Israel fired missiles into Gaza again last night as the White House tried to forestall the escalation of its war with Hamas at the end of one of the bloodiest weeks of recent times.
One man died and 32 Palestinians, including 10 children, were reported injured, when a helicopter gunship fired missiles at a car. Hamas named the dead man as Fuad al-Liddawi, a member of its military wing.
Three hours later, missiles from a helicopter hit what Israeli forces described as a weapons factory. Witnesses said the missiles hit the home of well-known Hamas family but there was no sign of casualties. In the West Bank, one Israeli was killed and two seriously wounded in Palestinian shootings.
Earlier the US president, George Bush, his secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, called Israeli and Palestinian officials to try to prevent a worsening of the crisis caused by Israel’s botched attempt to assassinate Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, Hamas’s political leader .
But Israel remained uncompromising in its intention to wage war against Hamas ”without restrictions”.
Yesterday officials said that some of its leaders, such as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who have previously been left untouched, would be added to their targets.
In response, Hamas ordered all its fighters to mobilise immediately and to ”blow up the Zionist entity”.
Although President Bush has vented his fury at Hamas for Wednesday’s suicide bombing on a Jerusalem bus, which killed 17 people, US officials say he is also furious that Sharon broke a promise to ensure the end of ”targeted killings” of the kind attempted on Dr Rantissi.
Bush spoke to the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, late on Thursday. Abbas, better known as Abu Mazen, assured him that he was committed to renewing negotiations with Hamas for a ceasefire.
The Egyptian intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, is in Israel to try to persuade Hamas to halt attacks. Yesterday he met the lawyer of the jailed militia leader Marwan Barghouti, who offered important backing for the ceasefire.
A newspaper poll showed that the majority of Israelis supported the Palestinian leadership’s efforts to get Hamas to stop its attacks: 58% said they wanted Sharon to call off the assassinations to give Abu Mazen time to get an agreement with Hamas.
Powell contacted the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, and urged restraint. He also called an emergency meeting of the EU, UN, US and Russia, the group that helped organise a Palestinian state.
The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, speaking to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, proposed an armed peace force to act as a buffer between the Israelis and Palestinians. The Israeli government has consistently rejected a foreign peacekeeping force, but has agreed to a US-led team to monitor implementing the ”road map”.
The first of the 51 US monitors are due to leave for Israel today, but Annan says the team is too small and a larger force is needed to act as a buffer.
”The monitoring mechanism that will be put in place next week is a beginning, and it may be enough if the parties are able to break the cycle of violence. In the interim, I would like to see an armed peacekeeping force act as a buffer,” he said.
JohnWarner, chairman of the Senate armed services committee, urged Bush to send Nato troops instead. But the White House said that was ”not realistic”.
Annan said he was prepared to give Sharon the benefit of the doubt regarding ending the occupation, but criticised his response to violence, saying that reprisals encouraged terrorism.
Yesterday, Israelis and Palestinians continued to bury their dead. Victims included a girl aged two who was killed in a helicopter strike in Gaza that also killed her mother and father, Yasser Taha, reportedly a Hamas militant. – Guardian Unlimited Â