Bloody Israeli-Hamas clashes escalate in Gaza

A least 35 Palestinians killed in fighting ahead of Rice visit

	A Palestinian man reacts after learning that his brother was killed by Israeli forces in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday.
Mohammed Salem / Reuters

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Thirty-five Gazans, at least half of them civilians, died in pitched battles between Israeli troops and Palestinian rocket squads that escalated sharply on Saturday. West Bank leaders threatened to suspend peace talks to protest the Israeli attacks, which came as Gaza militants bombarded southern Israel with dozens of rockets and mortars.

The swelling violence came amid Israeli threats to launch a broad invasion of Gaza, and just days before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was due to arrive in the region on her latest peacekeeping mission.

Two children were among those killed in some of the fiercest fighting in the Gaza Strip since Islamic Hamas militants seized control there in June. Palestinian fighters bombarded Israel with more than 40 rockets and mortar rounds by early afternoon, undeterred by Israeli troops backed by tanks and attack aircraft.

The bloodletting began before midnight Friday in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, where a 13-month-old girl, Malak Karfaneh, was killed by shrapnel. Hamas blamed Israel, but residents said a militant rocket fell short and landed in the area of the baby's house.

Before dawn Saturday, the battleground shifted to Jebaliya, a center of militant activity in northern Gaza. Throughout the day 35 more Gazans were dead, raising to 65 the total number of Palestinians killed since fighting flared on Wednesday. More than half of those who died this week were civilians.

Palestinian rocket fire earlier in the week also killed an Israeli man. The rocket assaults grew more ominous when a projectile struck closer to Israel's heartland. On Friday, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai renewed a threat to invade Gaza to crush militant rocket squads that attack southern Israel daily.

Recommendation to call off peace talks
Chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia said Palestinian leaders, including President Mahmoud Abbas, recommended calling off peace talks at a meeting Saturday in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

"I think they will be suspended," Qureia said.

"What is happening in Gaza is a massacre of civilians, women and children, a collective killing, genocide," Qureia added. "We can't bear what the Israelis are doing, and what the Israelis are doing doesn't led the peace process any credibility."

Israeli officials also met Saturday to discuss the Gaza violence and its implications for peacemaking. Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said as far as Israeli was concerned, talks are "based on the understanding that when advancing the peace process with pragmatic (Palestinian) sources, Israel will continue to fight terror that hurts its people."

Talks resumed in November after a seven-year breakdown at a U.S.-sponsored conference. At the gathering, the two sides pledged to try to reach an accord by the end of this year. In recent weeks, negotiators have met almost daily.

But the rising tide of violence threatened to overshadow peace efforts.

Tank shells reportedly hit houses
Not all of the Gazans killed on Saturday were immediately identified, but at least 13 militants and 16 civilians died. The civilians incuded an unidentified child, a 17-year-old girl and her 16-year-old brother, a 45-year-old man and his 20-year-old son, and two sisters thought to be in their early 20s.

The sisters and another civilian were killed by tank shells that struck two houses in separate attacks, Palestinian officials said. Rescue teams evacuated a 7-month-old boy from one of the houses, unharmed.

The Israeli military said it was unaware of tank shells hitting houses.

One of the damaged houses showed paramedics rushing an unmoving woman, lying on a stretcher, her face covered with a cloth, out of a room clouded with dust.

Elsewhere in Jebaliya, a wounded man and boy lay in a gutter near a dead man. Ambulance workers took away the dead man as a youth appealed to paramedics to treat the wounded. "Take them, they are still alive," he pleaded. Another man urged the wounded to "bear witness," or proclaim their Muslim faith before they die. The two began reciting a Muslim prayer, the boy's lower body ripped by shrapnel.

Tareq Dardouna, a resident of the Jebaliya area, told The Associated Press that a relative was killed outside his home in the crossfire that began raging at 3 a.m.

"His body is still on the ground," Dardouna said in a telephone interview from his home, where he was tending to four wounded people, amid the cries and screams of children. "Ambulances tried to come, but they came under fire. ... We are in a real war."

