GAZA CITY: Israel killed a Palestinian in a missile attack yesterday after bombing a Hamas police station and tunnels late Sunday night. The United Nations said it would launch a probe into Israeli attacks on UN facilities in the 22-day war on Gaza and the Red Cross chief called for an “honest” Middle East peace process.
Ayman Abu Jazar of the Popular Resistance Committees, a small Palestinian armed group, was killed when the vehicle he was traveling in was hit by an Israeli missile in Rafah. Four others accompanying him were wounded, medics said
Defense Minister Ehud Barak was quoted by the media as saying Israel had no intention of embarking on a large-scale offensive. “We said there would be a response and we responded.” Since the offensive ended last month, more than 15 rockets have been fired from Gaza, wounding one civilian and two soldiers, Israel said.
Barak said that although most of the rockets were not fired by Hamas, the movement which has controlled Gaza since June 2007 bore responsibility for the attacks. “We need calm in the south, and that is the test... If there is no calm we will have to act again,” Barak warned.
In the West Bank, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian who opened fire on an army patrol, rescue services said.
The flare-up came as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak held talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas amid efforts by Cairo to broker a lasting truce in and around Gaza. Hamas said it favors a one-year truce on condition that the territory’s crossings are opened to the outside world. “We agree in principle with a one-year truce,” spokesman Fawzi Barhum said, but added that Hamas has not ruled out an 18-month truce proposed by the Egyptian mediators.
“Whether one year or a year and a half, it must be linked to the opening of all crossing points, including (the) Rafah (crossing on the Egyptian border), and the lifting of the (Israeli) blockade,” he said.
John Holmes, who heads the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the UN was awaiting results from Israeli investigations into the attacks on a compound of the agency providing aid for Palestinian refugees, and on a UN school.
But he added that the UN would also launch its own probe on the strikes. “We’ll be mounting our own investigations into that and then I’m sure the question of compensations will arise,” he said in Geneva.
Karen Abu Zayd, who heads the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said the agency has calculated about a million dollars worth of damages done to UN facilities by Israel over eight years.
Red Cross chief Jakob Kellenberger yesterday called for an “honest and sincere peace process” involving states and groups including Hamas.
“After all that I have seen, I ask myself how many deaths, mutilations and invalids ... we need before we understand that there is no alternative but an honest and sincere peace process,” Kellenberger said in remarks published by Swiss newspaper Tribune de Geneve.
This process “should include all the states and armed groups which have influence in the region,” such as Hamas, which has until now been sidelined by the international community.
Kellenberger said in the interview that he was not ready to limit his “speech to humanitarian action.” “All discussions on humanitarian action cannot serve ... to get rid of difficult political questions,” he said.
— With input from agencies
