By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM, Nov 6 (Reuters) - When Israel re-entered the Gaza Strip last June, nine months after pulling out, it made its intentions clear -- rescue a captured soldier, stop Palestinian militants firing rockets and get out.

Five months on, the soldier is still being held, militants are still firing rockets at Israel and troops remain on the ground. Gaza has proved anything but a simple operation.

In the past six days alone, Israeli forces have fought pitched battles with militants in the streets, laid siege to 60 gunmen hiding in a mosque and enforced a curfew on the town of Beit Hanoun and its 30,000 people. At least 50 Palestinians have been killed, almost half of them civilians.

One Israeli soldier has also been killed.

While military commanders say the operation, dubbed Autumn Clouds, is achieving its goals, Israel now appears more bogged down in Gaza than at any time in the past 18 months.

Israeli security analysts are not convinced the operation is accomplishing its main aim -- stopping rockets -- and fear it could be the start of "mission creep" that leads Israel to all but re-occupying Gaza and its 1.4 million people -- reversing the 2005 pullout that was supposed to end a 38-year occupation.

"No one has any illusion that this operation is going to bring an end to the rocket fire," said Gidi Grinstein, the head of the Reut Institute, an independent Israeli think-tank, and a former government negotiator with the Palestinians.

Palestinian anger is as fuelled and fired up as ever, raising the threat of more intense violence to come.

As if to underline that point, several more homemade rockets fell on Sderot, an Israeli town just across the frontier from Gaza, on Sunday, and militant group Hamas declared in a statement: "Bombardment for bombardment, blood for blood".

"Until we come up with a new concept of how to handle the strategic threats we face, we're not going to be as successful as we want to be in dealing with them," Grinstein said.

POSSIBLE REOCCUPATION?

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said he will push ahead with the offensive until rockets stop, or at least taper off, but has also said Israel has no intention of "conquering" Gaza again, a move that would amount to political failure.

"The operation is limited in time but we have no intention of announcing when it will end," Olmert said ahead of a cabinet meeting on Sunday, saying Israel would not stay in Gaza.

One of the army's commanders was less guarded. "We're talking about a thorough and expansive operation and it will last as long as necessary," he told Yediot Ahronoth newspaper.

The problem for Israel is the longer the operation lasts, the more chance it has of jeopardising its chief goals. And for Palestinians, the longer it goes on, the more people will die.

Not only is the rocket fire unlikely to stop -- militants in Gaza seem to have a limitless ability to smuggle in the raw materials needed to produce the makeshift missiles -- but the captured soldier, Gilad Shalit, is also less likely to be freed.

Ahead of the Beit Hanoun offensive six days ago, prospects were looking good for a near-term deal that would see Shalit released in exchange for around 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Now Palestinian officials say the deal is in doubt and some sources say it could be months before further progress is made.

Furthermore, the longer Israeli troops remain on Palestinian soil, the more determined militants are to engage them, and to smuggle in the weaponry necessary to pursue the fight.

Israel says there has been a marked increase in smuggling of arms -- including anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles -- into Gaza across its southern border with Egypt in recent weeks, and that Iran and Syria are behind the rearmament.

It has made stopping the weapons flow another of the aims in the expanding offensive, so that now it is even considering bombing the Philadelphi Corridor, the narrow strip of land that marks Gaza's border with Egypt -- a considerable escalation.

If a bombing and re-occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor were to occur, security analysts say it could leave Israel at least de facto fully responsible for Gaza again, something Olmert wants to avoid at all costs.

"In the long run, permanent presence in Gaza will undermine Israel's basic foundations as a Jewish and democratic state," wrote Grinstein in an analysis of the current political risks.

At the same time, having stepped in so far, Olmert will find it hard to step back from Gaza now without concrete results.

He may also want to have something to tell U.S. President George W. Bush about where the operation is going when he visits Washington next week.

AlertNet news is provided by

del.icio.us  |   Digg  |   NewsVine  |   Reddit