Operation Is Halted in Gaza To Avoid Human Shield

JERUSALEM — Israel was forced to abandon an airstrike against a Palestinian Arab militant in the Gaza Strip yesterday after hundreds of civilians gathered to protect his home.

The human shield formed at the home of Mohammed Baroud early yesterday morning after the Israeli military telephoned to warn him that he had 10 minutes to leave his house before it was blown up.

Israel often uses unannounced airstrikes in Gaza to assassinate militants, but sometimes it targets their homes, weapons laboratories, or arms caches instead and issues warnings to keep down civilian casualties.

Until now, the warnings have been quickly heeded. But this time, Mr. Baroud — a leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, which has been firing rockets into Israeli towns near Gaza — ran to a mosque and appealed for help over the loudspeakers normally used for the Muslim call to prayer.

Hundreds of people flocked to his house, with some taking up positions on his rooftop. As dawn broke a spokesman for the Israeli military confirmed that the airstrike had been canceled.

"We don't want to hurt uninvolved civilians," the source said. "The terrorists are using uninvolved civilians as human shields."

Yesterday's human shield was the first to halt an airstrike in Gaza, but appears destined to become a new tactic designed to stifle the Israeli air force.

"This is a victory for the Palestinian people. It is a defeat for the Israeli F–16s," one militant at the house said. "Every time the Israeli military call from now on, no one will leave their homes."

Later in the day, however, Israel showed its determination to continue targeting wanted Palestinian Arabs from the air. A Hamas militant was critically injured by a missile strike on a car in Gaza City in an attack that doctors said wounded nine others, including five children.

Palestinian Arab militants, too, continued to attack, launching a morning barrage of their rudimentary Kassam rockets at the southern Israeli town of Sderot.

Israel says more than 800 such missiles have been launched into its territory since the beginning of the year, with improved design gradually increasing their range.

One Israeli man was slightly wounded by shrapnel from one of the four Kassams that fell on Sderot, as the Israeli defense minister, Amir Peretz, vowed that Palestinian Arabs would pay a "heavy price" for the ongoing attacks.

Mr. Peretz also said Israel needed to consider acquiring a sophisticated anti-missile defense system to protect its southern towns and villages from Kassam attack. In the past, such a system has been ruled out as too expensive, while the short distance that Kassams travel into southern Israel from Gaza makes them difficult to intercept.

New options are clearly needed, however, as Palestinian Arab and Israeli tactics in Gaza appear to be bringing neither side any success.

While Israel continues to launch airstrikes and occasional ground incursions into Gaza to stop Palestinian Arabs from launching missiles, the Kassams keep flying.

At the same time, those Kassams — launched at random into civilian towns — bring nothing to ordinary Palestinian Arabs but the certainty of a powerful Israeli response.

That explains why Palestinian Arabs celebrated their human shield as a rare double victory — the tactic forced an Israeli rethink, and no one died, either.