Gaza – Page 3 – praag.org

62 Palestinians killed in Gaza ‘massacre’ as death toll exceeds 400

At least 62 Palestinians were killed on Sunday in Israeli shelling of a Gaza neighborhood that left bodies strewn in the streets and thousands fleeing for shelter to a hospital packed with wounded, Palestinian witnesses and officials said.

The Israeli military said militants from Gaza’s dominant Hamas group responded with anti-tank missiles and heavy weapon fire in some of the bloodiest fighting since Israel launched its Gaza offensive 13 days ago.

A two-hour “humanitarian ceasefire” in the area, agreed by both sides at the request of the International Committee of the Red Cross, broke down in minutes with each side blaming the other.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of carrying out a massacre and declared three days of mourning. The Israeli military said Hamas had fired rockets and built tunnels and command centers in Sheja and that it had warned locals to evacuate two days earlier. Its ground forces were backed up by air strikes and artillery, the army added.

Anguished cries of “Did you see Ahmed?” “Did you see my wife?” echoed through the courtyard of Gaza’s Shifa hospital, where panicked residents of Shejaia gathered in family groups. Inside, bodies and wounded lay on blood-stained floors.

Elderly men there said the Israeli attack was the fiercest they had seen since the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel captured Gaza.

Shifa hospital’s director, Naser Tattar, said 17 children, 14 women and four elderly were among the 62 dead, and about 400 people were wounded in the Israeli assault.

Death toll exceeds 400

Gaza’s Health Ministry officials said at least 403 Palestinians, many of them civilians, have been killed and about 2,600 wounded in the 13-day offensive, that Israel says it launched to halt mounting cross-border rocket fire by militants.

On Israel’s side, two civilians have been killed by cross-border fire and five soldiers have died in fighting. More than 50 Israeli troops have been wounded, hospital officials said.

Thousands fled Shejaia, some by foot and others piling into the backs of trucks and sitting on the hoods of cars filled with families trying to get away. Several people rode out of the neighborhood of 100,000 in the shovel of a bulldozer.

Video given to Reuters by a local showed at least a dozen corpses, including three children, lying in rubble-filled streets, though the footage could not be verified independently.

As the tank shells began to land, Shejaia residents called radio stations pleading for evacuation. An air strike on the Shejaia home of Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, killed his son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, hospital officials said.

Israel, which has accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields by launching rockets from residential areas, sent ground forces into the Gaza Strip on Thursday after 10 days of air, naval and artillery barrages failed to stop the salvoes.

The military said it beefed up its presence on Sunday, with a focus on destroying missile stockpiles and a vast tunnel system Hamas built along the frontier with Israel.

“It has been a tough day of combat, but it won’t deter us,” Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid said, without referring to events in Shejaia.

“The operation is necessary and, if needed, we will broaden it,” he told reporters while visiting wounded Israeli soldiers in a hospital in the southern city of Beersheba. – Reuters

Israel could become a new banned nation, like South Africa

by Jacques Attali

Once again, a conflict breaks out between Israel and one of its neighbors; this time, as in 2008, against Hamas, which still governs Gaza.

The downward spiral appears to be unstoppable: The killing of 3 Israeli teens. The abhorrent murder of a Palestinian teen. Missiles launched from Gaza by Hamas on Israeli cities and at Ben Gurion International Airport, without provoking a catastrophe for the time being, because of the extraordinary efficiency of the Israeli anti-missile shield. And the deadly Israeli bombing raids in Gaza to halt the rocket strikes.

The result of this downward spiral is clear: Thousands of victims from Palestine’s coastal strip, which will weaken Fatah, accused of « collaboration » with Israel. And other victims on the Israeli side, which will nourish a desire for vengeance.

In both countries, those in power increasingly weak.

In Palestine, a discrediting of all leaders; so much so that, if elections were to be held today, Hamas would win in the West Bank, and Fatah in Gaza, leaving the country, or its equivalent, totally ungovernable.

In Israel, a ramshackle coalition between the extremists of Mr. Lieberman and those of Mr. Netanyahu, losing ground. As President Peres prepares to step down from the presidency.

