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Room with a view: An Ashkelon man looks up through a Palestinian produced skylight (Flash90)
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| By Israel Justice.com February 28, 2008 |
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Terrorists in Gaza stepped up their campaign against southern Israel on Thursday, firing dozens of Qassam rockets and ten longer-range Grad rockets, ten of which hit Ashkelon, some 10 km from the Gaza border, one of them slamming into a home.
There were more than a dozen casualties, most suffering from shock or light shrapnel injuries, including a 17-year-old girl, a 70-year-old woman and the advance security contingent of Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, who was about to visit the town, who was wounded when a Qassam hit Sapir College on the outskirts of Sderot, near the site where a 47-year-old man was killed Wednesday in a a similar attack.
Speaking to reporters later at the college, Dichter nevertheless rejected proposals to reoccupy the Gaza Strip, calling them "populist ideas which I don't connect to, and in my opinion, no intelligent person does either."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned on Thursday that the situation was heating up. "We must prepare for escalation," he said during security discussions. "A large, significant and tangible ground operation. We won't flinch." He assured listeners that "Israel will reach those responsible, hit them in operations, and Hamas will pay the price for its activities."
Barak ordered on Thursday the activation of the "Color Red" rocket early warning system Ashekelon, the sirens from which have become a many-times-daily feature of life in Sderot.
Earlier on Thursday, Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit said that a large-scale ground operation in the Gaza Strip will not put an end to Kassam rocket fire. "I am opposed to an operation [that includes] entering and taking over Gaza," Sheetrit said. "This is the wrong approach, and it won't lead us anywhere. We won't just go in and suddenly everything will be okay." He said that he favored increasing targeted killings of Hamas leaders.
"We must not let anyone involved in the shooting stay alive," Sheetrit, a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said. "I am opposed to hesitation and in favor of wiping out anyone who is in Hamas; from the military and political echelons, no matter who."
Former IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Amnon Lipkin-Shahak said Thursday that the army should have targeted Hamas leaders long ago in retaliation for the rocket attacks on southern Israel. "I think what they have avoided doing in recent months, hitting Hamas headquarters and Hamas leaders, it seems they are beginning to do now. I believe it would have been the correct course of action long ago," he told Army Radio.
Meanwhile, Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Eli Yishai demanded that the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee be convened to address the Kassam threat from the Gaza Strip. "The situation had been raised to a new level that we cannot ignore. We must convene for a deep and integrated discussion and present different alternatives [for a response]," said Yishai.
Transportation Minister and former defense minister Shaul Mofaz slammed the government's response to the Kassam attacks. "We cannot continue to hesitate while we define different goals and we must not let terror continue to dictate the agenda," said Mofaz, Army Radio reported.
Hamas will likely be able to expand the range of its home-made rockets to 20 kilometers (12 miles) by the end of the year, an Israeli security official said Thursday, giving the Palestinians an unlimited supply of rockets for targeting the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon, spreading over a range of 10 to 17 kilometers (6 - 11 miles) from northern Gaza, with 110,000 residents.
"We are doing our best to upgrade our capabilities," said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Izzedine al Qassam militant wing of Hamas. "We will never have equipment comparable to our enemy, but we are working all the time to have enough to make any aggression a regrettable adventure for the enemy." |
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