April 1, 2007 Israel Warns of Hamas Military Buildup in Gaza By STEVEN ERLANGER JERUSALEM, March 31 — Hamas, the dominant faction in the Palestinian government, is building its military capacity in the Gaza Strip, constructing tunnels and underground bunkers and smuggling in ground-to-air missiles and military-grade explosives, senior Israeli officials say. The officials, including a top military commander who spoke in an interview on Friday, said that Hamas had learned tactics from Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, which brought in and stored thousands of rockets in bunkers near the northern Israeli border before its war with Israel last summer. In Gaza, the Israeli commander said, Hamas has now recruited 10,000 fighters to its so-called Executive Force, a parallel police force intended to counter the control its rival Fatah exercises over the Palestinian Authority’s security forces. The Executive Force is now divided into five “so-called brigades, with battalion leaders” and is receiving more military training and sharing a common headquarters, he said, with the Qassam brigades, Hamas’s military wing. The commander, who gave the briefing at the request of The New York Times and spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Hamas’s improved rockets had a range of about 10 miles, which would allow them to hit the Israeli town of Ashkelon. But he emphasized that despite Israel’s growing concerns about Hamas, “we’re not going to start a big operation in Gaza.” Still, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, is under increasing pressure from the political right and from parts of the security establishment to deal with the Hamas buildup sooner rather than later. And no one rules out a major Israeli response if a rocket from Gaza produces significant Israeli casualties. Yuval Diskin, the director of the Shin Bet internal security service, said recently in a briefing for journalists that “if the Hamas buildup continues, and the rockets and tunnels continue, at the end of the day we will have to do something about it.” He said that Egypt needed to do more to stop the smuggling of weapons, explosives and rockets into Gaza, and he said that Hamas had been able to send out “tens” of men for extensive military training in Iran, “with the promise of hundreds,” which worried him more, he said, than any smuggled weapon. Hamas has denied sending men to Iran for training, dismissing Israel’s assertions as propaganda aimed at hurting the Palestinian government. Israel may have an interest in asserting that the Palestinians are building an aggressive force. But it is known to have excellent electronic and human intelligence about Palestinian militias. Its claims about Hezbollah’s buildup in recent years have proved to be accurate. Recently, when Fatah accused Hamas of digging tunnels and bunkers from which to launch attacks on its men, Hamas spokesmen said the construction was to confront another Israeli raid and was not aimed at Fatah. Tensions between Israel and the Palestinians have risen lately, and the intermittent cease-fire in Gaza is fraying. On Wednesday, Israeli forces carried out their first offensive operation in Gaza in months, attacking a cell of Islamic Jihad militants preparing to launch Qassam rockets into Israel. In the past two weeks alone, the army says, more than 20 Qassams have been launched toward Israel, with at least five landing inside its territory, and an Israeli civilian, an electrical worker standing on a ladder in Israel near the border crossing, was shot by a Hamas member. On Friday, on the grounds of a former Israeli settlement near Khan Yunis, a Hamas fighter was killed and nine more were wounded when explosives blew up during their military training. The senior military commander said that after last summer’s war in Lebanon, Israeli troops were training differently. Given the Hamas buildup in men and new weaponry, Israel now viewed a battle in Gaza as “high-intensity warfare,” no longer the kind of policelike operation still being carried out in the West Bank, where Israeli forces roam at will. While Israel controls access to Gaza and its sea and airspace, it has generally held to the cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza since November, despite all the Qassam missile launchings by other Palestinian militant groups like Islamic Jihad and Fatah’s Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, which Hamas has done nothing to prevent. Hamas itself has not fired rockets since at least November, the commander said, because it wishes to preserve the cease-fire with Israel and not precipitate a major attack in Gaza. But what worries the director of Shin Bet, the Israeli counterterrorism service, and the new commander of the Israeli military, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, is the way that Hamas is using the calm to consolidate its power in Gaza and enhance its military capacities — and not just to fight its Palestinian rival, Fatah. The strengthening of Hamas and its consolidation of power in Gaza, reflected politically in Fatah’s decision to join Hamas as a junior partner in a coalition government, is a prime reason that Mr. Olmert is resisting a push from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to talk seriously to the Palestinians about the