Not far, an already convalescent Egypt who fights against both the Muslim Brotherhood at home and Hamas in Gaza. Lebanon paralyzed by Hezbollah, that is to say: Iran. A martyred Syria, whose tyrant, and enemies alike, are supporting Hamas. Iraq in full meltdown in which two new States are emerging. One is a Kurdish state and peaceful, the other is a Sunni Islamic state, spearhead of a war of creeds between the two branches of Islam.

In this context, no great power is at ease.

The United States, who find themselves on the same side with Iran against Sunni terrorists, have timidly proposed the use of arbitration, that nobody wanted. France, who is torn between the traditionally pro-Palestinian position of the Quai d’Orsay and that of the French political class, a more balanced position, from both the Left and the Right. A Europe without leadership. China and Russia obsessed by the desire not to breed Islamic extremism for their own benefit.

If this situation continues for much longer, the Arabs, the Turks, the Persians, almost all Muslim, Sunni and Shia, will soon reconcile at the expense of Israel, in order to prevent the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from spreading discontent at home. And they will abandon the claim of creating a Palestinian State, realizing that Israeli colonization and messianism, make this option less viable with each passing day. They will advocate a one-state and binational solution.

At that point, it will be the programmed end of the State of Israel. Some will accept the single State, convinced that they will be able to dominate or expel the Arabs. Others will see the trap coming, that would transform Israel into a new South Africa, speedily banned by nations. Before its identity is lost, through demography and democracy.

Consequently, this leaves Israel very little time to dare to encourage the creation of a viable Palestinian State, next to it. And providing it with the means needed to ensure its development, without ever lowering its guard before the danger of terrorist attacks. Which is what the vast majority of Israelis desire.

This leaves very little time for the Arab countries, swimming in their dollar reserves, to provide Gaza with suitable ways to be a beautiful tourist destination in the Mediterranean.

There is even less time for other nations to create the conditions needed to solve this problem, which is causing all forms of violence to flourish.

In particular, France, (where Jewish and Arab communities could take sides and look for sources of division there) must speak loud and clear. And lead by example on the successful path to living together. – www.attali.com

Jacques Attali is a French economist, writer and senior civil servant.

Former adviser to President François Mitterrand and first president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, he founded the non-profit organization PlaNet Finance and was nominated President of the Commission for the Liberation of French Economic Growth. He is also Founder and President of A&A, a consultancy firm. He published more than fifty books, including essays and novels.

He belongs to the top 100 public intellectuals in the world, according to the Foreign Policy Magazine (May/June 2008).

Thousands protest in Paris against violence in Gaza

Thousands of people protested against Israel and in support of residents in the Gaza Strip, where a six-day conflict has left 168 Palestinians dead.

Some clashes erupted at the end of the march on Bastille Square, with people throwing projectiles onto a cordon of police who responded with tear gas.

Police announced six arrests had been made, after a small group tired to break into two synagogues in central Paris, a police source told AFP.

In the northern city of Lille, meanwhile, between 2,300 and 6,000 people protested peacefully, according to differing figures provided by the police and organisers.

The descent into violence in the Gaza Strip began on June 12 when three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and later murdered, triggering a major military crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank and an escalation of rocket fire from Gaza.

The brutal revenge killing of a Palestinian teenager by Jews on July 2 added further fuel to the fire, turning into an all-out conflict on July 8 when Israel launched an air campaign against Gaza militants.

The Palestinian death toll from Israel’s punishing air campaign has hit 168.

So far, no Israelis have been killed.

“I came to say no to this massacre,” Amid Hamadouch, 30, told AFP at the Paris protest while it was still peaceful, with a sticker reading “Boycott Israel, Racist State” on his jacket.

“They are bombing innocent people. There are missiles being launched by Hamas, but the Israeli response is disproportionate. They are attacking the civilian population and not Hamas officials.”

The crowd, very young, shouted slogans such as: “We Are All Palestinians!” and “Only One Solution, End the Occupation!”.

