Israel debates next move after Gaza missile strike
Israeli premier Ariel Sharon called his top ministers together today to discuss resuming peace talks with the Palestinians, a day after the military killed nine children along with a terrorist leader.
The children were among 15 people killed when an Israeli missile strike flattened an apartment block in crowded Gaza City. The target of the raid was a Hamas mastermind, Salah Shehadeh.
The children’s deaths sparked an international outcry. Sweden’s Foreign Minister called it ‘‘a crime against international law and morally unworthy of a democracy like Israel.’’
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat called it a ‘‘disgusting, ugly crime, a massacre no human being can imagine.’’ Even Washington - Israel’s staunchest ally - called the bombing ‘‘heavy handed’’.
Sharon yesterday called the operation ‘‘one of our biggest successes,’’ while adding that the civilian casualties were a grave error.
But some Israelis warned the move could backfire, leading to more deadly attacks by Palestinian militants.
‘‘The assassination and the embarrassment,’’ read the headline in today’s Maariv newspaper. The Haaretz daily said the army would investigate what it called the ‘‘Gaza bombing disaster’’.
The Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper quoted Sharon as saying that if he had known civilians were with Shehadeh, he would have postponed the strike.
Among the dead was a two-month-old baby, held aloft by angry mourners during a funeral procession that brought tens of thousands onto the Gaza streets yesterday.
Hamas had hinted on Monday that it might stop suicide bombings if Israel withdrew from the West Bank. But after the strike it vowed to avenge the death of Shehadeh, the leader of its military wing.
Abdul Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas spokesman, said today that any ceasefire was off.
‘‘After yesterday’s heinous massacre in Gaza, there will be no more respect for a Zionist child or the so-called Zionist civilians.’’
Israeli officials said the operation to kill Shehadeh had been cancelled several times previously because he was with civilians.
They said the information they had ahead of the strike was that he was alone, but Palestinians said it was impossible to send a large missile into a crowded residential area without killing innocent people.
Major General Giora Eiland, Israel’s military planning director, said they had intelligence Shehadeh was planning several large terror attacks, including setting off a huge bomb under a bridge used by Israeli settlers in Gaza and landing suicide bombers on an Israeli beach by boat.
But he said that if they had known children would be killed in the strike, ‘‘of course, we would not have taken this operation.’’
