Pat Dollard | Young Americans

UPDATE (10:30am EST):

Lebanon condemns rocket attack

Jan 8 - UN peacekeepers urge restraint after rockets are fired into Israel from Lebanese territory.

It is so far unclear who is responsible for firing the rockets into northern Israel from Lebanon.

While some Israelis fear it may signify an escalation of the conflict in the Gaza Strip, many Palestinians caught up in the Israeli military onslaught against Hamas militants consider the rocket fire to be justifiable retaliation.
(Reuters)

International Herald Tribune:

Rockets fired from Lebanon into Israel’s north

By Steven Erlanger

JERUSALEM: Rockets fired from Lebanon landed in northern Israel on Thursday, raising concerns they could represent a broadening of the conflict, but both governments played down their significance. International efforts to end the 13-day war in the Gaza Strip continued with the arrival of Israeli negotiators in Cairo.

Egyptian officials said the Israeli officials were meeting with the head of Egyptian military intelligence, Omar Suleiman, to explore a proposal devised by Egypt and France as what officials in Paris called a road map to a cease-fire. There was no immediate word on the outcome of the talks.

As Israel’s offensive in Gaza continued with tanks on the ground in the beleaguered coastal strip and bombardment from the air, Israel again ordered a temporary lull in the fighting on Thursday to give the 1.5 million population a three-hour opportunity to seek medical help and buy supplies.

A similar pause Wednesday enabled rescue teams from the International Committee of the Red Cross to enter some areas for the first time since Israel’s ground offensive began last weekend after days of air-strikes. In one area, the Committee reported Thursday, its representatives discovered “shocking” scenes including four children next to their mother’s corpses. The children were too weak to stand on their own, the aid organization said.

The discussions in Cairo got underway hours after at least three missiles from Lebanon landed near the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, slightly injuring two Israelis, and the Israeli army responded with fire. The rockets from Lebanon raised concern that they could presage a second front in the conflict that would complicate peace efforts and revive memories of the bloody war between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006.

But the Israeli Army later dismissed the rockets on Thursday as “a minor event” and, in Lebanon, the government said Hezbollah had distanced itself from the attack. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon immediately condemned the rocket-fire. In a statement, Lebanese Information Minister Tarek Mitri said: “Hezbollah assured the Lebanese government that it remains engaged in preserving the stability in Lebanon and respects Security Council resolution 1701.”

United Nations Security Council resolution 1701 laid out the terms of the ceasefire that ended the war between Israel and Lebanon in August 2006.

The Israeli Army said it “responded with fire against the source of the rockets,” which landed near the town of Nahariya. Two Israelis were slightly wounded, the police said.

The rockets from Lebanon fell in residential areas. Shimon Koren, head of the northern district police, instructed residents of Nahariya and Kabri to enter bomb shelters and he instructed residents in nearby localities to open their shelters. School was canceled in Nahariya and nearby Shlomi.

So far there has been no claim of responsibility.

The lull Thursday coincided with news from Cairo that the Israeli delegation had arrived to open talks. Israeli officials said on Wednesday that their country would be represented at the Cairo talks by two officials — a senior aide to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Shalom Turgeman, and a senior defense official, Amos Gilad.

International pressure for a negotiated cease-fire intensified after Israeli shells killed some 40 people at a United Nations school in Gaza on Tuesday. Israel said Hamas militants had fired mortar shells from the school compound prior to Israel’s shelling.

The Israeli government said Wednesday that it welcomed the efforts of France and Egypt to work out a durable cease-fire. It said it would end its assault if Hamas stopped firing rockets into Israel and ended the smuggling of weapons from Egypt. It said that if a durable cease-fire took hold, it would reopen border crossings into Gaza for goods and people. But Israeli and Hamas officials both denied an assertion on Wednesday by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, that a cease-fire had been agreed upon.

“There is an agreement on general principles, that Hamas should stop rocket fire and mustn’t rearm,” a senior Israeli official said Wednesday evening. “But that’s like agreeing that motherhood is a good thing. We have to transform those agreed principles into working procedures on the ground, and that’s barely begun.”

The United States has been involved behind the scenes, senior Israeli and French officials said, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “constantly on the phone” with Olmert, according to one Israeli official.

In Washington, the White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said of talks about a cease-fire: “As I understand, the Israelis are open to the concept, but they want to learn more about the details; so do we.”

At the United Nations, several Arab delegates said Wednesday night that they thought they now had enough votes to approve a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire. That would likely put the United States and other Western powers, which oppose a binding resolution, in the awkward position of having to veto a cease-fire.

A senior French official in Paris said that Sarkozy’s earlier comment about an agreement on a cease-fire was misunderstood: “The plan is not a cease-fire; the plan is a road map toward a cease-fire.” One crucial aspect of any deal is how to prevent new smuggling tunnels from being built under Egypt’s border with Gaza.

