Israeli troops pulled out of the Gaza Strip on Monday after a United States appeal to end days of fighting that killed more than 100 Palestinians, and rescue peace talks.
The Hamas Islamists who control the coastal enclave declared ”victory” and vowed to continue firing rockets into Israel, launching one into the main southern city of Ashkelon shortly after the troops withdrew, wounding one person.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was quoted by an official as telling a parliamentary panel: ”We are in the midst of a combat action. What happened in recent days was not a one-time event.”
And a senior Israeli official said there would be a ”two-day interval” for a visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Israel had been under pressure from its ally in Washington to halt the violence after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suspended US-backed peace talks in protest at the bloodshed.
In Gaza City, several thousand Hamas supporters took to the streets in celebration of the withdrawal and took festive photographs with gunmen as the chant ”The invaders fled and the army of Jews was defeated” rang out from loudspeakers.
Rice visit
Rice is to hold talks in Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday and Wednesday on moving Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations forward.
Washington hopes a Palestinian statehood deal can be reached this year.
Israel’s security Cabinet plans to meet on Wednesday to consider the government’s next move.
”This very limited [Gaza] operation was intended to show Hamas what could happen, what you may call a ‘prequel’,” the senior Israeli official said.
”If they decide they’ve seen enough and stop the rockets, if they get the message, then we may get into a period of quiet. If they continue to fire the rockets, then there will be more operations like this one or worse.”
The Palestinian Health Ministry said 116 Palestinians had been killed in the Gaza offensive. Militant groups said about half of them were civilians.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad put the death toll at 110, with 250 people wounded, and said the situation was ”unprecedented since the 1967 war of Israeli occupation”.
Many of the civilian casualties came when Israeli missiles fired by helicopters, jets and unmanned drones hit buildings and homes that the army said were being used by militants.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed in the offensive. On Wednesday an Israeli civilian was killed by a rocket, the first such death since May.
Overnight strikes
Overnight, Israel carried out several air strikes in the Gaza Strip, killing three militants, medical workers and Hamas said. The army said it had targeted workshops making rockets.
The Gaza violence touched off anti-Israeli protests in the West Bank, where a Jewish settler shot and killed a 17-year-old Palestinian on Monday in Ramallah after coming under attack by a crowd of rock-throwers, an Israeli police spokesperson said.
After Israeli troops left Gaza, municipal workers began repairing roads and power lines damaged in the fighting. Some grey concrete houses were pockmarked by bullets.
In Ashkelon, residents of a penthouse apartment penetrated by a Katyusha rocket picked through the debris.
Abbas, whose Western-backed forces lost control of the Gaza Strip to Hamas in June, has said he will not resume talks with Olmert until what he called Israeli aggression ends.
Hamas says it fires rockets in self-defence, and that it would stop if Israel halted all military activity in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank and ended its Gaza blockade.
Israel says security concerns dictate its actions and that raids have foiled militants’ plans to attack Israelis. – Reuters