Many protesters carried banners on which they had stuck photos taken from the Internet, reportedly showing Palestinian children killed or injured, houses razed to the ground or clouds of smoke emerging from bombed districts in Gaza.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, a majority of those killed in Gaza so far — 70 percent — have been civilians, of whom 30 percent were children.

HRW, apologists for murder

By Norman Finkelstein.

It takes considerable talent to describe Hamas’s firing of primitive “rockets” that to date have indirectly killed one person (she died of a heart attack) as a “war crime,” while describing Israel’s killing to date of 120 Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians and innocent children, and its systematic targeting of civilian infrastructure, as mere “collective punishment.”

But it’s what one has come to expect from Human Rights Watch. In 2008 HRW issued a report entitled Flooding South Lebanon: Israel’s use of cluster munitions in Lebanon in July and August 2006. The report found that Israel dropped as many as 4.6 million cluster submunitions on south Lebanon during the 2006 war. It was – in HRW’s words – “the most extensive use of cluster munitions anywhere in the world since the 1991 Gulf war,” while relative to the size of the targeted area the density of the attack was historically unprecedented. Some 90 percent of these cluster munitions were dropped during the final three days “when Israel knew a settlement was imminent” (HRW), the U.N. ceasefire resolution having already been passed but not yet gone into effect. But, although finding that Israel committed “extensive violations” of the laws of war, HRW did not go beyond stating that Israel’s massive resort to cluster munitions was “in some locations possibly a war crime,” even as the evidence HRW itself assembled conclusively showed that Israel was targeting civilian population centers.

HRW now says that targeting the civilian homes of Hamas militants constitutes mere collective punishment. So, let’s see. Israel prides itself on having a citizen army. Virtually every civilian dwelling in Israel contains a family member who is either in the army or the reserves. If Hamas had precision missiles, issued an official warning that henceforth it would be targeting every civilian dwelling in Israel, and then proceeded to do just that, would HRW call it mere “collective punishment”?

Thousands flee northern Gaza as Israel launches ground offensive

Thousands of residents fled northern Gaza on Sunday at the urging of the Israeli military as its ground troops briefly crossed the border on a mission to destroy a launching site.

The tumult came as the death toll from Israel’s six-day Operation Protective Edge offensive rose to more than 160, with more than 1,000 injured, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

“Civilians are requested to evacuate their residences immediately for their own safety,” the Israeli leaflets dropped by air warned. They listed specific areas that would “prove to be most dangerous.”

Israeli airstrikes hit more than 200 homes and buildings across Gaza on Sunday. Despite calls from the United Nations and world leaders, there were no signs the two sides will agree to a cease-fire soon.

“We don’t know when the operation will end,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Cabinet meeting Sunday. “It might take a long time.”

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, said the military has hit 1,300 targets since the offensive began July 7. He said Gaza militants have launched 904 rockets at Israel. Of these, 160 were intercepted by Israel’s “Iron Dome” anti-rocket system, Lerner said.

Nasr Kafarna, 43, a farmer in northern Gaza who lives near the border, says he has been on edge for the past week. After Israeli troops crossed into Gaza early Sunday, he fears for the worst.

“I worry this is all-out war now,” he said. “We haven’t recovered from the last one – we aren’t ready for another one.”

The death toll in the first week of this offensive has topped the estimated 133 killed in the last outbreak of hostilities in 2012. That Israeli operation, also to stop rockets being lobbed over the border, lasted eight days. The current conflict follows the murders of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank and the killing of a Palestinian teenager last month in what is being called a revenge death.

Residents say tensions are high in the densely populated, 140-square-mile strip of land squeezed between Israel and the Mediterranean Sea.

“Every time after you hear the sound of a missile hitting sometime, you look up the names of the dead with extreme fear, not knowing whose name you are going to find,” said Sabab Farahat, 22, of Gaza City. “Our hearts ache even for the names of the people we do not know.”

“I want to go back to my normal life, go to my university and the market and meet my friends,” Farahat added. “I really miss normal life.”

On Saturday, Israeli airstrikes hit two mosques – Israel’s government said Hamas hides arms in those places of worship.

Iyad Mortaga, 34, of Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, says she is just in a state of disbelief over what is happening and the deaths from the operation.

