1: GAZA CITY

The attack on Gaza City and other communties comes just hours after Palestinian commandos assault at an Israeli military base, killing two soldiers and injuring seven. Another soldier is fatally wounded by friendly fire. Two Palestinians also die in the early-morning raid.

That army base is in the southern Gaza Strip, a small stretch of land about 20 miles long. Israel has several large colonies in the southern end where about 6,000 Jewish settlers live -- even though under the 1994 peace accords, the Gaza Strip is supposed to be under Palestinian control. The army base attacked by the guerillas protects these enclaves in the region primarly via roadblocks and travel restrictions on Palestinians.

An almost-forgotten group, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. claimed credit. The action was intended to revive Palestinian resistance as political/ guerilla action, as compared to the terrorist acts against Israel which have recently included a rise in suicide bombings by Islamic extremist groups. "It's a classic model -- soldier to soldier, gun to gun, face to face," a DFLP spokesman tells the London Guardian. "This is going to be a model for other organizations to do the same kind of operation... people are going to see that this is a better way to resist the occupation than suicide bombs inside the Jewish state."