JERUSALEM — Israeli generals threatened Friday to re-invade the Gaza Strip if Palestinian rocket attacks continued, keeping up a war of words and weapons even as Jews, Muslims and Christians celebrated their holy days.
"I do not rule out ground operations if requested by the southern command of Israel," the army deputy chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinski, told the nation's biggest selling daily, Yediot Aharonot, in one of a spate of bellicose interviews in weekend newspapers. "If the times come, we will launch them."
As thousands of Palestinians rallied after Friday prayers to protest Israeli shelling and the cutoff of international aid, the new Hamas leadership, broke and shunned, was no less adamant.
"We will not give in, and attempts to isolate the government will fail," Prime Minister Ismail Haniya told a cheering crowd at a mosque in Gaza at the Jabaliya refugee camp. "We are prepared to eat salt and olives."
In the past week, 18 Palestinians have been killed in tank and artillery shelling and in Israeli airstrikes. The latest victims were two gunmen from Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade who were killed Thursday as they tried to get through a fence. On both Thursday and Friday, Israeli troops, with armored bulldozers, ventured several dozen yards inside Gaza searching for explosives, the first such incursion since their withdrawal in September.
Kaplinski maintained in his interview that the Israeli military pressure was "beginning to bear fruit." He added, however, "More should be done to stop rocket attacks."
The army's chief operations officer, Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, expressed similar views in a lengthy interview in Haaretz.
"If Hamas leaders don't act to stop the rockets, they must be hit hard and pay a heavy price," Eisenkot said. "What we saw up to now was just an introduction."
At Al Aqsa Mosque here, Sheikh Muhammed Hussein celebrated the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, which fell earlier in the week, at Friday Prayer, calling for a "just" Islamic state "ruled according to God's word." Just a short distance away, Christian pilgrims observing Good Friday followed the Stations of the Cross along Via Dolorosa.