Invasion of Gaza appears imminent

Jerusalem —- Israeli airstrikes killed at least eight Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Friday amid mounting speculation that a long-threatened land invasion of the coastal territory would begin soon.

Israel has vowed to press its offensive until there is no more rocket fire out of Gaza; its troops and tanks remained along the border.

The U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East, Robert Serry, told reporters on Friday that he was deeply worried that Israel would decide to move into Gaza.

“We are gravely concerned about that prospect because that would just mean another cycle of violence and a further escalation of the conflict,” he said.

Israeli analysts and experts have said that any ground operation should be brief but powerful. Alex Fishman, the military analyst of the daily Yediot Aharonot, wrote Friday, “Since the name of the game is killing and destruction, the ground operation has to be quick, with a lot of firepower at friction points with Hamas.” He added, “The goal is to exact a high price in the early stages of the ground operation and to end it quickly.”

Adding to concerns that an invasion was forthcoming, Israel temporarily opened a Gaza border crossing to allow hundreds of foreign passport holders to flee. Many of the evacuees were foreign-born women married to Palestinians and their children.

Among those fleeing was Jawaher Hajji, who said she had lost two close relatives in the past week. Hajji, 14, a U.S. citizen, described a scene of growing desperation in the enclave.

“There is no water, no electricity, no medicine,” she said. “It’s hard to survive. Gaza is destroyed.”

But Gaza militants continued to show their defiance. As warplanes swooped overhead Friday, supporters of Hamas, the radical Islamist party that controls Gaza, paid final respects to one of the movement’s senior spiritual and military leaders, an advocate of suicide bombings, in a mass public funeral.

Hamas and other factions also continued rocket launches toward southern Israeli towns, striking several buildings but causing only minor injuries. Gazan militants have extended their range deeper into the Jewish state, killing three Israeli civilians and one soldier during the past week.

In Tehran, Iran, a senior Iranian official and ranking cleric told worshippers that Hamas possesses a “new weapon” to use if Israel decides upon a ground invasion. The advanced weapon would allow the militant group to target Israeli tanks “from a long distance,” said former Iranian president Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, chairman of Iran’s powerful Expediency Council.

He also said the Islamic world should help Gazans with military as well as other kinds of support.

U.S. and Israeli officials accuse Iran of providing weapons to Hamas in Gaza.

The ongoing fighting generated more international calls for an end to the violence. President George W. Bush on Friday called the Hamas attacks on Israel unacceptable and said the United States was leading diplomatic efforts for a meaningful cease-fire.

“Another one-way cease-fire that leads to rocket attacks on Israel is not acceptable,” Bush said on his weekly Saturday radio address, which the White House released a day early. “And promises from Hamas will not suffice —- there must be monitoring mechanisms in place to help ensure that smuggling of weapons to terrorist groups in Gaza comes to an end.”

U.S. officials said they were discussing the possibility of a cease-fire, with proposals coming from the Egyptians, Turks, United Nations officials and the four-party diplomatic group called the “Quartet.” It includes the U.S., the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, said Friday that Israel would consider international monitors to ensure that both sides observe a cease-fire.

The Israelis would like guarantees that Hamas would not only halt missile and mortar fire, but would also agree to a verified halt to arms shipments, so that its strength could not increase again once the fighting is halted.

The ongoing violence and the threat of a bloody infantry and tank invasion have roiled Palestinian public opinion. Protesters in Arab East Jerusalem and in the occupied West Bank clashed Friday with both Israeli soldiers and security forces from the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, which is run by the Fatah faction, a rival Palestinian group to Hamas.

Palestinian Authority police disrupted a large pro-Hamas demonstration in the center of the West Bank city of Ramallah. Pro-Hamas supporters outnumbered those from Fatah and other Palestinian factions at a mass protest rally.

Hamas defeated Fatah in Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006 but was shunned by Israel and the Western powers for its refusal to formally recognize Israel’s right to exist. After a short-lived Fatah-Hamas unity government collapsed, Hamas fighters took full control of Gaza.

The New York Times and The Associated Press contributed to this article.