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JERUSALEM - Israel plans to establish a three-mile-deep "security zone" in the northern Gaza Strip, with hundreds of troops patrolling the area in coming months to prevent Palestinian rocket fire on Israeli border towns, security officials said Wednesday.
The army and the Defense Ministry declined comment.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon intends to withdraw all troops and settlers from Gaza by September 2005. But after an Israeli man and a toddler were killed by a Palestinian rocket attack on the Israeli town of Sderot this week, Sharon asked the military to come up with a quick plan to stop further rocketing.
In a first response, Israeli forces encircled the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, the main rocket launching area, to prevent more attacks.
More than 1,000 soldiers will be deployed in the zone, which would extend from Gaza's northern border for about three miles and would encompass Beit Hanoun, home to 21,000 Palestinians.
The town's residents would have to pass through an Israeli checkpoint to reach other areas of Gaza. Beit Hanoun's industrial zone in the outskirts of town has been temporarily closed, and farmers are not able to reach their fields while soldiers are deployed in the area.
The military hopes the "security zone" will move Sderot beyond the five-mile rocket range.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said the plan appeared to conflict with plans for a withdrawal.
"I don't understand the Israeli government's behavior," Shaath said. "Either it's not serious about the withdrawal from Gaza, or it wants to destroy Palestinian land before withdrawing."
The Israeli military operation is the eighth major one in Beit Hanoun in nearly four years of fighting. In previous raids, more than half of the town's 3,000 acres of farmland, including strawberry fields and vegetable patches, were flattened and thousands of trees uprooted, said the mayor, Ibrahim Hamad.
An extended army stay "will mean people are living in a prison," he said.
On Wednesday evening, army bulldozers uprooted hundreds of olive trees east of Beit Hanoun, residents said. The army had no immediate comment.
Abdullah Hamad, a Beit Hanoun farmer, said he pleaded with militants not to fire at Israel.
"We stab ourselves in the back when militants use the homemade rockets," the farmer said. "In May last year, I saw them firing rockets from my farm. I begged them not to shoot, but they did and they brought damage to my farm and to my house, and now they have done it again."
In the West Bank, Israel reoccupied Palestinian towns for extended periods during the current round of fighting. In densely populated Gaza, army raids generally last just a few days.
Israel established a security zone once before, in southern Lebanon. After withdrawing the bulk of its troops from Lebanon in 1985, Israel carved out the zone to prevent rocket attacks on northern Israel, but with little success. Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000.