http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L17427926.htm
Israel says small ground force enters north Gaza
17 May 2007 18:11:06 GMT
Source: Reuters

Israeli-Palestinian conflict
More JERUSALEM, May 17 (Reuters) - A small Israeli ground force entered northern Gaza on Thursday with tanks and other armoured vehicles, an army spokesman said.

"It is a small force on a defensive operation," the spokesman said.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/17/world/printable2820367.shtml
10 Killed As Israel Pounds Hamas Targets
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip, May 17, 2007
(CBS/AP) Israel pounded more Hamas targets with airstrikes, killing 10 people and wounding dozens as it stepped deeper into fighting between the Islamic militants and the rival Fatah fighters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The latest attack came early Friday morning as Israeli aircraft fired missiles east of Gaza City, killing four Palestinians, at least three of them Hamas militants, and wounding six people, Hamas and Palestinian doctors said. There was no immediate Israeli comment. Two other strikes followed but there was no word of any casualties, the doctors said.

Israel says the strikes are in retaliation for more than 50 rockets that Hamas has launched against Israel over the past three days in an apparent attempt to divert attention from Palestinian infighting, CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey.

"Hamas killed a lot of fellow Palestinians, some in brutal executions and ambushes, so a good way to divert attention from that was to draw Israel into the fighting," says CBS News correspondent Robert Berger. "If Hamas is targeted by Israel, it wins immediate sympathy from the public and also unites the Palestinians. Instead of fighting each other, they'll turn their attention to fighting a common enemy — Israel."

But the Palestinians have so far managed to kill more of their own than the Israelis have. Fatah gunmen even opened fire Thursday on a funeral for Hamas fighters killed in earlier street battles, adds Pizzey.

“Israel will take every defensive measure to stop these rocket attacks. We will defend our citizens against the rockets, against the weapons, against the Iranian-backed Hamas who are attacking Israel,” government spokeswoman Miri Eisen said.

The strikes, a series of Israeli attacks Thursday, and the reported movement of a handful of tanks a few hundred yards into the northern Gaza Strip, followed days of Hamas rocket barrages into Israel.

Street fighting between the Palestinian factions that has gripped Gaza since the weekend calmed under a truce agreement, but clashes still killed at least four people — a day after 22 died in the worst battles during a year of factional bloodshed.

There was no sign of any Israeli military buildup that would indicate plans for a serious intervention into chaotic Gaza, though a few tanks and soldiers moved just across the Gaza border. Israel's government said its attacks were intended solely to discourage rocket attacks on southern Israel.

Analysts said Israeli policy makers were likely trying to walk a narrow line to avoid uniting Palestinian factions into a common front against Israel.

(AP)Hamas mounted accusations on its Web sites, radio and TV that Abbas-linked forces were working with Israel — a charge dismissed as “absurd” by a Fatah spokesman.

Although Israel said it wasn't taking sides, the airstrikes did make it harder for Hamas gunmen to move around and that could help Fatah's fighters, who appeared to have been outfought in the latest round of battles. Hamas fighters have clearly been more motivated in the current fighting and earlier battles in December.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Israel had shown “great restraint” in exercising its right to self defense and warned Hamas it would never achieve a Palestinian state unless it chose peace and worked with Fatah.

“They're not going to see it by launching Qassam rockets into Israel. They're not going to see it by attacking the legitimate security forces of the Palestinian Authority. They're not going to see it by sending young people armed with suicide vests to blow up other Israeli youngsters,” McCormack said.

A day after bombing two Hamas targets, Israeli aircraft struck a Hamas command center, a trailer housing bodyguards and two vehicles Thursday.

(AP)Busloads of Sderot residents sought shelter away from the frontier. Israeli media said more than 2,000 of the town's 24,000 people had left.

Berger (audio) reports Sderot's terrorized residents are accusing the government of doing nothing.

Thursday's airstrikes came on the fifth day of factional fighting that appeared to be tearing apart a Hamas-Fatah unity government formed two months ago in hopes of ending such clashes and also killing any hope of renewed peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians.

In all, 46 Palestinians had been killed by the infighting since Sunday. But street clashes ebbed Thursday and Gazans who had been trapped in their homes the previous day hurried out to stock up on bread, bottled water and other supplies.

“I have run out of cigarettes and I'm almost out of mineral water. I don't have many diapers left,” said grocer Ghassan Abu al-Qas.

No one stayed outside long, though, fearing a resumption of fighting. Few cars and trucks ventured out.

