Posted on 09/28/2005 8:32:27 AM PDT by SmithL
GAZA (Reuters) - launched missile strikes that knocked out power to thousands of Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday as it pressed an offensive against cross-border rocket fire two weeks after its withdrawal from the territory.
No rocket launchings were reported during the day after a pledge by militant groups to halt attacks condemned by the Palestinian Authority (PA) as harming the national interest.
The air raids took place just hours after Israel's army fired artillery shells into the Gaza Strip for the first time since the 1967 Middle East war, further aggravating tension on the fifth anniversary of a Palestinian uprising.
Renewed violence has battered hopes that Israel's troop pullout from Gaza, completed on September 12 under Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon's plan for "disengaging" from conflict with the Palestinians, would improve chances for peace.
With little prospect for progress soon along a U.S.-backed peace "road map," Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said a meeting set for October 2 between Sharon and President Mahmoud Abbas had been postponed. He gave no new date for the summit.
However, in Washington, a U.S. official said Abbas and President George W. Bush would meet in the U.S. capital on October 20 to discuss "the way forward" following the Gaza withdrawal.
Sharon, locked in a race with rival Benjamin Netanyahu for leadership of the right-wing Likud party, has hit back hard against militants firing rockets into Israel.
He wants to counter hardliners' accusations that he has damaged Israel's security by pulling out of Gaza after 38 years of occupation. His tough response may have given him a boost with polls showing him taking a commanding lead over Netanyahu.
Before dawn, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at four militant targets in and around Gaza City, destroying the offices of a leading
Fatah militant and two other militant groups, Israeli military sources and Palestinian witnesses said.
They said a fifth missile fired later destroyed a bridge in northern Gaza's Beit Hanoun.
In separate strikes, Israeli aircraft attacked open fields in northern Gaza "for deterrent purposes," an Israeli military source said. Israel Radio described the action as being aimed against rocket launchers.
NO CASUALTIES
Residents of Beit Hanoun told Reuters they wanted militants to stop firing rockets into Israel so that rebuilding after numerous Israeli ground raids in the past five years of violence could begin.
Militant groups, including Hamas and the less influential Islamic Jihad, have said they were halting the rocket attacks to avoid large-scale Israeli retaliation.
No casualties were reported after the air strikes, which destroyed two major electrical generators and plunged Gaza City and much of the northern strip into darkness for hours.
The army said it had not deliberately targeted electricity infrastructure. After emergency repairs, at least 35,000 people remained without power after daybreak.
Late on Tuesday, Israeli artillery fired on what the army said were rocket launching sites in northern Gaza after a rocket landed in a street in a town in southern Israel. There were no further rocket attacks by late afternoon on Wednesday.
"We condemn the Israeli military escalation," Erekat said.
In the occupied
West Bank, a U.S. general helping the Palestinian Authority reform its security services called on the PA to carry out its road map obligation "to dismantle the infrastructure of terror" and impose law and order.
"If (mortar and rocket fire) were to stop, I would say that the very likely result would be Israeli stoppage of their activity as well," Lieutenant-General William Ward told reporters in the town of Jericho.
Israeli troops carried out raids overnight in the West Bank, arresting 24 suspected militants.
That followed Tuesday's release of a videotape by Hamas, a group bent on Israel's destruction, claiming responsibility for the kidnapping and killing of an Israeli man.
(Additional reporting by Muin Shadid in Tulkarm, Naim Sweilem in Qalqilya and Cynthia Johnston in Jericho)
Can you hear me now? Bump.
I am disappointed to see Israel using such restraint at this time...:-)
What?
The air raids took place just hours after Israel's army fired artillery shells into the Gaza Strip for the first time since the 1967 Middle East war, further aggravating tension on the fifth anniversary of a Palestinian uprising.
You reap what you sow, a$$holes. Happy intifada!
Rub the salt in their wounds boys. Rub it deep!! Make it burn!!!!
according to the arabs and idiots at the MSM, yes.
They got their people out of there so they can blow the hell out of them everytime a rocket lands in Israel. Not quite as stupid a move as some here have indicated.
What? Yellow Journalism?
The whole road map idea was assanine. Appeasement with madmen only leads to prolonged suffering and increased casualty rates. People want to ignore history and human nature. The Jews are a hated people by the rest of the world other then America. We in America are pressuring Israel to commit suicide by constantly "showing restraint". The gloves should have come off in 1990 with a mass expulsion of the Palestinians out of the country. It has to happen. Either the Jews need to annihalate all of the jihadi leadership and expel all the Palestinians or the Israel as a country ceases to exist. May as well do what needs to be done at any cost now. I specualte that we'll see a nuclear suicide bomb against Tel Aviv someday. Then what does Israel do? Then it's too late.
They could have done this with the Jewish communities in Gaza. It is not as if these shells would have hit Gush Katiff.
"Before dawn, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at four militant targets in and around Gaza City, destroying the offices of a leading Fatah militant and two other militant groups, Israeli military sources and Palestinian witnesses said.
Rise and Shine you terrorist scumbags, jihad that.
I agree. Plus now they have no one to blame but themselves for how much of a overpopulated shithole the gaza strip is and will be. The rest of the middle-east has been dead silent since the scenes of looting and hamas bombs blowing up their own people. You reap what you sow.
"Want some falafel with that" ping!
I know it was incredibly difficult for Israel to leave the gaza settlements. But a couple thousand people surrounded by 6 million pals? This was never going to work.
But I do truely believe it was for the best. It will be a total disaster for the palestinians and embarrassment for the arab world as the place continues to be a shithole for generations. They will have no excuses now for the lack of prosperity. How can you ask for the west bank, jerusalem, and statehood, if you can't even manage the gaza strip?
Unfortunately, it came at a big price to Israel's pride, but in the long term, I think its going to strengthen Israel, and make the arabs look like the incompetent backwards a$$wipes they are and always will be.
We must understand Islam's dogma of "Dar al-Islam": once conquored by Mo'ham's Islam's psychotic mass murdering death cult rampage, always conquored by the death cult. Mein Koran commands the devout to slaughter Jews and Islam's apostates before the rest of us. Just four generations ago, the Christian Greeks and Armenians in Turkey were slaughtered en mass under Attaturk - for being non-muslim infedels. Islam's "holy scriptures" are little beyond battle plans for their world caliphate conquest, the devout vision of one world government. This kind of muslim also burned the Library of Alexandia because only Mein Koran was worthy of reading. Whether a boot or sandle, they want it on your neck, five times a day. By comparison, Hitler was a local punk.
The settlements were in the way of the 10's of thousands of shells to follow, if those fail it will eventually be nukes to sterilize the desert. This is the last chance for the Palestinians.
Well stated!
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