JERUSALEM, 4 October 2004 — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed to expand the military terror operation in Gaza as 10 more Palestinians were martyred by indiscriminate firing by Israeli troops.
Suffering under the unprecedented attack, the Palestinians appealed for urgent international action. Sixty-six Palestinians have been killed during the five-day incursion — the deadliest in the impoverished Gaza Strip since the start of the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
Three of the victims were Israelis, two of them soldiers. “This is not a short operation. We should act for as long as the danger exists,” Sharon told army radio in his first public comments on the operation.
Sharon said he had “given the order to change the situation on the Gaza front, to hit at the Palestinians, their leadership and those who send them, along with those responsible for making weapons”.
One of the dead was a Palestinian deaf-mute man. Another three were teenagers caught in the crossfire of two separate operations in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, who later died of their injuries.
Medics at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, named the latest victims as Mohammed Al-Najjar and Sabah Al-Taliyyeh, both 13, and 14-year-old Nidal Al-Madhoun.
The Israeli Army’s “Days of Penitence” operation was launched late Tuesday which has been focused largely on the densely populated Jabaliya refugee camp, home to just over 100,000 people. The death toll has swept past that of a May operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 40 Palestinians were killed as Israel sought to destroy cross-border weapons-smuggling tunnels. Despite the spiraling bloodshed, which escalated Wednesday, Sharon pledged the operation would continue.
“We must broaden the area of action to push back the rocket launchers so Jewish areas along the border are no longer within their range,” the prime minister said.
Sharon added that the aim was also to halt fire on Jewish settlements in Gaza, both in the immediate term and during implementation of his so-called disengagement plan.
Under terms of the plan, all Jewish settlers and troops are to be evacuated from the Gaza Strip by the end of 2005.
The Palestinian Cabinet has declared a state of emergency, and yesterday the Parliament held an emergency session, with MPs mulling a proposal to give up one day’s salary for victims of the raids.
Palestinian Negotiations Minister Saeb Erekat had harsh words for the international community’s silence over the bloodshed.
“The absence of international reaction is encouraging Ariel Sharon to assert that the operation will continue, although the situation is getting worse,” Erekat said, warning it would lead to “a flare-up in violence and extremism”.
Arab League representatives decided that the 22-member bloc would make a joint appeal at the United Nations for urgent action to halt Israel’s “continuing war of extermination against the Palestinian people.”
“Until now, there has not been any intense international pressure on Israel to stop this operation, as the Palestinians would wish,” a senior Israeli official said.
In the southern West Bank, a 21-year-old Danish citizen and over 40 Palestinians were injured during clashes with the army as they protested against Israel’s construction of a wall across the territory, medics and peace activists said.
Maya Gouzare, a 21-year-old woman from Denmark who was volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian solidarity group, was wounded after being hit in the back by a rubber bullet, they said.
Another 14 Palestinians were also injured by rubber bullets and around 30 others were treated for tear-gas inhalation, medics said.
In Gaza, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) denied Israeli claims that it allowed Palestinians to use one of its ambulances to transport Qassam rockets. UNRWA chief Peter Hansen told public television the pictures showed paramedics throwing a folded portable stretcher into the vehicle and slammed the army for its “irresponsible” allegations based on “flimsy evidence”.
— Additional input from agencies
