GAZA,
Sept 25, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Israel launched
fresh air raids on the Gaza Strip on Sunday, September 25, and
arrested up to 207 Palestinians in the West Bank, including two
Hamas’s leaders Hassan Yusuf and Mohammad Ghazal.
Most
of the casualties in the five Israeli air raids, half of them women
and children, were injured during a strike against a school north of
Gaza City, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Medical
sources said eight women and three children were wounded as well as
several elderly people. The school and several nearby houses sustained
heavy damage.
Other
sites targeted included the offices of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the nearby town of Beit Lahiya.
The
air raids also hit a building in Khan Yunis and a second structure in
the nearby town of Bani Suheila.
The
latest escalation began when Israel assassinated three Islamic Jihad
fighters early on Friday, prompting the resistance movement to fire
three rockets into the Israeli town of Sderot.
Shortly
afterwards, a huge blast rocked the Jabalya refugee camp in the
northern Gaza Strip, which Hamas blamed on Israeli warplanes, killing
19 people and injuring dozens.
Adding
insult to injury, Israel assassinated four Hamas members in a deadly
air strike on two cars in Al-Zaitoun district to the south of the
Strip. Hamas vowed to strike at the heart of the Israel following the
attacks.
Massive
Arrests
 |
|
A file photo of Hamas leader Mohammad Ghazal who was arrested in the West Bank raid. (Reuters)
|
|
|
In
the West Bank, Israeli troops arrested on Sunday 207 Palestinians in a
massive raid.
Among
those held were Hamas leaders Hassan Youssef and Mohammad Ghazal,
relatives and Hamas’s sources told Reuters.
The
crackdown and deadly raids were ordered by Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon, who vowed anew on Sunday to carry on with strikes on
Palestinian resistance fighters.
"I
have issued orders that there be no restrictions regarding the use of
all means to strike at the terrorists, members of terrorist
organizations, and their equipment and their hideouts," Sharon
told cabinet ministers.
"We
don't intend here to stage a one-time action, but intend to carry out
a continued action, whose aim is to hurt the terrorists and not to let
up," he said. "We should use every means at our disposal to
stop this phenomenon."
Sharon's
inner cabinet also agreed to resume assassinations of leaders,
suspended since a February truce.
Urging
the United States to restrain Israel, top Palestinian negotiator Saeb
Erekat said the attacks and arrests "lead in one direction and
that is to the collapse of the ceasefire".
Earlier
on Saturday, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz ordered “tough and
varied operation” in the Gaza Strip.
The
Israeli occupation army further deployed an artillery unit along the
northern Gaza border on Saturday.
Courting
Rightists
 |
|
Palestinians stand in the rubble of their house destroyed in the raids. (Reuters)
|
|
|
Pundits
believe that Sharon, by ordering massive strikes on the Palestinians,
was trying to restore his stature among the rightists in his Likud
party after the polarizing pullout from the Gaza Strip.
Iyad
Al-Barghouthi, professor of political science in the West Bank
university of An-Najah University, told IslamOnline.net that the
hawkish premier was trying to court the rightists in his Likud party
to beat off his anti-pullout rival Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Israel
also wants to send the message that its withdrawal from the Strip
doesn’t mean that it is no longer capable of launching
incursions,” he said.
Atef
Edwan, the head of the Al-Mostakbal Research Center in Gaza City, said
Sharon’s political career is now at stake after the pullout.
“Of
course the best way to restore some of his shattered prestige and
falling popularity rates among the Likud rightists is through stepping
up attacks on the resistance factions,” he said.
The
Likud’s central committee is voting Sunday on a request by Netanyahu
to advance the party’s leadership elections to November 2005 instead
of 2006.
The
vote could turn Israeli politics on its head and prompt Sharon to
leave Likud and form a new centrist alliance.
Opinion
polls show the outcome is too close to call, although Netanyahu -- who
quit as Sharon's finance minister in August over the Gaza pullout --
has a slight lead among central committee members in the run-up to the
vote.
Israel
has withdrawn its troops from the Gaza Strip earlier in the month
after 38 years of military presence, but maintained tight control over
the strip’s airspace, harbor and crossings, turning it into an
open-air prison.
Palestinians
hope Gaza will become the embryo of a much-hoped state. They want
their state to include the larger West Bank and occupied Al-Quds (Arab
East Jerusalem).
On
Saturday, thousand of Israelis and Palestinians urged their political
leaders to pursue peace at simultaneous peace rallies held in the West
Bank city of Ramallah and West Jerusalem.
Under
the slogan "After Gaza, let's make peace", the
demonstrations were organized by a group calling itself the Blue
Rising Coalition for a Permanent Status Peace.
The
coalition, which brings together activists from the Peace Now
anti-settlement watchdog and from the Geneva Initiative, aims to
galvanize the political establishment to move forward to negotiations
over a final status agreement between the two peoples.
