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Israel ready for Gaza blitz
27/06/2006 16:49 - (SA)
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| An Israeli soldier sleeps on top of an armoured vehicle at a gathering point near Kibbutz Mefalsim in southern Israel. (Oded Balilty, AP) |
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Nizmit Hill - Israeli tanks and
troops massed near Gaza on Tuesday for a threatened offensive
against Palestinian militants as the Israeli government said it
would target Hamas leaders if an abducted soldier was not freed.
In northern Gaza, Palestinians blocked roads with dirt and
barbed wire. Militants wielding automatic rifles and anti-tank
rockets rigged explosive devices along a road as tensions hit
their highest since Israel quit Gaza nearly a year ago.
The United States urged Israel to give diplomatic
negotiations a chance to win the release of Corporal Gilad
Shalit, who was seized on Sunday by militants who also killed
two soldiers in a raid on a military border post.
Israel's military build-up came as Palestinian factions put
aside months of internal acrimony and agreed on a manifesto at
the heart of a power struggle between the moderate President
Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.
The proposal calls for a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
But one Hamas lawmaker said the deal did not mean the militant
group was recognising Israel, which it is sworn to destroy.
Hamas's armed wing said it carried out Sunday's attack with
other gunmen, but has not said it was holding Shalit. Assassination targets
Israel said Hamas leaders could become assassination
targets, including the group's supreme chief Khaled Meshaal who
lives in exile in Damascus.
"They have to understand one thing, that nobody is immune,
including Khaled Meshaal," cabinet minister and former general
Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said on Army Radio.
Clutching an AK-47 assault rifle, Abu Ubaida, a
spokesperson for Hamas's armed wing, warned: "The enemy will regret the
moment they raid Gaza. The price will be so heavy."
At Nizmit Hill, just across from northern Gaza, around 100
Israeli tanks and armoured personnel carriers faced the coastal
strip. Officials have not said when troops might go in.
Israeli media said the government had approved a contingency
plan to cut food, water and gas supplies to the Gaza Strip if
the conscript was not freed. Israel has shut Gaza's crossings.
Hamas's armed wing and the other factions involved in
Sunday's raid, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) and the
Islamic Army, have said Israel would not get information about
Shalit unless it freed all jailed Palestinian women and youths.
Israel has rejected the demand.
Diplomatic efforts US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice urged restraint.
"There really needs to be an effort now to try and calm the
situation," Rice told reporters en route to Pakistan.
Egyptian officials are playing a lead role in trying to free
Shalit. Other countries involved in the diplomacy include
France. p>The 19-year-old soldier also holds French citizenship.
Militant groups said Sunday's raid was in response to the
killing of 14 Palestinian civilians in Israeli air strikes in
Gaza against militants behind cross-border rocket attacks.
Israel completed a withdrawal of Jewish settlers and
soldiers from Gaza last September after 38 years of occupation.
The PRC also reiterated it had kidnapped a settler in the
occupied West Bank. It has produced no evidence to back the
claim but the Israeli rescue service Zaka said a search was
under way for an 18-year-old missing since Sunday night.
Police said they were treating the reports "very seriously".
After weeks of negotiations, leaders from Hamas and Abbas's
Fatah movement said they had agreed the statehood proposal.
The deal could lead to the cancellation of a July 26
referendum Abbas scheduled over Hamas's objections on the
document, penned by prisoners in an Israeli jail.
- Reuters
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