Israel shells 50 targets ahead of truce vote
Afp, Ap, Gaza City
Israel pummelled Gaza with new strikes yesterday destroying 50 targets, including a UN-run school sheltering hundreds of refuges in the north, hours before an expected unilateral halt to a 22-day war on Hamas.
The Israeli security cabinet was to convene later on Saturday to consider ordering a halt to its offensive, which has killed more than 1,200 Palestinians and left much of Gaza in ruins.
But even before any official announcement, Hamas said they would not be laying down their arms as Israel still planned to keep its troops in Gaza.
“This unilateral ceasefire does not foresee a withdrawal” by the Israeli army, Osama Hemdan, the movement’s Lebanon representative, told AFP. “As long as it remains in Gaza, resistance and confrontation will continue.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was to address the press along with senior ministers following the security cabinet meeting, which is widely expected to vote in favour of a unilateral ceasefire in Israel’s deadliest ever offensive on Gaza.
In the hours before the meeting, the Israeli army kept up its attacks, killing more than a dozen people, including a woman and a child who had taken refuge with hundreds of others at a UN-run school in the north.
The military said it struck some 50 Hamas targets. In one attack, a shell struck a United Nations school packed with refugees fleeing the fighting, witnesses and the UN said, killing two Palestinians and drawing a sharp condemnation from the UN.
Israel had no comment on the incident, the latest in a string of attacks to hit a UN installation.
It was at least the fourth Israeli strike on an UNRWA-operated school in Gaza and the UN agency demanded an investigation.
The expected stop to the violence came after the Jewish state won pledges from Washington and Cairo to help prevent arms smuggling into the Islamist-run enclave from Egypt, a key demand for ending the war.
However Egypt, which had been trying to broker a reciprocal peace deal, blamed the failure of its efforts on Israeli “intransigence.”
Under the terms of the proposal being discussed by the security cabinet, Israel would silence its guns even without a truce with Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since mid-2007, a senior government official said.
The Israeli official made clear that the army would respond to any Hamas attacks even after a ceasefire order from the security cabinet.
“If it decides to open fire, we will not hesitate to respond and resume our offensive,” he told AFP.
The security cabinet meeting comes as the UN’s General Assembly called for an immediate ceasefire to end a war whose stated aim was to halt rocket fire by Gaza militants. Half of the Palestinian dead have been civilians.
Gaza militants fired some seven rockets into Israel on Saturday, without causing any casualties.
“The (Israeli) security cabinet is expected to vote in favour of a unilateral ceasefire at (Saturday’s) meeting following the signing of the memorandum in Washington and significant progress made in Cairo,” the government official said on condition of anonymity.
The breakthrough came after Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni signed the deal with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice under which the US will assist in preventing smuggling into Gaza, and a top envoy returned from talks in Cairo.
“Olmert was satisfied with the results of the talks in Cairo, which answered Israel’s basic requirements for a thorough answer to Israel’s demands to halt rocket fire and an agreement on coordination between Israel and Egypt on the opening of the crossings” on the Gaza border, the official added.
However Egypt, whose President Hosni Mubarak has been busy trying to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas, showed anger that its efforts had been in vain.
Asked by reporters what the main obstacle was, Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said “Israeli intransigence,” adding: “Israel is drunk with power and violence.”
Abul Gheit also said that Cairo is “absolutely not bound” by the US-Israeli agreement on arms smuggling.
Clamping down on the porous Gaza-Egypt border, where hundreds of underground tunnels form Hamas’s main supply route, has been a key Israeli demand for ending its offensive.
After signing the deal in Washington, Rice said she now hoped for a “ceasefire very, very soon” but could not promise one would be sealed in time for January 20, when President George W. Bush hands over to Barack Obama.
Since Israel unleashed Operation Cast Lead on December 27, at least 1,203 Palestinians, including 410 children, have been killed and 5,300 wounded.
On the Israeli side, 10 soldiers and three civilians have been killed in combat or in rocket strikes. Militants in Gaza have fired more than 700 rockets and mortar rounds into Israel since the start of the war.
The war in Gaza has drawn worldwide protests and raised fears of a humanitarian crisis in the impoverished territory of 1.5 million people, which has been under a crippling Israeli blockade ever since Hamas seized power.
Courtesy: thedailystar.net