The senior Israeli official raised the possibility of reaching “tacit agreements” with Hamas to end rocket fire, while also persuading Egypt to allow American and perhaps European army engineers to help seal its border with Gaza above and below ground.

Hamas is insisting that any new arrangement include the reopening of border crossings for trade with Israel and the reopening of the Rafah crossing into Egypt for people.

Casualty figures in the Gaza war are hard to verify, but officials at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and the Gazan Ministry of Health said 683 Palestinians had died since the conflict began Dec. 27, including 218 children and 90 women. They said 3,085 had been wounded. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza said 130 children age 16 or under had died. The United Nations estimated a few days ago that a quarter of the dead were civilians.

But Palestinian residents and Israeli officials say that Hamas is tending its own wounded in separate medical centers, not in public hospitals, and that it is difficult to know the number of dead Hamas fighters, many of whom were not wearing uniforms.

Israel says it has killed at least 130 Hamas fighters. Ten Israelis have been killed during the offensive, including three civilians. Most of the seven dead Israeli soldiers were killed in so-called friendly fire.

*** BREAKING (1:50am EST 1/08/09):

FOX Email Alert:

No immediate report of casualties_

FOX:

BREAKING NEWS — Three rockets fired from Lebanon exploded in northern Israel on Thursday, the first since the Jewish state launched an offensive in Gaza two weeks ago, Israeli police said.

Israeli medical staff said two people were lightly wounded by one of the rockets.

Israeli warplanes bombed the Gaza Strip on Thursday and tanks pounded Palestinian fighters on the ground as U.S. backing for a proposed truce raised expectations of an end to the offensive.

Residents described the overnight blitz to the east of Gaza City as among the heaviest of the 13 day offensive. To the south, a phalanx of tanks advanced closer to the town of Khan Younis, witnesses told Reuters.

Palestinians say that more than 20 airstrikes hit Gaza early Thursday, killing at least one person and wounding 10 while Israeli armored forces and Hamas militants clashed in southern Gaza.

“Because Hamas uses your houses to hide and smuggle military weapons, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] will attack the area,” read thousands of leaflets dropped earlier over the Rafah area by Israeli planes.

Despite a continuation of violence that has killed nearly 700 Palestinians and 10 Israelis, there has been movement on the diplomatic front. Egyptian diplomats say they will host separate talks with Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in Cairo Thursday.

In Turkey, a Mideast diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity says Turkey will be asked to put together an international force that could help keep the peace.

And diplomats in New York worked on a U.N. Security Council statement backing the cease-fire initiative but failed to reach agreement on action to end the violence.

Click to view photos from the conflict.

Israel resumed its Gaza offensive Wednesday, bombing heavily around suspected smuggling tunnels near the border with Egypt after a three-hour lull to allow in humanitarian aid. Hamas responded with a rocket barrage.

Israeli airstrikes reportedly killed 29 Palestinians on Wednesday.

Despite the heavy fighting, strides were made on the diplomatic front with the U.S. throwing its weight behind a deal being brokered by France and Egypt.

While the Security Council failed to reach agreement on a cease-fire resolution, Egyptian diplomats said Egypt will host separate talks with Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in Cairo Thursday, but there would be no meeting between Israel and Hamas.

The fighting continued into Thursday. Palestinians reported more than 20 airstrikes around Gaza before dawn, killing one person and wounding 10. There were also reports of clashes between Israeli armored forces and Hamas militants in southern Gaza.

The casualties brought the total Palestinian death toll during Israel’s 12-day assault to 689 and drove home the complexities of finding a diplomatic endgame for Israel’s Gaza invasion. Ten Israelis have been killed, including three civilians, since the offensive began Dec. 27.

More than 5,000 people have fled the border area, seeking refuge at two U.N. schools turned into temporary shelters.

The fury of the renewed fighting made it appear each side was scrambling to get in as many hits as possible before a truce could materialize.

“I feel like the ground is shaking when we hear the shelling. People are terrified,” said Fida Kishta, a resident of the Gaza-Egypt border area where Israeli planes destroyed 16 empty houses.

In Turkey, a Mideast diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly said that country would be asked to put together an international force that could help keep the peace. And diplomats in New York worked on a U.N. Security Council statement backing the cease-fire initiative but failed to reach agreement on action to end the violence.

“We are very much applauding the efforts of a number of states, particularly the effort that President (Hosni) Mubarak has undertaken on behalf of Egypt,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. “We’re supporting that initiative.”

The army, which has refused to allow journalists into Gaza, permitted two TV teams to accompany soldiers on patrol for the first time. The footage showed soldiers walking through a deserted street in an unidentified location in Gaza.