“I really don’t know how all this came to pass,” she said, adding she had attended afternoon prayer at the Dar Al Salam Mosque before it was hit.

“My neighbor – we learned of his death two hours after the bombing,” she said. “Now I can’t go to pray in the mosque and I am afraid to go to any mosques.”

In Israel, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Yigal Palmor told USA TODAY, “Israel isn’t interested in a temporary cease-fire. … We’re not looking for a Band-Aid solution but a long-term plan that will neutralize and take off the table completely all possible threats of rocket fire from Gaza.”

Gershon Baskin, the Israeli who negotiated the 2011 prisoner swap for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier Hamas kidnapped in 2006, said he maintains open channels with many in the Palestinian leadership and both sides remain far apart. He said Israel’s military is concerned about Hamas’ arsenal of anti-tank rockets.

“The Hamas have tunnels and bunkers all throughout the north and center of Gaza, and they are planning to emerge out of nowhere and hit the Israelis with the hopes of being able to grab some soldiers and hold them hostage,” Baskin said.

He said a senior official in the Palestinian Authority involved in attempts to get Hamas to agree to a cease-fire told him that Hamas won’t stop until after Israel launches a ground invasion. “They want to hurt Israel badly, something they have so far failed to do” with their rockets,” Baskin said. – USA Today

Gaza’s torment, Israel’s crimes

By Noam Chomsky

At 3am Gaza time, July 9, in the midst of Israel’s latest exercise in savagery, I received a phone call from a young Palestinian journalist in Gaza. In the background, I could hear his infant child wailing, amidst the sounds of explosions and jet planes, targeting any civilian who moves, and homes as well. He just saw a friend of his in a car clearly marked “press” blown away. And he heard shrieks next door after an explosion but can’t go outside or he’ll be a likely target. This is a quiet neighborhood, no military targets – except Palestinians who are fair game for Israel’s high tech US-supplied military machine. He said that 70% of the ambulances have been destroyed, and that by then over 70 had been killed, and of the 300 or so wounded, about 2/3 women and children. Few Hamas activists have been hit – or rocket launching sites. Just the usual victims.

It is important to understand what life is like in Gaza when Israel’s behavior is “restrained,” in between the regular manufactured crises like this one. A good sense is given in a report to UNRWA by Mads Gilbert, the courageous and expert Norwegian physician who has worked extensively in Gaza, also throughout the vicious and murderous Cast Lead operation. In every respect, the situation is disastrous. Just keeping to children, Gilbert reports: “Palestinian children in Gaza are suffering immensely. A large proportion are affected by the man-made malnourishment regime caused by the Israeli imposed blockage. Prevalence of anaemia in children <2yrs in Gaza is at 72.8%, while prevalence of wasting, stunting, underweight have been documented at 34.3%, 31.4%, 31.45% respectively.” And it gets worse as the report proceeds.

When Israel is on “good behavior,” more than two Palestinian children are killed every week, a pattern that goes back over 14 years. The underlying cause is the criminal occupation and the programs to reduce Palestinian life to bare survival in Gaza, while Palestinians are restricted to unviable cantons in the West Bank and Israel takes over what it wants, all in gross violation of international law and explicit Security Council resolutions, not to speak of minimal decency. And it will continue as long as it is supported by Washington and tolerated by Europe – to our everlasting shame.

Jan Nederveen Pieterse in conversation with Noam Chomsky, linguist, philosopher and political commentator. Chomsky is Emeritus professor of linguistics at MIT. Jan Nederveen Pieterse is professor of Global Studies and Sociology at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Egypt denies Israeli attack

Egyptian Armed Forces Spokesperson Colonel Ahmad Ali categorically denied circulated reports of Israeli drone attacks behind the two blasts that hit the Egyptian city of Rafah Friday, killing at least five suspected terrorists.

“It is not true, either in form nor substance, that there were any attacks from the Israeli side inside Egyptian territory,” Ali told the state news agency (MENA).

“Likewise, the claim that there was coordination between the Egyptian and the Israeli side in this matter is a matter completely void of truth.

“The Egyptian border is a red line that could not be violated.” The Israeli government did not comment on the reports.

