Actions a Response to Continuing Rocket Fire
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 19, 2008
JERUSALEM, Jan. 18 -- Israel blocked shipment of food, fuel and all other supplies into the Gaza Strip on Friday and intensified airstrikes on the Palestinian territory, calling the steps a response to increasing rocket attacks into Israel.
At least through the weekend, each delivery of humanitarian supplies into Gaza will be subject to review, said Shlomo Dror, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Ministry. "If Palestinians don't stop the violence," he said, "I have a feeling the life of people in Gaza is not going to be easy."
The hostilities come two days after President Bush ended a Middle East tour that aimed in large part to push Israel and the Palestinians to take substantive steps toward easing tensions and resuming peace talks. The violence is some of the worst since the armed Hamas movement, which Israel and the United States consider a terrorist organization, took control of the Gaza Strip in June.
On Monday, Palestinian and Israeli negotiators reopened talks on issues central to any potential peace agreement, in a step apparently timed to coincide with Bush's visit. The next day, Israeli air and ground assaults in Gaza killed 18 Palestinians, including the son of a senior Hamas leader and a dozen other fighters, as Palestinians continued firing rockets into Israel. Also, Palestinian gunmen shot dead an Ecuadoran farmhand working just outside the Gaza boundary.
Israeli airstrikes on Gaza on Friday hit a Palestinian military installation and an abandoned building that once housed the Palestinian Interior Ministry. Palestinians said Friday's strikes killed two civilians and one fighter.
Palestinian fighters have escalated their attacks since Tuesday's Israeli airstrike, firing at least 150 mortar rounds and rockets from Gaza in the last four days. Israelis said 16 rockets fell in Israel on Friday, including one that hit near a day-care center.
No Israelis have died in this week's rocket attacks, although several people have been injured. The barrages -- carried out mainly with missiles hand-fashioned from pipes -- have killed 12 Israelis in the past six years.
On Friday, Hamas pledged its own response. "If the bloodshed in Gaza and the West Bank does not stop, there will be similar bloodshed in . . . Tel Aviv," Hamas spokesman Hamad al-Rukeb said in a statement.
The radical Islamic group, which last asserted responsibility for a suicide bombing inside Israel in 2005, left the door open to resuming such attacks. Hamas will honor "all shapes of resistance," another spokesman for the group, Fawzi Barhoum, said by telephone from Gaza.
Israel's closing of Gaza alarmed aid workers. "The closure of the border crossing points this weekend . . . mean[s] that an already dire humanitarian situation inevitably will get worse," said Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the U.N. agency responsible for caring for Palestinian refugees.
Israel has sharply restricted all but vital supplies, such as food and medicine, into Gaza since June, when Hamas fighters seized control of the strip after days of battling forces from its political rival, Fatah. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a Fatah leader, then dissolved the unity government, leaving his party administering the West Bank and Hamas in charge of Gaza.
About 1.1 million of Gaza's 1.5 million people receive food rations from the U.N. agency, Gunness said. Since summer, U.N. workers have seen increased cases of rickets in Gaza children, he said.
About 60 of the 197 megawatts of electric power that Gaza requires are generated by its single power plant, which depends on the now-interrupted delivery of fuel.
Israel, which declared Gaza a "hostile entity" in September, has closed the checkpoints before, usually for several days at a time. Dror said the latest closing was a military decision. Intent on stopping the rocket attacks, Israeli authorities had considered launching a ground offensive into Gaza or heavily bombing areas where Palestinian fighters share space with civilians, Dror said. Authorities decided against both of those options to minimize casualties, he said.
People always look "for the responsibility of Israel" concerning the worsening situation of the Gaza population, Dror said. "I think it's time to look for the responsibility of Hamas."
For Friday and Saturday, Dror said, Israel would allow only Palestinians with urgent medical needs in and out of Gaza.
Meanwhile, the escalation of attacks on Gaza triggered some of the first overtures between the two Palestinian factions since they clashed last summer in Gaza.
Abbas called senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar, whose son was killed Tuesday by the Israeli strike, to express condolences. It was the first contact between the president and top Hamas officials since June, said Mustafa Barghouti, an independent Palestinian politician who met with Abbas on Friday.
Fatah officials also reportedly attended the young man's funeral.
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