28 January 2009, Israeli jets bombed several tunnels underneath the border of the Gaza Strip and Egypt today after an Israeli soldier and two Palestinians were killed in renewed fighting, the army said in a statement.
A Jan. 18 cease-fire that ended Israel’s 22-day offensive against the Hamas Islamic movement that controls Gaza was shattered yesterday when an explosive device detonated as Israeli soldiers patrolled their side of the border fence. A reserve soldier was killed and an officer seriously wounded, the army said.
Following that attack, a Palestinian farmer was killed by Israeli tank fire and a gunman was killed in an Israeli air strike while riding his motorcycle, Palestinian Health Ministry officials said.
“Yesterday Hamas acted to deliberately torpedo the cease- fire with Israel,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokeman, Mark Regev, said in a telephone interview. “While we want the cease- fire to succeed, Israel will respond in force to Hamas’s violent provocation.”
The Gaza flare-up comes as President Barack Obama’s new Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, lands in Israel on his first trip to the region since being appointed. Mitchell arrives today after first visiting Egypt, and will meet with Olmert and other Israeli leaders.
Rocket Attacks
Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire with Hamas on Jan. 18, ending its military offensive against the group. The Israeli government said the operation was intended to stop cross-border rocket attacks. Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., the European Union and Israel.
At least 1,375 Palestinians were killed in the conflict, according to the Palestinian emergency services department in Gaza. Thirteen Israelis also were killed, the army said.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who leads the Labor party, Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of the ruling Kadima party are vying with each other in Feb. 10 elections to lead the next Israeli government.
“No Israeli leader can afford, even without the elections in the background, to allow Hamas to pick off Israeli soldiers or rebuild its strength,” Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political science at Israel’s Bar Ilan University, said in a phone interview.
After the attack on its border force, Israel sealed crossings into Gaza, barring entrance to some 200 trucks carrying humanitarian aid, Major Peter Lerner, a Defense Ministry official, said. The crossings will remain closed until further notice, he said.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniya urged Israel to lift the siege in a written statement to journalists. “I am certain that rebuilding what was destroyed necessitates the lifting of the siege and the reopening of the crossings,” he said.
We would like the HAMAS Fighters to comment about the truthfullness on the information of this blog?
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