Israel at it again [Archive]

freepalestine

19th August 2011, 17:17

Gaza rockets hit Israel after night of airstrikes
Published today (updated) 19/08/2011 12:23

GAZA CITY (AFP) -- Gaza militants on Friday fired 12 rockets into Israel, seriously injuring one person after a night of Israeli air strikes which killed a teenager and hurt 17 other people.

Most of them caused no injuries or damage but two struck the southern coastal town of Ashdod on Friday morning, damaging a school and a synagogue and seriously wounding one person, Israeli police and the military said.

The uptick in rocket attacks came as Israeli fighter jets staged seven overnight air strikes on targets across Gaza which killed a teenager and injured 17 people, Palestinian medics said.

The Israeli strikes were launched just hours after a series of deadly attacks near the Red Sea resort town of Eilat, which killed eight Israelis in an operation Israel blamed on the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees.

Shortly after the attacks on a desert road, Israel attacked targets in southern Gaza, killing six -- including four top PRC militants and a two-year-old boy.

The group vowed bitter revenge and on Friday claimed responsibility for firing two Grad rockets toward the port city of Ashkelon and seven mortars at an army post near the southernmost point of the Israel-Gaza border, close to Egypt.

On Friday, the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine also vowed that Israel's attacks would not pass without "punishment and revenge."

The Abu Ali Mustapha brigades called for unity and resolve in the face of the attacks in a statement received by Ma'an.

Overnight, the Israeli air force staged seven raids, hitting two training camps for the armed wing of Hamas, the Al-Qassam Brigades, as well as Palestinian security posts, medics said.

The Israeli military confirmed the raids, saying it had targeted a weapons manufacturing site, two smuggling tunnels, a "terror tunnel" and several other sites in the wake of the desert attacks and the rocket fire on southern Israel.

"The Israeli Defense Forces will not tolerate any malicious attempt to harm Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers, and will not hesitate to respond with strength and determination to any element that uses terror against the State of Israel and until calm is restored," it said in a statement.

It also blamed the bloodshed on Gaza's Hamas rulers, who had on Thursday denied any connection to the coordinated attacks near Eilat.

"The IDF holds the Hamas terrorist organisation solely responsible for any terrorist activity emanating from the Gaza Strip."

Egypt's official MENA news agency reported, meanwhile, that two Egyptian policemen were killed on Thursday when an Israeli plane fired a rocket near the border at militants it was tracking after the deadly desert attacks.

The incident took place near the Rafah border crossing with Gaza, the agency quoted a military official as saying.

"An Israeli plane was pursuing infiltrators on the other side of the border until they reached Rafah and fired at them. There were several Central Security members there and they were hit by the gunfire," the official told MENA.

State television reported that the two police conscripts were killed southwards from Rafah near Taba, roughly 12 kilometers from the Israel town of Eilat close to the site of the attacks.

The Israeli military has not immediately commented on the reports.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=414344

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Egypt: Israeli rocket kills 3 policemen
Published today (updated) 19/08/2011 18:07

(AFP) -- Three Egyptian policemen have been killed after an Israeli plane fired a rocket near the border at militants it was tracking following earlier attacks, security officials said Thursday.

Egypt's official MENA news agency quoted a military official as saying that two policemen were killed when the Israeli aircraft opened fire near the Rafah border town with the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

Security officials said the incident took place south of Rafah, along the border with Israel.

They identified the Israeli aircraft as an Apache gunship that had been tracking the militants who attacked two buses, a civilian car and a military jeep in the coastal city of Eilat hours earlier.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=414315

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Renewed shelling kills 1 near Gaza City
Published today (updated) 19/08/2011 17:54

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) -- Israeli shelling killed one person in the eastern part of Gaza City on Friday afternoon, medics said, the eighth Palestinian to die following an attack in southern Israel.

The victim, a 22-year-old man who was not identified, was taken along with one other injured person to Shifa hospital in Gaza City, medical officials said.

Gaza medical spokesman Adham Abu Salmiya said missiles also targeted a concrete factory in the same area seriously injuring two locals.

Over the past 24 hours, Israel has carried out more than 10 airstrikes across the Gaza Strip following a series of deadly shooting attacks in the Negev desert that left eight Israelis dead.

Eight Palestinians have been killed and scores injured after Israeli officials blamed Gaza-based militant group the Popular Resistance Committees, although the faction has denied any involvement.

Earlier, Israeli warplanes struck An-Nuseirat refugee camp leaving one Palestinian lightly injured, said Gaza medical official Adham Abu Salmiya.

Fighter jets bombed a generator near the camp, causing a power outage across the area and missiles hit a training camp of the armed wing of Hamas, the Al-Qassam Brigades, witnesses said.

The Israeli military said aircraft "targeted two weapons manufacturing sites in the central Gaza Strip and a terror activity site in both the northern and southern Gaza Strip."

"This is a response to the terror attacks executed against Israel in the last 24 hours," an army statement said.

The raid came hours after Israel launched airstrikes on the Az-Zaitoun neighborhood south of Gaza City causing damage but no injuries, medics said.

Just after midnight Friday, Israeli warplanes launched a series of raids targeting Gaza City, the northern towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, and Khan Younis in the south.