Several international news agencies have published reports about Israeli drone attack inside Sinai Peninsula Friday.

Earlier Colonel Ali released a statement saying that two explosions were heard at 4:15 pm in the area of Egra in Northern Sinai, adding that the area is currently being inspected to reveal the cause of the explosions.

Militants based mainly in North Sinai near the border with Israel have been launching attacks on Egyptian and Israeli targets over past years, but they have escalated their assaults since the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi on July 3.

The Sinai Peninsula is largely demilitarized as part of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of 1979 but Israel has approved troop reinforcements to combat the militants and smuggling by Palestinians into Gaza. – KUNA

UN expert accused of anti-Israel bias

An embattled UN rights expert who probes Israel’s conduct towards Palestinians on Tuesday rejected calls to step down, saying his opponents were trying to silence his criticism of the Jewish state by labelling him anti-Semitic.

“I don’t intend to resign, and there doesn’t seem to be any formal initiative that is seeking my dismissal,” Richard Falk told reporters, a day after calling for an international investigation of Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners.

Falk, an 82-year-old American who is an emeritus law professor at Princeton University, has been the UN Human Rights Council’s monitor for the Palestinian territories since 2008.

He rejected claims of anti-Semitism, saying they were “hurtful” and “completely malicious”, given that he is Jewish himself.

“It makes it appear as if criticising Israel is tantamount to what everybody agrees to be objectionable, which is anti-Semitism. I’m not willing to be intimidated in this way,” he said.

“The attack on the messenger is a way of diverting attention from the message.”

Falk has repeatedly locked horns with Israel, the United States, Canada and some human rights groups for positions including labelling Israel’s 2008 offensive against Gaza a war crime and urging a boycott of companies helping Israel’s settlement drive in the Palestinian territories.

Washington has said he should quit his UN role, which like other rights monitors at the world body he holds on an unpaid, voluntary basis.

Falk has also come under fire for alleged anti-Israel bias from UN Watch, a lobby group affiliated with the American Jewish Committee.

In April, Canada asked the rights council for Falk’s departure after UN Watch highlighted comments he had made that could be interpreted as linking the Boston marathon bombing to Washington’s support of Israel.

Falk said his remarks were “spun” by opponents, that he had condemned the Boston attack as “terrorist criminality”, and that his goal was to examine the roots of antipathy towards US policies.

“I’ve criticised the US frequently, and I don’t feel I’m anti-American,” he said.

“Why do I keep getting into trouble? It’s because of my role in trying to speak honestly about the situation that Palestinians are facing under this condition of prolonged occupation,” he added.

Gaza M75 perfume captures ‘victory’ scent

“Victory” has never smelled so sweet — or at least that’s what they would have you believe at the shop selling Gaza’s newest fragrance named M75 after a long-range Hamas rocket.

It’s a bold move by the “Stay Stylish” shop in Gaza City’s upscale Rimal neighbourhood, but one that store owner Abu Ahmed expects to pay dividends.

“We came up with the name M75 for a new perfume in the shop as a symbol of the rocket of the resistance, and the victory of Gaza,” he told AFP.

The M75 rocket was among several long-range missiles Gaza militant groups fired into Israel during an eight-day conflict last month, which ended with a ceasefire between Hamas and the Jewish state.

The conflict killed at least 174 Palestinians, including more than 100 civilians, and six Israelis, four civilians and two soldiers, but many in Gaza felt Hamas emerged from the violence victorious.

The goal of the perfume is “to promote and market our products, and its only natural to use something like a victory to market our goods,” added Abu Ahmed, who declined to give his full name.

“We want to send a fast message to people about this perfume to market it as quickly and easily as possible,” he said.

“People are proud that we were able to hit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem with this M75 rocket and this name is much talked about and liked by people here.”

The fragrance, available both for men and women, has been successful so far, despite the fairly hefty price tag of 50 Israeli shekels ($13, euros), which the manufacturers justify on the basis of the perfume’s “luxurious” components.

The success, according to Abu Ahmed, has already inspired his fellow Gaza entrepreneurs, whom he expects to slap the M75 label on a whole range of new products.