Abbas condemned the swelling civilian death toll. "We tell the world, watch and judge what's happening, and judge who is committing the international terrorism," Abbas said.

But Israeli government spokesman David Baker said Israel was "compelled to continue to take these defensive measures" to protect more than 200,000 Israelis living under the threat of Palestinian rocket barrages.

Militants "hide behind their own civilians, using them as human shields, while actively targeting Israeli population centers," Baker said. "They bear the responsibility for the results."

In response, mosques across northern Gaza and Hamas-affiliated radio issued a call for civilians to stay at home.

Hamas remained defiant.

"We will respond to any aggression ... with all available means," said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas' military wing.

Fuel shortages idle ambulances
Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of the Gaza Health Ministry said 35 ambulances were idled in the midst of the deadly turmoil because there was no fuel to power them. Israel, which supplies all of Gaza's fuel, cut back supplies in recent months in an effort to increase pressure on Hamas to rein in the rocket launchers.

Journalists came under fire in Jebaliya and a cameraman for Dubai TV, Mahmoud Ajrami, was wounded.

The U.N. shuttered 37 schools it runs in northern Gaza because of the fighting, affecting some 40,000 students said Christopher Gunness, a U.N. official.

The Israeli military said five soldiers were wounded in the clashes, and two children and a woman were slightly injured in rocket attacks in and near the city of Ashkelon, 17 kilometers (11 miles) north of Gaza, the military said.

Israel evacuated its troops and settlers from Gaza in late 2005, but militants proceeded to fire rockets from the abandoned territory at small Israeli border communities. On Thursday, militants raised the stakes significantly by firing Iranian-made rockets into Ashkelon, a coastal city of 120,000 people.

The violence likely will mar Rice's visit to the region next week, meant to nudge Israel and Palestinians closer to an accord.

Senior European diplomat Javier Solana will also visit the region beginning Sunday, to encourage Israeli and Palestinian leaders to keep the peace process on track, his office said in a statement.

But even when violence is at a lower level, Abbas' efforts are compromised by the fact that he only rules the West Bank, while Gaza is controlled by Hamas. And Israel's fragile government would be hard pressed to make concessions to the Palestinians while Gaza militants pummel southern Israel.

‘The real Holocaust’
Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on Saturday denounced Israeli attacks against civilians. "Israeli actions in Gaza since Wednesday is the real Holocaust," Mashaal told reporters in Damascus, where he lives in exile.

He accused Israel of "exaggerating the Holocaust and using it to blackmail the world."

Mashaal's multiple references to the Holocaust appeared to be a reaction to a statement Friday by Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai who told Israeli Army Radio that Israel had "no other choice" but to launch a massive military operation in Gaza. Vilnai said the Palestinians would be "bringing upon themselves a greater 'shoah' because we will use all our strength in every way we deem appropriate, whether in airstrikes or on the ground."

The Hebrew word "shoah" most often refers to the Holocaust but Israelis use it to describe all sorts of disasters. Vilnai spokesman Eitan Ginzburg said the deputy defense minister never intended it as a reference to the Holocaust but used the word "shoah" to denote a disaster.

Mashaal warned Israel against the "folly" of invading Gaza, saying Israeli soldiers would be defeated by Palestinians who "will fight like lions."

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23419778/

    Israeli patience is wearing very thin with Hamas in Gaza nad rightly so. Invasion and occupation of Gaza by Israel is imminent. Why is Fatah condemning Israel for retaliating against the Hamas mortar attacks? Why doesn't Fatah join with Israel in fighting against Hamas, which violently overthrew Fatah in Gaza? Hamas is a cancer in Palestine and must be cut out, by any means necessary. The Gazan Palestinians  themselves should rise up against Hamas. There can be no peace between Israel and Palestine as long has Hamas has any power. They must be crushed, in my opinion.

tags: israel  palestine  hamas  fatah  middle east  war on terror  power  warpeace  

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