Gaza City, July 9, 2006
Three Palestinian family members, including a six-year-old girl, were killed on Sunday in an air strike in Gaza City as Israel rejected a call by Hamas premier Ismail Haniya for a mutual ceasefire.
The girl, her elder brother and her mother were killed in the air raid which according to an army spokesman targeted a group of militants east of Gaza City.
Despite initial denials, the Israeli army later confirmed carrying out an airstrike in the neighbourhood of Sejayun.
"We are currently examining the exact details of the strike," an army source said.
Four more Palestinians were killed earlier as Israeli forces shifted the focus of their Gaza campaign to end militant rocket fire and free a captured soldier to the seaside strip's eastern frontier.
As Israel pushed on into Gaza, officials brushed aside Haniya's call for a "return to a situation of calm on the basis of a halt to all military operations by both sides".
"We do not hold negotiations with terrorists. They must first return the kidnapped soldier unharmed and cease their fire," an official in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office told reporters.
"We will decide on our next moves according to the steps taken by the Palestinian government," he said, asking not to be named.
Haniya stressed that his Hamas government was determined to solve the problem through diplomatic channels in a "peaceful" manner.
Source: Hindustan Times
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1739490,00050004.htm
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Gaza feud stokes bigger fire
By Betsy Hiel
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, July 9, 2006
The latest Israeli-Palestinian violence is diverting Arab anger from U.S. policy in Iraq to that old standby, U.S. support for Israel.
The fighting poses problems for another U.S. ally in the region -- Egypt -- and has prompted muted criticism of other Arab governments for ignoring the Palestinians.
Yet one American analyst is surprised the conflict hasn't provoked more concern about larger, longer-term consequences.
Jon Alterman, who directs the Middle East program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes that Israel's incursion aims to collapse Hamas and that the Bush administration is "basically sympathetic with Israeli goals."
Without a negotiated end, he predicts "things are likely to get worse."
Israel's incursion into the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip has dominated Middle Eastern newspapers and televisions for nearly two weeks. Arab commentators generally accuse the Bush administration of endorsing an attack that has killed scores of Palestinians, as well as a number of Israeli soldiers.
"It doesn't work, this American connection with Israeli interests," Walid Shaqir wrote in the pan-Arabic daily Al Hayat. "It contributes to the rising hatred against Washington in the region."
Although the incursion initially aimed to rescue a captured Israeli soldier, many Israelis hope it ends frequent rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.
Many Arabs suspect the real goal is to destabilize the Palestinians' newly elected Hamas government, reviled in Israel for its suicide attacks on Israeli civilians.
"Half the Palestinian cabinet and many parliamentarians are in Israel's hands," wrote Salama A. Salama in an editorial in Egypt's Al Ahram Weekly. "President Mahmoud Abbas is trapped and Gaza is being pummeled, all because one Israeli soldier has been abducted in retaliation for the killing of an entire Palestinian family on a Gaza beach" in an earlier Israeli bombardment.
Even some in Israel's lively press criticize the incursion. "The original goal, to return the kidnapped soldier ... was overlaid by the desire to change the rules of the game in the south (read: to stop the firing of Qassam rockets) and then by the intention to weaken the Hamas government," wrote Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff in the liberal Ha'aretz newspaper.
The operation, they conclude, "tried to achieve too many goals and may end without any of them being achieved."
Egyptian officials fear the fighting will destabilize their borders with Israel and Gaza. But an even greater concern may be that public support for Hamas will encourage more sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood, the increasingly popular Islamic party that is challenging the two-decade-long rule of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Mubarak has sent a delegation to negotiate for the Israeli soldier's release.
The Jordan Times has warned of an unfolding humanitarian disaster among Gaza's 1.3 million residents: "Sonic booms shatter people's sleep at night, lack of electricity plunges large parts of the strip in darkness ... hospitals and other essential services are functioning at emergency capacity only."
Despite the anger on the Arab street, however, Arab governments -- particularly those in Persian Gulf countries getting rich on $75-a-barrel oil -- are unlikely to impose a retaliatory oil embargo. That prospect prompts Salama, the Egyptian editorial writer, to complain that "Palestinians must be aware by now that they can no longer count on Arab help, economically, politically or militarily."
Alterman, of the international studies center, is "struck by how little strategic thinking is going on by anybody. I don't think people have really figured out what they want the end state to be. I don't see a deal that meets any side's ambition ... anyone engaging in the near future," particularly when Western-Muslim relations are so explosive.
"We have had the Palestinian Authority for some time now," he says, "and we may be moving to a point where there isn't a Palestinian Authority -- and what does that look like?"
In other words, if Hamas does fall, anarchy could rise in its place.
Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Reviewhttp://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/middleeastreports/s_461195.html
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