The M75 rocket, among hundreds that Hamas and other groups fired into Israel during the eight-day conflict, appears to have captured the public’s imagination in Gaza, where it played a commanding role during Hamas’s 25th anniversary celebrations this weekend.

An enormous mock-up of the rocket had pride of place on a stage where the festivities took place, and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal — in Gaza for the first time ever — emerged from a door in the fake missile to give an address. – France24

Hillary Clinton in Israel

clinton_netanyahu — Hillary Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed to support Israeli security on Tuesday while calling for a quick de-escalation of Gaza fighting that raged on unabated amid signs of an emerging truce deal.

The top US diplomat flew in for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as efforts continued across the region to refine an elusive accord to end a week of violence that has cost 136 Palestinian and five Israeli lives.

The Israeli army confirmed its first fatality from rocket attacks on Tuesday, and a defence ministry official was also killed, while another missile landed harmlessly just south of Jerusalem on a day of continued strikes from Gaza.

The unrelenting violence also claimed the lives of 26 more Palestinians and witnessed an Israeli strike on a Gaza City building that houses foreign media organisations including AFP — the third such strike in three days.

Clinton told Netanyahu — a right-winger who has had strained relations with US President Barack Obama’s administration in the past year — that Washington’s commitment to Israeli security was “rock solid and unwavering.”

But she also stressed that this “is why we believe it is essential to de-escalate the situation” in the Palestinian territory.

Clinton further indicated that any truce announcement may not emerge until after she completes visits to the West Bank capital of Ramallah and Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.

“In these days ahead, the United States will work with our partners here in Israel and across the region for an outcome that bolsters security for the peace of Israel, improves conditions for the people of Gaza and moves toward a comprehensive peace for all people of the region,” said Clinton.

Optimistic negotiators had initially said a deal could be announced in Cairo later Tuesday following days of negotiations brokered by Egypt’s new Islamist leadership.

“There will be a joint press conference between Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the Egyptian mediators tonight to announce the truce,” an Islamic Jihad source told AFP in Gaza City. A Hamas source separately backed up the report.

But Hamas later said in a statement that there was no truce accord, stressing that it could only be announced by Egypt and calling on Palestinian armed groups to “continue to riposte against Israel’s crimes.”

And an Egyptian official told AFP in Cairo that “the truce announcement is not expected tonight because we are still waiting for a response” from the Jewish state.

A meeting was held between Egypt’s intelligence chief Rafat Shehata and top-level delegations from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but it wound up with no agreement being reached on a ceasefire, a source close to the discussions told AFP in Cairo.

“Hamas and Islamic Jihad told the Egyptians they weren’t in a hurry, and it was Israel that had asked Egypt for a truce,” the source said.

“Hamas says it has not yet received a reply from Israel and asks all the media not to rush. It is the Egyptian presidency that will announce a truce if an accord is reached. Any declaration before that, or different from that, is irresponsible.”

An Israeli diplomatic source told AFP that negotiations were ongoing.

“We are working very hard using our diplomatic channels. We are working continuously. But I cannot give you an estimated time of arrival (of a truce),” the source said.

The bloodshed meanwhile showed no signs of abating as the military pressed on with its bombardment of northern Gaza positions from which most of the militants’ rockets have been launched.

Netanyahu told Clinton he was ready to agree to a “long-term solution” as long as the rocket attacks from Gaza stopped.

“If there’s a possibility of achieving a long-term solution for this problem by diplomatic means, we prefer it. But if not, I’m sure you understand that Israel will have to take every action necessary to defend its people,” he said.

A senior Hamas official told AFP in Cairo that a key sticking point was whether Israel would begin easing its six-year-old blockade of Gaza coinciding with the truce or at a later date.

“A compromise solution is for there to be agreement on lifting the siege, and that it would be implemented later at a specified time,” he said.

Netanyahu and his key ministers decided in a closed-door meeting late Monday to place “a temporary hold on a ground incursion to give diplomacy a chance to succeed,” a senior Israeli official told AFP.

The move came as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met Netanyahu and again urged all parties to end fire “immediately”.

