Palestinian rockets strike Israel, planes hit Gaza
Pastor Dale Morgan
Friday November 17, 2:25 AM
*Palestinian rockets strike Israel, planes hit Gaza*
Militants fired rockets into Israel after warplanes raided Gaza,
prompting Israeli officials to threaten wider killing raids, and one
minister warning the Palestinian premier should not be immune.
The strikes coincided with an announcement by French President Jacques
Chirac and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero that
they, with Italy, were working on an initiative to revive the moribund
peace process.
Their declaration drew a swift rejection from a senior Israeli official,
a welcome from the Palestinian Authority for an international peace
conference, and a guarded response from the EU's Middle East envoy Marc
Otte.
On the ground, however, the two sides remained prey to continued
violence, one day after a mother of two was killed when a salvo of
Palestinian rockets crashed into Israel in the first such lethal attack
from Gaza since July 2005.
Israeli planes carried out five overnight air raids across the Gaza
Strip, targeting five buildings the military said were used by
militants. Palestinian medics said five people were wounded.
Palestinian militants fired two rockets into southern Israel Thursday,
one of which damaged a chicken coup on a kibbutz, but neither caused any
casualties, an army spokesman said.
In the West Bank, a 25-year-old Palestinian militant was killed by an
Israeli army sniper during a raid into a West Bank refugee camp before
troops also staged an incursion into the territory's political capital,
Ramallah.
At a meeting with army chiefs in Tel Aviv, Defence Minister Amir Peretz
ordered them to draw up new initiatives for Gaza, army radio said.
"We will move against those who are involved in the firing of rockets,
starting from their leaders and down to the last of their terrorists,"
Peretz said on Wednesday.
His outspoken colleague, Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer,
advocated "targeted killing" operations, branded assassinations by the
Palestinians, and warned that prime minister Ismail Haniya should not be
immune.
"Targeted killing operations must be broadened, not only against those
who fire rockets but against their leaders," he said, in a direct
allusion to leaders of Haniya's Islamist Hamas movement, whose armed
wing claims rocket attacks.
"If the rockets do not stop, they (Hamas leaders) will have no respite,
from the prime minister to the last of them," Ben Eliezer warned.
Nevertheless Israeli leaders freely admitted they had no solution to the
near constant rocket threat in the south since troops withdrew from the
Gaza Strip in 2005 after a 38-year occupation.
Flying home from California, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert acknowledged
that rocket fire would not end in one swoop, but he said that operations
would continue "according to circumstance."
"The rocket fire will not end with one blow," he told reporters
travelling with him, sentiments echoed by Deputy Prime Minister Shimon
Peres.
"We are making all efforts and a lot of people are risking their lives.
But the unequivocal way to stop it (rocket fire) completely has yet to
be found," the Nobel peace laureate told army radio.
Israel has been waging nearly continuous military operations inside the
Gaza Strip for nearly five months, launched in a bid to retrieve a
soldier captured by Palestinian militants in late June and also to halt
rocket attacks.
More than 300 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers have since died in
the territory, but the rocket attacks continue and the conscript is
still a captive.
Despite the violence, Chirac and Zapatero confirmed at a conference in
Spain that they and Italy were working on an initiative for peace in the
Middle East.
They were seeking a ceasefire, a prisoner swap and an international
peace conference, while also backing a prospective Palestinian unity
government and a fact-finding mission to the Palestinian territories,
Zapatero said.
A senior Israeli official, who refused to be named, rejected the
initiative outright as "hasty". European Union envoy Marc Otte
counselled caution while a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority
welcomed the idea of an international peace conference.