Israel advances into Gaza Strip
Israeli leaders approved new incursions into the Gaza Strip, security officials said today, after the Hamas leader said he would not free an Israeli soldier whose capture by Palestinian militants led to a bloody 13-day confrontation.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister Amir Peretz gave the green light to additional incursions into Gaza to free the soldier and stop Palestinian rocket attacks, officials said.
They said the new phase would include sending troops into areas of Gaza where they had not yet operated. So far soldiers have entered southern and northern Gaza and have approached Gaza City.
Yesterday, Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal demanded a prisoner swap, but Olmert said that would be a “major mistake”.
The two men spoke within hours of each other – Olmert in Jerusalem, Mashaal in Damascus, Syria.
Neither expressed any readiness to compromise, boding poorly for an end any time soon to Israel's Gaza Strip incursion that has already killed 58 Palestinians and an Israeli soldier.
“They will never be able to win from me any minor concession,” Mashaal insisted in his first public appearance since the June 25 capture of the 19-year-old Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit.
Speaking to foreign reporters, Olmert saved some of his harshest rhetoric for Mashaal.
“Khaled Mashaal is a terrorist with blood on his hands. He’s not a legitimate partner for anything. He's not a partner and he won’t be a partner. I will not negotiate with Hamas,” the Israeli leader said.
At the same time, however, Olmert said the violence in Gaza would not deter him from carrying out his plan to leave the West Bank, despite a growing sentiment among Israelis that last year’s Gaza pullout was a failure.
Shalit’s seizure in a brazen cross-border raid and Israel’s harsh response have turned the already tense relations between Israel and the Palestinians’ Hamas-led government into a violent onslaught.
Four militants were killed in three Israeli airstrikes yesterday, and three others were killed in a fourth Israeli attack in northern Gaza last night. The army said the last attack targeted a group of militants who had just launched a rocket into Israel.
Early today, an Israeli aircraft attacked a bridge in northern Gaza to stop militants from transporting rockets, the military said.
Dispelling media reports of a likely deal with Hamas, Olmert said that “trading prisoners with a terrorist, bloody organisation such as Hamas is a major mistake that will cause a lot of damage to the future of state of Israel”.
Wearing the Palestinian chequered scarf draped over his shoulders, Mashaal insisted Israel must free at least some prisoners before Shalit can be freed.
“The solution is simple: an exchange. But Israel refuses that,” he said, adding that the Israelis are “under an illusion” if they think that by escalating their offensive they will win the soldier’s release.
In another development, a Palestinian militant group claimed early Tuesday that it fired a rocket from the northern West Bank into Israel.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a violent offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement, said in a message from Gaza that a cell in the West Bank town of Jenin, at the northern edge of the West Bank, fired a rocket at an Israeli village.
The Israeli military said it had no evidence of a rocket being fired or landing in Israel.
Palestinian rocket barrages from the West Bank could hit main Israeli population centres. At its narrowest point, Israel is only 16 miles across from the Mediterranean Sea to the West Bank line.
