JERUSALEM — In the latest and strongest signal by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Israel may intend to seize parts of the Gaza Strip, the country's defense minister on Sunday explicitly raised the prospect of a ground offensive in the teeming Palestinian enclave.
For nearly two weeks, Gaza has been the scene of steadily escalating violence after the collapse of a self-declared truce by Palestinian militant groups and the near-snuffing out of hopes for the success of a U.S.-backed peace initiative.
The remarks of the defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, came hours after an Israeli truck driver was shot and seriously wounded by a Hamas gunman in southern Gaza, and thousands of Palestinians marched in furious funeral processions for an 8-year-old girl accidentally shot by Israeli troops and for two Hamas militants assassinated by Israeli helicopter-fired missiles a day earlier.
"We have the option of a ground operation in Gaza," Mofaz told journalists as he, like several other top government officials, visited Israeli pupils on their first day back at school. "We will exercise it when we decide it is right to do so, at the appropriate time."
Israel's commander in the Gaza Strip, Col. Shuki Rimsky, told Israeli radio that in the last week, Palestinian militants in Gaza had staged 60 shooting attacks, 62 mortar firings and 14 attacks with homemade Kassam rockets.
Asked about the likelihood of an Israeli offensive, he replied: "We are always ready. We will go when we receive the order."
Twice last week, Israel rattled the nerves of Palestinians when it sent armored vehicles and military earthmoving equipment into northern Gaza to uproot orchards that Israel said had served as cover for Palestinians firing Kassam rockets. Many Palestinians expressed fears then that the two brief incursions were a prelude to a larger-scale Gaza offensive.
Nearly all of the 10 Hamas leaders or operatives slain in an Israeli campaign of "targeted killings" that began Aug. 21, two days after a devastating bus bombing in Jerusalem, were said to have been involved in the manufacture and firing of mortars and rockets.
In recent days, Israel has employed unusually harsh rhetoric regarding Palestinians' use of northern Gaza as a launchpad for Kassam rockets aimed at Jewish settlements inside Gaza and at Israeli towns and cities outside the strip.
