Israeli forces storm Gaza City neighborhood
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - January 13, 2009 On the diplomatic front, Egyptian mediators pushed Hamas to
accept a truce proposal and, in a hopeful sign, Israel sent its
lead negotiator to Cairo for "decisive" talks on a cease-fire.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also headed for the region to
join diplomatic efforts.
Israeli military officials say that depending on what happens
with what they described as "decisive" talks in Cairo, Israel
will move closer to a cease-fire or widen its offensive. They spoke
on condition of anonymity because they were discussing sensitive
policy matters.
Asked if Israel's war aims had been achieved, Israeli Defense
Minister Ehud Barak said: "Most of them, probably not all of
them."
Israeli troops now have the coastal city of 400,000 virtually
surrounded as part of an offensive launched Dec. 27 to end years of
Palestinian rocket attacks on its southern towns.
Palestinian medical officials reported at least 42 deaths from
the conflict on Tuesday throughout Gaza.
Early Wednesday an Israeli warplane fired a missile at the
former Gaza city hall, used as a court building in recent years,
witnesses said. The 1910 structure was destroyed and many stores in
the market around it were badly damaged, they said.
The Israeli military said three soldiers were wounded, including
an officer who was searching a northern Gaza house when a bomb
exploded.
Palestinian hospital officials say more than 940 Palestinians,
half of them civilians, have been killed in the fighting. A total
of 13 Israelis, 10 of them soldiers, have died.
Palestinian rocket fire has dropped significantly since the
offensive was launched. Some 15 rockets and mortar shells were
fired toward Israel Tuesday, causing no injuries, the army said.
Fireballs and smoke plumes from Israeli bombing have become a
common sight in the territory of 1.4 million people, who are
effectively trapped because of blockaded border crossings. Recent
fighting has focused on Gaza City, where Israeli soldiers could be
increasingly exposed to the treacherous conditions of urban
warfare.
The operation in Tel Hawwa neighborhood, one mile (1.5
kilometers) southeast of downtown, matched fast-paced forays into
other areas designed to avoid Israeli casualties. Residents said
troops entered overnight, reconnoitered the area, and then pulled
back to more secure positions.
One Israeli military officer told The Associated Press that
Hamas fighters often operate in small groups of up to four and have
largely refrained from confronting Israeli troops at close range.
"Their strategy has mainly been to use lots of booby-traps,
shooting guns and missiles from afar," the Israeli officer said on
condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to
the media.
"Soldiers are taking lots of precautions, they are being more
careful than the army has ever been before in any war," he said.
"Soldiers shoot at anything suspicious, use lots of firepower, and
blast holes through walls to move around."
Gabi Ashkenazi, chief of staff of the Israeli military, said
Hamas militants also have put on Israeli military uniforms to try
to approach troops and carry out suicide bombings.
Hamas, which is backed by Iran, cannot hope to score a
battlefield victory over the powerful Israeli military, but mere
survival could earn it political capital in the Arab world as a
symbol of resistance to the Jewish state. Lebanon's Hezbollah,
another Iran-backed group, largely achieved that goal in its 2006
war with Israel.
On Tuesday, a Gaza resident said he saw Hamas militants in
civilian clothing firing rockets from the southeastern corner of
the territory. He spoke by telephone and requested anonymity
because of the sensitivity of the information.
Israel says it will push forward with the offensive until Hamas
ends all rocket fire on southern Israel, and there are guarantees
the militant group will stop smuggling weapons into Gaza through
the porous Egyptian border.
Hamas has said it will only observe a cease-fire if Israel
withdraws from Gaza.
"We will not allow our enemy to gain any political achievement
from this war on Gaza," said Salah Bardawil, a Hamas envoy in
Egypt.
Much of the ongoing diplomacy focuses on an area of southern
Gaza just across the Egyptian border that serves as a weapons
smuggling route, making Egypt critical to both sides in any deal.
Israel wants smuggling tunnels along the border sealed and
monitored as part of any deal, and has bombed suspected tunnel
sites throughout its campaign.
One resident, Khader Mussa, said he fled his house while waving
a white flag as Israeli forces advanced. He spent the night
huddling in the basement of a relative with 25 other people,
including his pregnant wife and his parents.
"Thank God we survived this time and got out alive from here.
But we don't know how long we'll be safe in my brother's home,"
Mussa, 35, said by telephone.
The Israeli military said it carried out dozens of airstrikes on
squads of gunmen, rocket launching sites and smuggling tunnels
along the Egyptian border.
The Gaza fighting has raised tensions around the region and
galvanized anger toward Israel throughout the Arab world. On
Tuesday, at least one gunman opened fire at an Israeli army patrol
along the desert border between Israel and Jordan, the military
said. There were no casualties, and Jordan said the claim was
"baseless."
In the southern West Bank city of Hebron, the Israeli military
said, a Palestinian was shot and injured after he tried to grab a
gun from an Israeli soldier whose patrol stopped him for
questioning. The man later died, according to an Associated Press
reporter who saw his body.
Humanitarian concerns have increased amid the onslaught although
some aid is getting through to Gaza during daily three-hour lulls
declared by Israel to allow delivery of supplies.
In Brussels, the European Union's aid chief said Israel has not
respected international humanitarian aid during the war. In Oslo,
Norway, the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, Karen
Abu Zayd, urged the Israeli army to do more to allow supplies into
the besieged area.
"We are getting a lot of help from the Israeli Defense Forces
on the one crossing that's open to get more and more trucks in, but
it's just not enough," she said.