 |
 |
 |
|
|
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert looks on during a ceremony in his Jerusalem offices. (AP)
|
|
|
|
|
|
| By Associated Press July 3, 2006 |
|
| |
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stepped up pressure on the Palestinian government Sunday, telling his military to "do all it can" to free an abducted soldier and hinting Israel may arrest Hamas leaders in Gaza.
Olmert's threat, just hours after an Israeli airstrike blasted the Palestinian prime minister's office, signaled that the government was losing patience with diplomatic efforts to end the crisis and was planning to escalate its military offensive.
Israeli aircraft, gunboats and artillery have pounded the Gaza Strip since Israeli troops and tanks took up positions in southern Gaza on Wednesday in an operation aimed at pressuring Palestinians to free Cpl. Gilad Shalit. Early Monday, Israel shelled northern Gaza, slightly wounding one person in a house on the outskirts of the town of Beit Hanoun, Palestinians said. The military said artillery was firing at the area.
Israel has been massing forces across from Beit Hanoun. Olmert called off a planned invasion late last week, but there were signs that the military is ready to roll again.
The Hamas-affiliated militants holding Shalit have offered to give Israel information about him in exchange for the release of hundreds of prisoners in Israeli jails, a deal Israel has rejected.
"These are difficult days for Israel, but we have no intention of giving in to any form of blackmailing," Olmert said Sunday. "Everyone understands that giving in to terror today means an invitation to the next act of terrorism, and we will not act that way."
Meanwhile, Israel reopened a cargo crossing into Gaza to allow food and fuel shipments into the territory.
Egypt has been working to broker a compromise to free the soldier and end the standoff, but negotiations were complicated by confusion over who is in charge of Shalit's fate.
Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's Hamas-led government said it has no contact with the kidnappers. The militants holding Shalit are presumed to answer to Hamas' leader, Khaled Mashaal, who lives in Syria. But Hamas' foreign leadership denied having any authority over the matter.
"We have no contact with those holding the prisoner," said Osama Hamdan, a top leader of the Islamic militant group who is based in Lebanon.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was trying to enlist Syrian President Bashar Assad's help to persuade Hamas leaders to release Shalit, while Egypt's intelligence chief was talking with Mashaal directly, an Egyptian official said.
The efforts were continuing, "but time is not on the Palestinians' side," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.
The Israeli army's chief of intelligence, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, said Sunday the mediation efforts were stymied because no one knows who to talk to about Shalit.
"The Egyptians are trying to mediate, but most of the negotiations they are doing with themselves," he told the Israeli Cabinet, according to a participant in the meeting.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Olmert on Sunday to discuss the situation, Olmert's office said in a statement. Olmert told Rice there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza and said Israel would use all means at its disposal to get Shalit released.
Olmert told his Cabinet on Sunday that he had instructed the military to "do all it can" to get Shalit back safely, but added that the offensive would end immediately if he was released, according to the official in the meeting.
Raising the stakes, Israeli aircraft launched two missiles into Haniyeh's empty office building early Sunday morning, damaging offices and leaving parts of the building smoldering.
"This is unacceptable," Haniyeh said. "This will not break the will of the Palestinian people."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a rival of Haniyeh's from the moderate Fatah Party, surveyed the damage with Haniyeh and called the attack "a dirty, criminal act."
The airstrike, which came a day after Israel destroyed the interior minister's office, was a clear signal that no one was immune.
"I remain very concerned about the need to preserve Palestinian institutions and infrastructure," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Sunday. "They will be the basis for an eventual two-state solution and are thus in the interests of both Israel and the Palestinians. It would therefore seem inadvisable to carry out actions that will have the opposite effect."
Hamas militants said they would retaliate if Israel continued attacking Palestinian institutions. Hamas is responsible for scores of deadly suicide bombings in Israel.
Last week, Israel arrested eight Hamas Cabinet ministers and dozens of other top Hamas leaders in the West Bank.
Olmert told the Cabinet that the arrests could spread. Hamas' power base is in Gaza, where many of its top leaders, including Haniyeh, live.
"I don't promise that the arrests of senior Hamas officials will be limited to Judea and Samaria," Olmert said -- according to the participant -- using the biblical names for the West Bank. "Wherever there is a proven terror infrastructure, there will be arrests. There will be immunity for no one."
Israel has conducted nightly airstrikes in Gaza and routinely shakes the territory with window-shattering sonic booms that pierce the silent darkness.
An airstrike Sunday hit a school in Gaza City and Hamas facilities in northern Gaza, where one Hamas militant was killed, the second Palestinian fatality since the offensive started, Palestinian officials said. The military said the militant was "planning terror attacks against Israel."
In other violence Sunday, Israeli artillery pounded open areas near the southern town of Khan Younis; Israeli troops shot dead three armed Palestinians near the long-closed Gaza airport, two of them carrying explosive belts, the military said. Two bodies were brought to a hospital in Khan Younis early Monday, and Palestinian officials said it was unclear if there was a third.
"I take personal responsibility for what is happening in Gaza. I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza. I want them to know what its like," Olmert told the Cabinet. "People are saying it's uncomfortable, it will be uncomfortable, nobody dies from being uncomfortable."
Israel, meanwhile, reopened its main cargo crossing with Gaza on Sunday to allow 50 trucks of food, medical supplies and fuel to be sent in from Israel, Israeli officials said. Trucks carrying diesel fuel, gasoline and natural gas also began entering northeastern Gaza through the Nahal Oz border crossing.
While food shortages have not been reported, human rights groups cautioned that fuel for generators powering hospitals and water pumping stations was running out after Israeli missiles struck Gaza's power station, an important source of electricity for the strip.
By Sunday evening, long lines that had formed at gas stations in recent days had disappeared.
|
|
 
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
|
