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Israel rejects calls to cease offensive

Source: Agencies | January 1, 2009, Thursday | Print Edition

ISRAEL has rejected mounting international pressure to suspend its air offensive against Palestinian militants whose rocket barrages are striking ominously close to the Israeli heartland.

Yesterday, it sent warplanes to demolish smuggling tunnels that are a lifeline for Gaza's Islamic Hamas rulers.

An Egyptian official said Israel had destroyed 120 of an estimated 200 tunnels since the aerial campaign began.

Israel launched its campaign on Saturday, and Gaza officials have put the casualty toll at 390 dead and some 1,600 wounded. Hamas says some 200 members of Hamas security forces have been killed, and the United Nations says at least 60 Palestinian civilians have died. Four Israelis have been killed by militant rocket fire, including three civilians.

The chief of Israel's internal security services, Yuval Diskin, told Cabinet ministers yesterday that Hamas's ability to rule had been "badly impaired." Weapons development facilities have been "completely wiped out," and the network of smuggling tunnels badly damaged.

The military strike has touched off protests across the Islamic world. In Iran, fundamentalist students yesterday asked their government to authorize volunteer suicide bombers to attack Israel. The Tehran government had no immediate response.

On Tuesday, France urged Israel to halt its operation for 48 hours. Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert discussed the idea with his defense and foreign ministers, but the three decided to pursue the punishing aerial campaign.

Calls for an immediate cease-fire have also come from the United States, the European Union, the UN and Russia. President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice personally called leaders in the Middle East on Tuesday to press for a durable solution.

Underlying the Israeli decision to keep fighting are the mightier weapons that Hamas has smuggled into Gaza through underground tunnels along the border with Egypt. If previously militants had relied on crude homemade rockets that could fly just 118 kilometers to reach Israeli border communities, they are now firing industrial-grade weapons that have dramatically expanded their range and put more than a tenth of Israel's population in their sights.

More than two dozens rockets and mortar shells were fired by midday yesterday, including five that hit in and around the major southern Israeli city of Beersheba, 35 kilometers from Gaza. One hit an empty school. Another landed in a small farming community about 32 kilometers southeast of Tel Aviv.

The smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border keep Hamas in power by supplying weapons, food and fuel. Israel and Egypt blockaded Gaza after Hamas seized control of the territory in June 2007, and have opened their borders only to let in limited humanitarian aid.

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