Israel launched air strikes on Gaza for a second successive day on Sunday, piling pressure on Hamas after 229 people were killed in one of the bloodiest 24 hours for Palestinians in 60 years of conflict with the Jewish state.
”Palestine has never seen an uglier massacre,” said Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and his Islamist group, which has controlled the coastal territory since June 2007, vowed revenge including suicide bombings in Israel’s ”cafés and streets”.
Israel bolstered armoured and infantry forces along the Gaza Strip border, and a military spokesperson said on Sunday: ”The [Gaza] operation is continuous. It is still taking place.”
The Jewish state said it was responding to ”intolerable” almost daily rocket and mortar fire by Gaza militants that intensified after Hamas ended a six-month ceasefire a week ago.
The militant attacks caused some injuries and Israeli leaders were under pressure to stop them ahead of a February 10 election, which opinion polls show the right-wing opposition Likud party may win.
Israel said its warplanes mounted about 100 strikes on Saturday and that Palestinian militants had fired about 70 rockets at the Jewish state, killing one Israeli man.
”There is a time for calm and a time for fighting, and now the time has come to fight,” Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on television. He later ruled out any new truce with Hamas.
Black smoke billowed over Gaza City after Israel bombed more than 40 security compounds, and uniformed bodies lay in a pile and the wounded writhed in pain at a graduation ceremony for new recruits hosted by Hamas.
Some rescue workers beat their heads and shouted, ”God is greatest”. A wounded man quietly recited verses from the Qu’ran.
More than 700 Palestinians were wounded in Saturday’s attacks, said medical staff.
Israel said the operation was aimed at ”terrorist infrastructure”, and outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said it ”may take time”. Officials said Hamas leaders could be targeted.
Hamas defiant
In Damascus, top Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal called for a new Palestinian uprising against Israel.”We will not leave our land, we will not raise white flags and we will not kneel except before God,” said Haniyeh.
Israel telephoned some Palestinians to warn them their homes were targeted and that they should leave to avoid being killed. In at least one case, a home was bombed after occupants left.
Two Palestinians were killed when a mosque was bombed in Gaza City, Hamas and medical staff said. Israel said it targeted the mosque because it was used for ”terrorist activities”.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a leading candidate to become the next prime minister, called for international support against ”an extremist Islamist organisation … that is being supported by Iran”, Israel’s arch-foe.
United States President George Bush’s administration, in its final weeks in office, put the onus on Hamas to prevent more violence.
”The United States … holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement. ”The ceasefire should be restored immediately.”
The United Nations and the European Union called for an immediate halt to all violence.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah forces were routed in Gaza when Hamas won control last year, said Israel’s action was ”criminal” and urged world powers to intervene.
Egypt said it would keep trying to restore the truce.
‘Apartheid Israel’
The Congress of South African Trade Unions on Saturday called the air raids ”criminal”.
”TV footage clearly shows wounded children being carried to hospital … again civilians are bearing the brunt of the bombings and shootings,” said Patrick Craven, Cosatu spokesperson.
Craven said that Cosatu supported Abbas’s call for international intervention, and it called for swift action.
”Cosatu reiterates its call for the government of South Africa to break diplomatic ties with apartheid Israel and institute sanctions against it,” said Craven.
Cosatu was joined in its criticism of South Africa’s official policy toward Israel, by South African Islamic groups, Media Review Network (MRN) and the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC).
In a statement, MRN chairperson Iqbal Jassat and Ighsan Hendricks, president of the MJC, condemned what they described as the South African government’s ”so-called ‘balanced approach’.”
”Such faulty policies have allowed Israel to intensify it’s illegal policies of collective punishment,” they said.
In the statement, they urged South Africa to change its policy with regards to Israel and Palestine.
”[South Africa] needs to heed lessons of the struggle against apartheid in order to drastically review its policies. It’s untenable to proclaim support for Palestinian rights while the Israeli flag flutters in the capital, Pretoria,” said Hendricks and Jassat.
Cosatu also urged South Africans to ‘intensify†their boycott of Israeli goods.
Highest toll
Saturday’s death toll was the highest for a single day in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948, when the Jewish state was established.
Hamas estimated at least 100 members of its security forces had been killed, including police chief Tawfiq Jabber, along with at least 15 women and some children.
The group, which won a 2006 parliamentary election but was shunned by Western powers over its refusal to renounce violence and recognise Israel, said all its security compounds in the Gaza Strip were destroyed or seriously damaged.
Aid groups said they feared the Israeli operation could fuel a humanitarian crisis in the impoverished coastal enclave, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, half of them dependent on food aid.
Gaza hospitals said they were running out of medical supplies because of an Israeli-led blockade. – Reuters, Sapa