bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Having set off a firestorm of international protest,  the Israeli army may have achieved little from its mission against arms smugglers in the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza.

An army division  uncovered three tunnels leading across the Egyptian border, fewer than security chiefs had expected.

No large arms caches were  discovered, although senior officers had expressed  the belief at the beginning of the operation this month  that the search would also pinpoint munitions workshops in Rafah.

The arrest of the men behind the tunnel digging was  high on the army's agenda but security officials acknowledged yesterday that there had been few 'quality' arrests.

The army would have liked to  extend its methodical search  into adjacent areas but criticism over the damage inflicted on Palestinian  homes  made it settle with what it had accomplished  so far.

The commander of the operation, Brigadier-General Shmuel Zakai, said  its objectives had been achieved.

Chief of Staff General Moshe Ya'alon acknowledged however that non-military considerations were factors in  ending the action.

'There are military considerations, political considerations, and humanitarian considerations,' he said.

Protests against the operation  have come from the US, the UN and Amnesty International. Israeli human rights groups had  also protested  the demolition of Palestinian homes.

The Israeli media gave extensive coverage to Justice Minister Yosef Lapid's remark that the television picture of an elderly Arab woman searching for her medicines in the ruins of her home  made him think of his grandmother, lost in the Holocaust.

General Zakai said  56 buildings  were destroyed - some in the search for tunnels, some because they were used as firing positions and some in order to permit armoured vehicles to avoid the mines the Palestinians had planted in  narrow  roads.

He said 41 'terrorists' and 12 civilians were killed in the operation.  Palestinian sources said that only 12 of the dead were armed.  Eight civilians were killed when a tank shell, fired to deter a protesters  from approaching the search area, exploded among  them.

The chief of staff said  the army would go in again to destroy tunnels whenever intelligence learned of their existence.

Security sources said the operation had managed to hold up  a planned  shipment of  weapons  from Iran.

Meanwhile, a major worry confronting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appears to have been dispelled following Israeli media  reports yesterday that Menachem Mazuz, the newly-appointed attorney-general, was inclined not to indict him in a  bribery case.

The previous attorney-general, Edna Arbel, who was  appointed to the Supreme Court bench last week, was reportedly prepared to indict Mr Sharon over  allegations  he helped his son extract large fees from a building contractor when in a previous ministerial post.



Top brass count cost of Israeli offensive in Rafah