GAZA CITY, 14 March 2008 — Israel resumed its air raids on the Gaza Strip yesterday as Hamas launched a volley of homemade rockets into southern Israel in retaliation for the killing of four Palestinians in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Wednesday.
Israeli warplanes targeted a group of Palestinians in the north of the Gaza Strip but there were no injuries, medical sources said.
Israeli military sources said that the airstrike targeted a loaded rocket launcher. They added that the warplanes carried out the raid after rockets fired by Palestinians hit the town of Sderot.
The renewed tit-for-tat attacks put at risk international efforts to broker a more permanent deal to end the violence and the isolation around the impoverished territory. They also come a day before the Israelis and Palestinians are to meet with a US general to resume peace talks that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suspended amid a week of strikes in Gaza that killed more than 130 Palestinians.After the Bethlehem raid, the Palestinian presidency accused Israel of “barbaric crimes” in a rare harshly worded statement. “These barbaric crimes reveal the true face of Israel, which speaks loudly about peace and security while committing murders and executions against our people,” it said.
But Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak vowed to keep hitting militants. “We proved again that Israel will pursue and hit all assassins with blood on their hands. No matter how much time has passed, Israel will be waiting for them,” he said.
And the Jewish state said it held Hamas responsible for the rocket fire even though the Islamic Jihad group claimed the salvoes.
“Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and they are accountable for every active aggression against Israel,” said government spokesman Mark Regev. “We will not allow Hamas to sub-contract out terrorism.”
Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad that has claimed most of the rocket fire and suicide attacks against Israel over the past several years, vowed revenge after the Bethlehem deaths.
Peace Talks in Jeopardy
Israel, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had been observing a tacit truce in and around the Gaza Strip since early Saturday as Egypt seeks to work out a more permanent deal.
Egypt has been holding talks aimed at ending Israeli strikes on Gaza, rocket fire into Israel and a lifting of a crippling regime of Israeli and international sanctions on the coastal strip.
Today, Barak and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are to meet with Lt. Gen. William Fraser, appointed in January to oversee compliance with the 2003 international road map to peace blueprint.
— With input from agencies
