JERUSALEM, 16 July 2005 — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced in a television interview late yesterday that he had ordered the army to take “all necessary measures” against Palestinian “terrorist organizations”. “I have ordered the army to take all necessary measures against terrorist organizations,” Sharon told Israel’s private second television station.
Asked about a resumption of targeted killings against militants or leaders of radical Palestinian factions, Sharon said there was “no limit” on the orders handed down to the army.
At least five activists from the armed wing of Islamist group Hamas were killed earlier yesterday as the Israeli Air Force carried out three airstrikes, in the northern West Bank and two in the Gaza Strip. The army said the missions were Israel’s first targeted killings in seven months, as Israeli forces, tanks and armored vehicles could be seen massing just across the border with Gaza in television footage.
Sharon also reiterated that his planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip would take place on schedule in mid-August “but not under fire” from Palestinians. A Hamas spokesman said the airstrikes had opened the “gates to hell” and that the group was reconsidering a seven-month-old informal truce. The Israeli raids were carried out after Hamas claimed a rocket attack late Thursday on southern Israel in which a young woman was killed.
However, Israel’s chief of staff remained firm. “Hamas violated all the rules of the game. That’s why Israel had to react,” he told public radio. The chief of staff said Palestinians fired 19 makeshift rockets in the southern Negev region. Hamas had claimed responsibility for a rocket attack late Thursday. It was that attack that prompted Palestinian Interior Minister Nasr Yussef to order security officers to “prevent by force if necessary” attacks against Israeli targets.
Earlier in the day, Palestinian security personnel had battled Hamas men in Gaza City in a bid to stop the spiraling violence from unraveling the truce, killing two teenage bystanders in the process. A headless corpse, M-16s, fragments of rockets and torn, bloodied pieces of human flesh littered the road after the Gaza explosion as volunteers ferried body parts to hospital, witnesses and an AFP journalist said.
Two Israeli helicopters fired three rockets at a car near Salfit, not far from the northern West Bank city of Nablus and the Jewish settlement of Ariel, Palestinian security sources said. The helicopters then pummeled the car with heavy machine-gun fire before troops entered Salfit and imposed a curfew, medical and security sources said. The army confirmed the West Bank airstrike targeted two “Hamas terrorists.”
