GAZA CITY/AMMAN, 4 January 2007 — Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians, five of them civilians, during a raid in the Gaza Strip yesterday while King Abdallah of Jordan told visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to stop settlement activity in the West Bank.
Among the civilians killed in the Gaza Strip were a mother and her daughter. The deaths in an Israeli ground operation against Palestinian fighters in the village of Bani Suheila near the southern city of Khan Younis. Israeli troops and tanks were backed by combat helicopters during the raid.
Israeli warplanes also carried out at least four airstrikes across the Gaza Strip in response to what the army said was the firing of a rocket for the first time in months toward the Israeli city of Ashkelon.
At least 33 people were injured and several houses destroyed in the raid, Palestinian sources said.
Israel has carried out near-daily military strikes and incursions across what it considers a “hostile entity” in a bid to halt rocket fire since Hamas seized control of Gaza in June. On Wednesday, Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians, including six fighters, in pre-dawn strikes in Gaza. “Israel cannot sit idly and see as many as a quarter of a million of its citizens living under the threat of rocket attacks,” government spokesman Mark Regev said.
In Amman, King Abdallah urged Olmert to stop settlement operations in the Palestinian lands, branding this a “violation” of the understandings that had been reached at the Annapolis conference on Nov. 27, according to an official statement.
Olmert made a surprise and rare visit to the Jordanian Red Sea resort of Aqaba, 24 hours after similar talks between King Abdallah and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the outcome of the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations on core issues. “The king reiterated Jordan’s rejection of any settlement activity in the Palestinian territories, considering this a flagrant violation of what had been agreed at the Annapolis conference,” a royal court statement said.
The king also urged Olmert to refrain from any “unilateral actions that could impede progress in the ongoing negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on final status issues — Jerusalem, settlements and refugees.”
Abdallah expressed hope that US President George W. Bush’s visit to the region next week would represent “a strong incentive for implementing what had been agreed on during the Annapolis meeting and to help the Palestinians and Israelis fulfill their commitments,” including the creation of an independent Palestinian state before the end of 2008.
Since the conference in Annapolis, Israel has issued two invitations for tenders for new construction, overshadowing the first two rounds of renewed peace talks and drawing rare criticism from the United States.
