mostly carried out by Islamic Jihad or other smaller terror groups. But even so, the rocket attacks were directed mostly at the Rutenberg power plant on the outskirts of Ashkelon - a strategic site the rockets have yet to directly hit.

....Meanwhile, OC Air Force Maj.-Gen. Eliezer Shkedy said Israel made "super-human efforts" to prevent the loss of innocent lives during military operations. On Monday, three bystanders were killed alongside two Islamic Jihad terrorists in an IAF missile strike in Gaza City. "We are doing everything we can possibly think of to prevent innocent people from being harmed, but this is a war and nothing is certain," he said during a lecture at a conference on air power at Tel Aviv University.

....The IDF said it planned to investigate but that preemptive operations would continue. "We haven't always been able to prevent harming bystanders, but we must remember that in 2005 one civilian was harmed for every 28 terrorists we hit," Shkedy said.