The Israeli military correspondent who accompanied the soldiers said they were concerned about Hamas booby-traps. He said they were shooting through walls, throwing grenades around corners, going from house to house looking for Hamas gunmen and using bomb sniffer dogs. Buildings showed bullet and shrapnel marks. “We used a lot of fire,” said an officer in the group, Lt. Col. Ofer.

Hamas, meanwhile, fired rockets, though at a slower pace than previous days, hitting the towns of Ashkelon and Beersheba with the sort of longer range missiles never seen before this war. Rockets were still hitting the cities after midnight, but there were no immediate reports of injury.

Despite the violence, a surprise announcement in Paris on Wednesday put a spotlight on diplomacy.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that both Israel and the Palestinian Authority had accepted the cease-fire deal, but he made no mention of Hamas, without whom no truce could work. The Palestinian Authority controls only the West Bank while Hamas rules Gaza — two territories on opposite sides of Israel that are supposed to make up a future Palestinian state.

Later, Israeli officials made it clear Sarkozy’s statement was not exactly accurate.

“Israel welcomes the initiative of the French president and the Egyptian president to bring about a sustainable quiet in the south,” said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev.

But for Israel to accept the proposal, he said, “there has to be a total and complete cessation of all hostile fire from Gaza into Israel, and … we have to see an arms embargo on Hamas that will receive international support.”

For its part, Hamas said it would not accept a truce deal unless it includes an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza — something Israel says it is not willing to do.

“There must be guarantees to ensure Israel will not breach this package, including halting the aggression, lifting the blockade and opening the crossings,” said Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas adviser.

Growing international outrage over the human toll of Israel’s offensive, which includes 3,000 Palestinians wounded — could work against continued fighting. So could President Bush’s departure from office this month and a Feb. 10 election in Israel.

But Israel has a big interest in inflicting as much damage as possible on Hamas, both to stop militant rocket fire on southern Israeli towns and to diminish the group’s ability to play a spoiler role in peace talks with Palestinian moderates.

The Israeli Cabinet formally decided on Wednesday to push ahead with the offensive while at the same time pursuing the cease-fire option. Israeli officials also rejected Hamas’ call to open the border crossings, which Israel has largely kept closed since the group seized the territory by force in June 2007.

The military has called up thousands of reserve troops that it could use to expand the Gaza offensive. Defense officials said the troops could be ready for action by Friday.

Still, Israel briefly suspended its offensive Wednesday to allow humanitarian supplies to reach Gaza, and Israeli officials said such lulls would be declared on a regular basis.

The announcement came among growing warnings by the World Bank and aid groups of a humanitarian crisis. The Word Bank pointed to a severe shortage of drinking water and said the sewage system is under growing strain.

Solafa Odeh, a resident of the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia, said around 100 people in her community were lining up for fresh water outside a local grocery store Wednesday. “We were only allowed half a gallon each, and I saw some people walk away with their jerry cans empty,” Odeh said.

Of the 688 Palestinians killed since Dec. 27, some 350 were civilians, among them 130 children, according to Palestinian officials.

During Wednesday’s lull, Israel allowed in 80 trucks of supplies as well as industrial fuel for Gaza’s power plant. Medics tried to retrieve bodies in areas that had previously been too dangerous to approach.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said in a statement that one of its ambulance drivers was shot by Israeli soldiers during the lull. The Israeli military said it had no knowledge of the incident.

Medic Mohammed Azayzeh in central Gaza pulled out three people, killed by shrapnel fire Sunday, from the border town of Mughraqa, where Israeli tanks had settled nearby. The medic said he also found a dead family of three, including a father cradling a 1-year-old boy.

In the Jebaliya refugee camp, residents on Wednesday held a mass funeral for 40 people killed a day before by Israeli mortar fire toward a U.N. school. Israel says Hamas militants fired mortar shells from an area near the school, and that Israeli responded to this attack.

The bodies, wrapped in blankets, were laid out in a long row on the ground, with mourners kneeling in Muslim prayer before them. Among the mourners was Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas legislator.

Also Wednesday, Israel released footage of suspected Hamas militants captured by Israeli troops. Israel’s chief army spokesman, Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu, said 120 suspected militants have been captured. He also said soldiers conducting searches have uncovered many explosive devices and tunnels.

“We uncovered many tunnels for kidnapping soldiers, at least one car bomb, booby trapped dolls, tunnels — an underground city,” Benyahu said on Israel TV’s Channel 10.

The CARE aid organization said one of its workers was killed Monday in an Israeli airstrike.

Israel says it launched the air and ground attack to end Hamas rocketing that has traumatized southern Israel. Hamas, a militant Islamic group which the U.S. and Israel consider a terrorist organization, wrested control of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in June 2007, and since 2001, hit has launched more than 3,000 Qassam rockets and 2,500 mortar attacks against Israeli targets.