substance of a peace treaty with Israel. The continuing empowerment of Hamas is also behind Mr. Olmert’s reluctance to embrace the Arab League peace initiative reconfirmed Thursday at its summit meeting. Israelis may want peace in principle, but they are very reluctant to give up more territory in the occupied West Bank, as they have done in Gaza, to a Palestinian Authority dominated by a group unwilling to recognize Israel’s right to exist or to forswear the use of violence. The concerns of Shin Bet and the army, their officials say, include the following: as much as 30 tons of weapons-grade explosives smuggled into Gaza from Egypt, either through tunnels or through the desert; new rocket-building expertise from non-Gazans smuggled into Gaza or from Gazans who received training from Hezbollah or in Syria; a small but unknown quantity of better antitank missiles, of the general kind used so effectively last summer by Hezbollah against Israeli armor and Israeli troops sheltering in houses; a small number of ground-to-air missiles; and the construction of Hezbollah-style concrete bunkers and tunnels in crowded Gaza that will make any Israeli infantry operation harder to carry out. As important, the commander said, the use of industrial explosive means that weapons can be produced and stored, while homemade explosives deteriorate within weeks. “In a way,” the commander said, “it’s a cease-fire that’s not a cease-fire.” He noted more agitation inside Hamas, especially in the military wing, to end the cease-fire out of unhappiness with the new unity government agreed upon by Hamas and Fatah. He noted that Fatah was so far doing little to resurrect itself, and he suggested that the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, “has given up” and taken a junior role to Hamas. “And since we can’t see a political solution meanwhile, we’re a little worried about this situation,” he said. General Ashkenazi, the chief of staff, warned the Israeli Parliament this week that the army might be required to provide an answer to the growing strength of Hamas in Gaza and the accumulation of large quantities of arms and ammunition. “The process of Hamas growing stronger demands some sort of solution on our part,” he said. “It involves large quantities of arms and an increase in the level of their operational planning. To counter this, the Southern Command is planning and training in case they will need to be activated.” Hamas spokesmen in Gaza said that Palestinians had the right to defend themselves and that the Israeli comments appeared intended to justify new military attacks. Fawzi Barhoum of Hamas said that “resistance is a legitimate right so long as there is occupation, and resistance in all its forms.” Hamas, he said, “has the right to defend our people, the right to be ready to respond to Israeli attacks.” Mr. Barhoum would not comment on the specifics of the Israeli charges, but Khaled Abu Hilal, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said that the Executive Force remained at just under 6,000 men representing various factions. He said it was an arm of the government, not of Hamas, and did not share headquarters with the Qassam brigades. Islam Shahwan, spokesman for the Executive Force, said the 6,000 men were divided into six brigades and added, “We work as a government institution to protect internal security, not as a faction.” Men have been sent to Syria and Sudan for training, he said, not to Iran. Hamas also denied a charge by Mr. Olmert in Time magazine that Prime Minister Ismail Haniya had delivered $1 million in cash to the military wing, saying that all cash was handed to the Palestinian treasury. The senior commander said Israel wanted to give Washington space to try diplomacy and had promised to try to ease restrictions on the Palestinian movement of goods and people, not tighten them. Israel also knows that any large operation in Gaza would take months, not days, he said, and would result in numerous civilian casualties among Palestinians in the tightly packed towns and refugee camps where fighters live among the residents. Presumably, Hamas would be badly damaged by such an operation, which Hamas is therefore likely to be careful not to cause. But Israel also knows that however hurt, Hamas would not be wiped out, and that Fatah is not ready to replace it. Israel is also concerned that if Hamas decides to turn back from politics and resume full-scale military activities against Israel, there would probably be a new surge in more sophisticated rocket attacks and more professionally planned suicide bombings. Efraim Halevy, a former director of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, who is now at Hebrew University, said that while there were always military solutions, “it’s a question of price, and the government will take longer to discuss a Gaza operation than it did before going into Lebanon.” A major operation in Gaza “would imply that Gaza disengagement was a mistake,” Mr. Halevy said, something that a weakened Mr. Olmert, who strongly backed the Gaza pullout, would be reluctant to acknowledge. “Israel needs a solution to Gaza, but not necessarily a military solution,” Mr. Halevy said. “I think the government would exhaust all other options first.” Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting from Gaza.