A delegation of more than 10 Arab foreign ministers and other senior representatives also visited Gaza in a symbolic show of solidarity with the Palestinians — the latest in a string of regional leaders’ visits to the impoverished coastal enclave.

“The real problem is not a truce,” Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi told reporters in Gaza City.

“The real problem that the Arab and Islamic countries and all friendly countries in the world must focus on is ending the occupation,” the organisation’s secretary general said.

Hamas is understood to be seeking guarantees that Israel will stop its targeted killings and end its blockade.

Israel for its part is believed to be looking for a 24- to 48-hour truce as a buffer to work out a more permanent arrangement.

The Security Council held talks late Tuesday to discuss a demand by Arab nations that it hold a public meeting on the crisis.

Western diplomats had expressed fears that comments made at an open meeting could harm efforts to reach a ceasefire, but they agreed to hold the meeting on Wednesday at 2000 GMT. – AFP

Israeli air strikes kill 12 in Gaza

Palestinian medical officials said early Saturday that a total of 12 people had been killed and 12 injured in a series of Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli raids came as Palestinians fired dozens of rockets and mortar rounds into southern Israel, wounding four people, one seriously, Israeli military sources said.

One Israeli strike, on a car travelling in the Tel El-Hawa neighbourhood west of Gaza City, killed the head of the militant Popular Resistance Committees, Zohair al-Qaisi, and fellow member Mahmud Hanani, the group said.

Both the PRC and the military wing of Hamas threatened to retaliate for Qaisi’s death.

The Al Quds Brigades, the military arm of Islamic Jihad, said that strikes on the east side of the city had killed its members Obeid al-Gharabli, Mohammed Harara, Hazem Qoureqa and Shadi Seqali.

It said that another two of its members, Fayeq Saad and Moatasem Hajaj, were also killed in strikes.

The Israeli attacks came in response to Palestinian mortar and rocket fire which started on Friday morning. The Israeli military said that in the course of the day about 40 rockets and mortar rounds had landed in southern Israel.

The PRC and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah movement, issued statements claiming to have fired rockets into Israel on Friday.

The official Palestinian WAFA news agency quoted a statement by the Fatah-dominated Palestinan Authority condemning the Israeli retaliation, saying it had created a “negative environment” that would “escalate the circle of violence in the region.”

The Israeli military said Qaisi “was among the leaders who planned, funded and directed” a deadly cross-border attack into southern Israel from Egypt’s Sinai last August.

In that incident, gunmen carried out a coordinated series of shooting ambushes on buses and cars on Route 12, which runs along the Egyptian border some 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the Red Sea resort of Eilat.

The shootings took place over several hours, leaving eight dead and more than 25 wounded.

The military statement said Qaisi was also involved in a 2008 attack on a terminal for pumping fuel from Israel into the Gaza Strip, in which two Israeli civilians were killed.

The statement added that both the dead men were “responsible for planning a combined terror attack that was to take place via Sinai in the coming days.”

It said that other strikes were aimed at men about to fire rockets into Israel.

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has maintained a tacit truce with Israel, but other armed Palestinian groups regularly fire rockets and mortars across the border, which can spark air strikes in response.

The relatively small Popular Resistance Committees is one of the most active, and it pledged to avenge its men’s deaths.

“We are not committed to the truce; we will respond very strongly to this (Israeli) crime,” Abu Ataya, a spokesman for the PRC’s military wing, the Al-Nasser Salahadin Brigades, told AFP.

Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades also warned of retribution.

“Al-Qassam Brigades mourns the martyr leader Zohair Qaisi and martyr Mahmud Hanani and confirms that their blood will not be wasted, the enemy’s crime will be a curse on him,” it said in a statement.

Its political leaders were more restrained.

“The recent Zionist escalation is an unjustified crime, it comes as a part of the destabilization of a stable security situation in the Gaza Strip” the Hamas-run Gaza government’s interior ministry said in a statement.

“We hold the international community fully responsible for the attacks.”

Before Friday’s air strikes, Israeli army radio quoted what it called “senior military sources” as saying the army “does not intend to allow the firing to continue.” – AFP