Hamas Ends Stalemate with Rival Fatah Party

MARGARET WARNER:

It has been a tumultuous day on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides of the Gaza border. We start with some background, narrated by Jonathan Miller of Independent Television News. It was prepared before the latest reports of Israeli military movements.

JONATHAN MILLER, ITV News Correspondent:

Israeli Army radio reporting deployment now of two infantry regiments and two armored battalions, around 5,000 troops.

One hundred tanks and armored personnel carriers cluttering the farmland of Kibbutz Nahal Oz. A full naval and grand blockade imposed on Gaza. Palestinian civilians reportedly fleeing the frontier region in anticipation of the looming incursion.

"There's no doubt we'll have to carry out operations that will cost lives," Israel's defense minister says. Threats to cut food, water, fuel and electricity supplies to Gaza, too, if the kidnapped corporal isn't freed by midnight tomorrow.

Nineteen-year-old conscript Gilad Shalit, the first Israeli captured in a decade, today, Hamas, one of three groups to have spirited him away down a kilometer-long tunnel after a brazen raid inside Israel on Sunday, saying he was still alive.

The spokesman for another of the armed groups responsible, the Popular Resistance Committees, says the kidnapped soldier is in a security place which, he says, the Zionists cannot reach.

SHIMON PERES, Deputy Prime Minister, Israel:

It was done by a small group of people that want to destroy any chance for peace and introduce again terror and bloodshed.

JONATHAN MILLER:

Bizarrely enough, Palestinian officials chose today of all days to announce a "peace in our time" document, an agreement between leaders of Fatah and Hamas Palestinian factions to form what they call a unity administration.

The document, grandly called a manifesto, was supposed to implicitly recognize Israel's right to exist by endorsing a negotiated two-state solution, but it's not at all clear that it does this.

It was drafted by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, but Hamas facing a deep internal split over the issue of recognizing Israel.

The 8,500 Palestinians held captive in Israel now in the spotlight, following the militants' capture of the Israeli soldier. The Israeli prison services confirm that 113 of them are women and 313 are under 18. Their freedom the single demand so far from the corporal's captors.

The Israeli prime minister has refused to negotiate over Corporal Shalit's release, but Israel has struck lopsided bargains before. After what has already been the deadliest fortnight since Israel pulled out of Gaza last August. Now, with Israeli troops and tanks massing, a deepening sense of foreboding.