Gaza on Brink as Battlefront After Israel Raid
Although tensions have always threatened to flare in the tinderbox Gaza Strip since the start of a Palestinian uprising for independence nearly two years ago, the region has been largely on the back burner in recent months.

Israeli tanks and troops now occupy seven of the West Bank's eight cities, but there has been no large-scale offensive in the smaller and more densely populated Gaza Strip, where casualties on both sides would likely be higher. The dynamic changed after an Israeli F-16 warplane fired a one-ton missile on a teeming Gaza neighborhood Tuesday, killing Salah Shehada, head of the military wing of the Muslim militant group Hamas, and 14 others.

Hundreds of thousands of people poured out in funerals and protests calling for ``Death to Israel'' in what appeared to be the largest crowds to pack Gaza's streets since Israel killed Hamas master-bombmaker Yehiya Ayyash in 1996.

Hamas militants wasted no time in vowing to kill Israelis in their own streets, restaurants and buses in revenge. It has made good on such vows in the past, killing scores of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks.

``The brigades call all fighters in occupied Palestinian cities and villages in West Bank, Gaza Strip and 1948 lands to be ready to strike the Zionists at any place and time,'' it said.

The narrow, coastal Gaza Strip was the first land Israel handed over to Palestinian rule in 1994 under peace accords. It has Egypt to the south, the Mediterranean Sea to the west and Israel to the north and east.

An Israeli security fence surrounds the strip, enclosing it in a miasma of refugee camps, villages and cities bursting with more than a million Palestinians. Jewish settlements, whose status was to have been negotiated, take up about 40 percent of the land.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-gaza.html