Abu Salmiya said an airstrike on a home near the former intelligence services headquarters in Gaza City killed 13-year-old Mahmoud Abu Samra and injured 18 others.

Elsewhere, Apache helicopters fired at least two missiles toward a Palestinian military site in the town of Beit Lahiya and a missile near Khan Younis landed in an open area and caused no injuries or damage.

The overnight strikes followed a day of violence in which gunmen unleashed bloody mayhem on on a desert road near the Red Sea resort town of Eilat.

Six Israeli civilians, a soldier and a police officer were killed in several hours of attacks on a desert road some 20 kilometers north of Eilat.

Israel officials were quick to point the finger at Gaza, although the territory's Hamas rulers denied any connection to the attacks.

But the Israeli military said it held the Islamist group ultimately responsible for violence coming from the territory it controls.

"If Hamas wants an escalation, it will pay a high price," Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai told public radio on Friday, saying some form of ground operation in Gaza was not out of the question.

"All options are open, including a pin-point [ground] operation," he said.

Shortly after the attack near Eilat, Israeli warplanes attacked targets in southern Gaza which killed six people, including a two-year-old toddler and five militants from the Popular Resistance Committees.

The PRC vowed bitter revenge for the attack, which killed its leader and three other top cadres, and on Friday claimed responsibility for firing at least seven rockets and mortars into Israel.

Both sides were burying their dead on Friday, with funerals in Jerusalem for the soldier and the police officer, and a burial procession due to take place in southern Gaza for the five militants and the toddler.

As Israeli police went on high alert across Israel, the country's main newspapers painted a much clearer picture of how events unfolded on Thursday involving an estimated 15 to 20 gunmen, some wearing Egyptian army fatigues.

The first attack saw three gunmen open fire on a packed bus heading to Eilat, injuring seven people. Shortly afterwards, they opened fire on a civilian car in the same area, killing four people.

Then one of the militants detonated an explosives-packed belt he was wearing as an empty bus drove past, blowing himself up and killing the driver. Further gunfire was directed at another car, killing one man.

The soldier and the police officer were killed in two separate gunbattles with the attackers which lasted into the evening, the papers said.

Six of the attackers were killed by Israeli troops and special police forces, while the seventh blew himself up; others are believed to have fled across the Egyptian border.

In Egypt, state television said two "unidentified Egyptians" had been killed by Israeli gunfire on Thursday in an area near the site of the attacks; overnight security officials said three Egyptian policemen were also killed in the same area when an Israeli Apache fired a rocket at militants.

Egypt's state television on Thursday showed footage of rifles, grenades and army uniforms seized during an ongoing security operation in northern Sinai, while in a separate development, security officials said they had uncovered a workshop capable of producing suicide belts.

AFP contributed to this report.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=414448

freepalestine

20th August 2011, 17:04

Musatafa Barghouti: Domestic Israeli politics behind Gaza escalation
Published today 13:26

RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- The escalation in violence by Israel against the Gaza Strip was planned in advance by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, a Palestinian lawmaker alleged Saturday.

Mustafa Barghouti said Israel "planned for the attack on the Gaza Strip to escape a social crisis, which Israel is currently going through, and from a political crisis with the United States."

Now is the time for Palestinians to complete a factional reconciliation agreement signed earlier this summer in Cairo, said Barghouti, a former information minister and presidential candidate.

Palestinians should unite in order to campaign for sanctions against Israel, he said.

In Ramallah, meanwhile, a few dozen Palestinians in Manara Square condemned the continued operations in Gaza, which have killed 14 people since a deadly series of attacks in Israel on Thursday.

Protesters carried Palestinian flags and banners demanding that the international community intervene to stop the attacks and Israel's "crimes against the Palestinian people in the Strip."

The demonstrators also called for wrapping up the unity deal, which was signed in May.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=414682

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Spokesman: Fatah will be first to defend Gaza
Published today (updated) 20/08/2011 17:06

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) – Fatah said Saturday it would be in the forefront of the forces defending the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip by all means, calling upon other factions to unite in order to face Israel’s aggression and to implement a reconciliation agreement.

"The Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip is institutionalized and plotted early," said Fatah spokesperson Fayiz Abu Aita.

"The catalyst behind this is for the Israeli government to get past its political crisis, and to thwart the Palestinian reconciliation agreement,"
Abu Aita said in a statement.

He reiterated that the Palestinian Authority would go ahead with its political struggle against occupation at an international level.

“The pure Palestinian blood being shed in the beloved Gaza Strip requires that we all fight a battle united against occupation,” he added.

Fatah's leadership in Gaza, meanwhile, condemned the attacks and described Israel's ongoing operations as a "massacre against children, women and the elderly."

Fatah leader Abdullah Abu Samhadana said the "aggression will drag the region to an explosion."

He stressed that Benjamin Netanyahu's government was escalating violance "after seeing an opportunity to escape from its internal crises, especially with the growing protest movement."

He added that "the occupation seeks to export this crisis" to Gaza.

Expect similar events up until September, when Netanyahu will use security concerns as a pretext to stop the Ramallah leadership's drive for recognition of statehood at the UN, he added.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=414769