Nine Palestinians were killed on Monday as Israel pounded Gaza with deadly air strikes and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert defended the massive military offensive in the face of international criticism.
Despite the mounting toll, Hamas’s exiled political chief insisted the captured soldier at the heart of the worst Middle East crisis in months — and the deadliest in four years — would not be freed without a swap for Palestinian prisoners.
Israel has refused to negotiate with Hamas or free prisoners in exchange for the missing teenage corporal, pressing on regardless with its deadly offensive in which three football-playing adolescents were among the dead on Monday.
“We haven’t set a particular timetable for this operation. We will continue in places, in time, in measures that will suit our purposes,” said Olmert, who is facing the biggest test of his premiership in the crisis.
“I think that once the Qassam [rocket] shooting will be stopped and the terrorist actions against innocent civilians will be halted altogether, there will be no need for any Israeli action in Gaza,” he said.
At least 50 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have been killed since Israel tanks and troops poured into the Gaza Strip on July 5 in a bid to stop Palestinian rocket attacks and secure Corporal Gilad Shalit’s release.
Four Palestinian teenagers, who local medical sources said were unarmed, died and another four people were wounded in the latest Israeli air strikes over the Gaza Strip after dark on Monday.
Witnesses said the victims were playing football close to an area where militants had fired makeshift rockets towards Israel a short time earlier. One rocket was reported to have landed on Israeli territory without causing damage or casualties.
An Israeli army spokesperson said the air raid had targeted a rocket-launching cell in northern Gaza in the Beit Hanun area.
Two militants from Hamas’s armed wing and two from rival Islamic Jihad were killed in earlier strikes, and at least another 12 bystanders were hurt. An eighth Palestinian died of his injuries elsewhere in Gaza.
Israel has warned that troops are likely to be in for the long haul, rejecting a call by Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya for a mutual ceasefire but denying that the offensive aims to topple his Hamas government.
“This government is terror,” Olmert said, but “we have no particular desire to topple the Hamas government as a policy.”
Hamas, which has seen its government offices bombed in Israeli air strikes since Shalit’s capture, for which the Hamas armed wing claimed joint responsibility, has warned the assault is complicating mediation efforts aimed at freeing the corporal.
But Olmert reiterated he would not negotiate with Hamas, which officially advocates the destruction of the Jewish state, or release prisoners in a swap for Shalit as his captors have demanded.
Moving into land evacuated in September after a 38-year occupation, ground forces have been backed by helicopter gunships and drones in wave after wave of air strikes for two straight weeks of overnight bombardment.
Olmert rejected international charges that the Israeli response to the soldier’s capture was disproportionate, claiming that Israel’s historic pull-out from Gaza last year had only been followed up by continued violence.
Militants have fired at least 30 makeshift rockets towards Israel since the army began a vast operation in the northern Gaza Strip late on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas left on a surprise visit to Jordan for talks with Prime Minister Maaruf Bakhit at the request of King Abdullah II to discuss “regional developments”, said an official.
Aid groups have expressed concern about the difficulties of providing assistance to 1,4-million people living in Gaza following months of financial crisis and the suspension of direct Western aid to the Hamas-led government.
Exiled Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal — one of Israel’s most wanted men — convened a rare news conference in Damascus on Monday to declare that the captured soldier was being treated as a prisoner of war.
“There will be no freedom for the Israeli prisoner without an exchange involving Palestinian detainees,” he stressed, while vowing that Shalit’s life would be protected.
The United States on Monday chided Meshaal for “sitting in Damascus” and dictating the will of Palestinian people.
“The root cause of this current situation is the fact that a group of terrorists tunneled into Israeli territory, killed two soldiers and took this individual hostage,” said State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack.
“The international community is interested and has been working toward his release for some time. I would just question how Khalid Meshaal, who’s sitting in Damascus, knows exactly what the Palestinian people want.
“It might be easy for him to dictate from Damascus and to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people, but it is really the Palestinian people themselves who suffer as a result of the fact that Khalid Meshaal and Hamas are now the head of a Palestinian Authority that is not a negotiating partner for the Israeli government or the rest of the world.” – AFP