Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Thursday to make Hamas militants pay a heavy price for rocket attacks despite United States concerns about civilians in the Gaza Strip.
As five more Palestinians were killed, Olmert held talks in Tokyo with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is preparing for a visit next week to the Middle East to push ahead the slow-moving peace process.
”I explained to the secretary of state that we won’t end our battle,” Olmert told reporters. ”We will make the terrorists pay a very heavy price.”
Just as the State Department announced Rice’s trip to the Middle East, militants from Islamist movement Hamas launched a volley of rockets into southern Israel, killing a man at a university on the outskirts of Sderot.
He was the first Israeli killed by rocket fire from Gaza since Hamas seized control of the impoverished territory in June. The Islamist group said it was avenging the death of militants and reserved the right to ”respond by all means available”.
”What happened could transpire again in the near future,” Olmert said of rocket attacks reaching into the south of the Jewish state.
”We are at the height of this battle and we will pursue it until the danger threatening residents in the south ends,” he said.
Eleven Palestinians were killed on Wednesday as Israel attacked the Gaza Strip, including a six-month-old baby who was in the Hamas government’s Interior Ministry when an Israeli helicopter struck it with missiles.
Three armed Palestinian militants were killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza City early on Thursday, while two others died in a raid on the West Bank, hospital officials said.
”We don’t have a magic formula to resolve this problem in a day or two. It’s a painful process. We are taking painful blows and we will hit back with even more painful blows,” Olmert said.
Rice said she told Olmert she was sorry about the Israeli student’s death and supported his determination to end the rocket attacks.
”The issue is that the rocket attacks need to stop,” Rice told reporters.
But she added: ”There needs to be due concern for the innocent people and the humanitarian situation in Gaza.”
The bloodshed comes as US President George Bush’s administration steps up its diplomacy in the Middle East in hope of making progress before he leaves office next January.
Bush hosted a summit in November in Annapolis, near Washington, breaking a seven-year gap in high-level negotiations. That meeting set a target for Israelis and Palestinians to reach a two-state settlement by the end of 2008.
Bush also visited Israel and the Palestinian territories last month for the first time in his presidency.
Rice — who will visit Israel, the Palestinian territories and Belgium from March 3 to 7 — said she still saw a ”remarkable commitment” to the Annapolis road map by Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, a Hamas opponent.
”The most important thing that can be done is to use the opportunity before us to have this vision of a Palestinian state become one that is concrete,” Rice said.
”That is what will ultimately give Israelis and Palestinians confidence that they have a future of peace and security, not one of conflict,” she said.
Olmert, in his talks in Japan — a major donor to the Palestinian Authority — also pledged progress on the road map, although he cast doubt on whether the 2008 timeframe was realistic.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon separately said he was ”deeply concerned” by the escalation of violence in the Middle East.
”These events underscore the urgent need for a calming of violence, and must not be allowed to deter the continuation of the political process,” Ban said in a statement. — AFP