Israel's airstrikes complicated an already chaotic situation in Gaza, making the embattled Abbas even more vulnerable to Hamas accusations that he is in Israel's pocket. With his aides citing security concerns, Abbas canceled a Thursday trip to Gaza for talks with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.

Israel had remained on the sidelines during the infighting, but security officials said the military had to respond to the rocket attacks on Sderot.

(AP)Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was under intense public pressure to respond to the Hamas barrage, and he visited the town late Thursday to tell residents they shouldn't feel alone, his office said. “I am handling this crisis in order to remove this threat as much as possible,” he was quoted as saying.

During his visit, the rocket alert system sounded, but an official did not know if a rocket hit.

Olmert is fighting for political survival in the face of plummeting popularity and harsh criticism of his handling of last summer's war in Lebanon.

Still, he Olmert probably would be wary of a major ground offensive in Gaza, fearful of another inconclusive effort. Israeli attacks have unified Palestinians in the past.

“It makes Hamas look like it is the one that is under attack from the so-called American-Israeli team within Fatah,” Palestinian analyst Yehia Rabah said.

Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher said intervening would be fraught with risk for Israel. “If the attacks are seen by the Palestinians as being very comprehensive, they will enable Hamas to rally everyone around the cause of opposing Israel,” he said.

Hamas reacted to the airstrikes by loosing a barrage of verbal attacks on Fatah.

Hamas lawmaker Salah Bardawil said Israel and Fatah had a “shared interest in striking at Hamas' strength” and that Fatah was led by a “bunch of mercenaries.”

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said the group's opponents are “pro-Zionist and pro-American elements who are working in a systematic, barbaric pre-planned campaign against Hamas and its elected leadership.”

A Fatah spokesman, Maher Mikdad, said the accusations were “absurd” and were designed to deflect criticism in light of “public discontent and rejection” of Hamas' militant action.

“Israel's interference is only in the interest of Hamas,” he said.

In the biggest Israeli strike of the day a bomb hit a two-story building belonging to Hamas' militia, the Executive Unit, destroying it and several nearby structures. The blast killed a militant and wounded 45 people, including civilians, who were dug out of the rubble by a frantic crowd.

Later, Israeli missiles struck a trailer housing bodyguards of a Hamas official and a car carrying two senior Hamas militants, killing two people.

An Israeli hit on a pickup truck near the southern Gaza town of Rafah killed a father and his two teenage sons. Israel's military said it targeted a rocket squad, but Palestinians said that was apparently a case of mistaken identity after Hamas fired rockets from the area.

Late at night, Israel said it staged an air attack on a member of a Palestinian rocket squad in Gaza City. His condition was not known.

Palestinians said five Israeli tanks moved about 200 yards into northern Gaza, in an area where Israel's troops have operated in the past trying to quell rocket attacks. Israeli media said a few soldiers set up observation posts. The army had no comment.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L154119374.htm
Fatah brings forces into Gaza from Egypt- sources
15 May 2007 10:42:34 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Adam Entous

JERUSALEM, May 15 (Reuters) - Hundreds of fighters loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction crossed into Gaza from Egypt on Tuesday as possible reinforcements in fighting against Hamas militants, Western sources said.

Fatah said the group that crossed into Gaza did not do so to fight Hamas.

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt was briefly opened to readmit a 450-strong Fatah contingent into the coastal strip, according to the sources, who spoke in Israel on condition of anonymity.

The sources said the crossing was opened, with Israeli consent, in only one direction to allow in the Fatah contingent. Once they crossed into Gaza, the crossing was re-closed.

The men were not carrying heavy equipment.

The move came as fighting intensified in Gaza between Abbas's Fatah forces and those loyal to the ruling Hamas movement.

In the fiercest battle, at least eight members of Abbas's Presidential Guard were killed in an attack by Hamas gunmen near Gaza's Karni commercial crossing with Israel, security officials said.

"The role of the security forces is to protect the security of the Palestinian people and not to take part in internal fighting," Tawfiq Abu Khoussa, Fatah's spokesman in Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

"They had been sent for training. It was a rehabilitation course that had nothing with any intention of fighting Hamas, or anyone else," he added.

Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz said Israel would not intervene in the fighting.

The 450 fighters are loyal to Abbas's national security adviser, Mohammad Dahlan.

Western officials say Dahlan, recuperating from leg surgery in Egypt, recently sent about 500 men loyal to Fatah to Egypt to receive more advanced instruction in police tactics, according to Western diplomats.

