Israel's Barak predicts more strikes on Gaza

[Scurrilous]

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"Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Israel will go back to carrying out military strikes on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip despite a month-old truce, army radio reported on Tuesday.

"Those who miss the operations in the Gaza Strip, don't worry, they will come," Barak told a Labour party event in Jerusalem, without elaborating.

In June, Israel agreed to an Egyptian-brokered truce with Palestinian militants in Gaza that has mostly halted the near daily rocket and mortar attacks launched from the impoverished territory on southern Israel.

But Israeli officials remain wary of the deal and suspect Gaza's Hamas rulers and other armed groups are using the calm to train and rearm with weapons smuggled through a vast network of tunnels under the border with Egypt.

Israel had also said the truce depended on progress in releasing Gilad Shalit, an Israeli corporal seized by Gaza militants in a deadly cross-border raid on June 25, 2006.

Israel's army chief said on Monday that the military knows Shalit's location and the identity of those holding him, raising the possibility that Israel could seek to extract him through military means."

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Settler movement preparing to reestablish Gush Katif

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"The Homesh First Movement is expected to announce Tuesday that settlement groups are planning to return to settlements in Gush Katif evacuated during the August 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip. The core settlement groups hope to return the minute it is acceptable from a security standpoint, explained Boaz Haetzni, one of the leaders of the movement.

Haetzni told Haaretz that as soon as the Israel Defense Forces reenters the Gaza Strip, "and in our estimation the 'big operation' is only a matter of time, we will follow them in. We will not ask for permission from anyone. The groups will be ready, and this evening we will start an organized sign-up for them. These core groups will do exactly what the group that reestablished Kfar Etzion did after 1967. They will return to the lands where they existed in the past, and will rebuild them," said Haetzni.

Dozens of families who left Netzer Hazani in the Gush Katif as well as dozens more families have already expressed their interest in signing up for the new settlement groups, said Aviel Tokar, the coordinator of the planned group for reestablishing Netzer Hazani. "I was born in Netzer Hazani, the first settlement in Gush Katif, which with the help of God will also be the first settlement to return there. In our home, there is a picture of me as a four-year-old boy presenting Rabin with tomatoes from our hothouse. I believe my children will also present the prime minister with tomatoes from the hothouses of the rebuilt Netzer Hazani," said Tokar.

He repeated that the only problem preventing them from returning is security, but the minute the IDF enters the area, even temporarily, his group will simply go and establish the "facts on the ground."

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