GAZA CITY, 8 February 2008 — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas offered to help negotiate a cease-fire as Israeli troops, backed by tanks, helicopters and warplanes killed seven Palestinians including Hani Naim, a schoolteacher, and wounded 14 others in attacks on the Gaza Strip yesterday.
Israel has stepped up military action since Hamas claimed responsibility for a bombing on Monday, the first suicide bombing inside Israel in a year. The bombing in the southern desert town of Dimona killed one woman and wounded nearly a dozen people.
Abu Obida, spokesman of Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said that three Hamas members were killed in missile attacks and two others during surface gunfire. The Islamic Jihad movement said that one of its fighters also died in clashes with the Israeli forces.
Escalating violence has now seen 20 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza.
However, Hamas rejected Abbas’ truce offer, with spokesman Fawzi Barhum branding it a “blackmail attempt against the Palestinian people whom (Abbas) has left to be massacred.” Abbas offered to help broker a cease-fire, his spokesman said, amid fears that the violence could undermine recently revived peace talks.
“President Abbas is prepared to try to work toward a mutual cease-fire with Israel to stop the daily slaughter confronting the Palestinian people in Gaza,” Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.
Abbas has repeatedly condemned both Palestinian rocket fire and Israeli strikes on Gaza, but he has little if any authority over the territory from which his security forces were ousted by Hamas in June 2007.
Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner said the government had not yet received the offer, but said it was up to Hamas to end the fighting.
“The most simple thing is for Hamas to end its attacks against Israel and then we will not have to take measures to respond to them,” he told AFP.
Hamas said Israeli ground troops were also in the area, while an Israeli military spokesman said only that “an army operation is under way.”
Hamas members, meanwhile, launched at least 14 rockets and mortar bombs at Israel, with one wounding two civilians.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak yesterday vowed that “if the rocket fire from Gaza continues, we will intensify our operations and strikes against the other side, until a solution is found.” Since Israelis and Palestinians renewed peace talks in late November after a seven-year freeze, at least 169 people have been killed in violence between the two sides.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni yesterday warned in a statement that “concrete responses to the threats coming from Gaza must be given before creating a Palestinian state.”
Meanwhile, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit yesterday warned that Palestinians caught sneaking across the border “will have their legs broken,” according to the country’s official MENA news agency.
— With input from agencies