Abbas could also dispatch thousands of reinforcements from the occupied West Bank and draw upon the Jordan-based Badr Brigade, a Fatah-dominated force that includes at least 1,000 members.

But a senior Western diplomat involved in the matter played down the chances that Abbas would deploy either his West Bank or Jordanian-based forces.

"They won't go," the diplomat said.

Israel has signalled support in the past for Badr's deployment in the Gaza Strip, but U.S. and other Western officials have played down their readiness.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070518/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians&printer=1;_ylt=ApekNTinzfKJlefi1OjX08gUewgF
Fighting plunges Gaza further into chaos By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 12 minutes ago

Hamas and Fatah gunmen exchanged automatic weapons fire Friday at a Gaza City university and Israeli war planes pummeled Hamas targets for a third straight day, killing eight people in response to the Islamic group's rocket attacks on southern Israel.

The sound of gunfire and explosions rang out in the Gaza Strip as masked gunmen took up positions at roadblocks and rooftops — defying mediators who worked furiously to get the sides to withdraw and halt their fire.

Against the backdrop of the Palestinian infighting that threatened all-out civil war, Israeli airstrikes added an extra element of violence and uncertainty. Still, a senior army official said Israel had no immediate plans for a major ground offensive to halt rocket fire.

The Israeli army said about 90 rockets have hit southern Israel since Wednesday. At least 13 fell on Friday, including one that wounded three Israelis and another that wounded a man in the southern town of Sderot.

Six days of fighting between Hamas and the Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have claimed 47 lives and all but destroyed a two-month-old power-sharing deal between the two groups. An additional 20 Palestinians have died in the Israeli airstrikes.

Israel launched five new airstrikes on Friday alone. One east of Gaza City killed five Palestinians, at least three of them Hamas militants, and wounded six people, Hamas and local doctors said. The military said the target was a Hamas headquarters building.

Four other strikes followed, the last of which targeted a minivan belonging to a Hamas fighter in northern Gaza City, killing three people and wounding 12, Palestinian hospital officials said.

An afternoon hit on a Hamas military building near the central Gaza town of Deir al Balah. No casualties were reported, most likely because Hamas had ordered its people to evacuate possible Israeli targets. But Hamas suffered further damage to its infrastructure.

Gunshots and rocket-propelled grenades flew outside the Islamic University, a Hamas stronghold, in two bursts of fighting on Friday. Hamas fighters in control of the university battled Fatah forces who had taken up positions in the nearby Foreign Ministry building.

Grenades hit the office of university President Kamelen Shaath, who appealed for an immediate halt to the violence.

"Universities must be outside the circle of violence and I appeal to the president (Abbas) and all the wise people on both sides to try and spare the university the agony of this fight," he said.

One person was wounded in fighting at the school.

Elsewhere in the city, a 40-year-old Palestinian fisherman was shot in the head by a sniper. It was not clear which side fired the deadly shot.

Street battles were down from their height two days ago, but the latest truce worked out Thursday enjoyed no more success than a series of previous cease-fires. That raised the question of who was in charge — and it appeared the political leaders of both Hamas and Fatah had lost control of their gunmen.

"Our retaliation for (Fatah's) crimes is going to be beyond their imagination," Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas's military wing, told The Associated Press.

Gen. Jamal Kayed, Fatah's security commander in Gaza, said his group had already begun implementing the cease-fire but said Hamas was not willing to follow suit.

By most accounts, Hamas's performance in the latest round of internal fighting has been superior to Fatah's, with greater discipline and more motivated fighters.

Although Israel said it wasn't taking sides, its airstrikes made it harder for Hamas gunmen to move around, and Hamas used that fact to argue that Fatah and Israel were in cahoots. Hamas TV on Friday named three Fatah security chiefs who it said were in secret contact with "foreign" security personnel to exchange information on Palestinian militant groups.

"They are deep into treason, and we will deal with them accordingly," the broadcast said. The TV did not specify which foreigners, but Fatah forces affiliated with Abbas have received advice and training from the U.S.

Earlier in the week, some 500 Fatah security forces trained in Egypt under a U.S.-brokered deal returned to Gaza, passing through the border with Israel's permission. While Israel and the U.S. have made no secret of their desire to bolster Fatah at the expense of Hamas, Israeli policymakers also want to avoid uniting Palestinian factions into a common front against Israel.

Washington lists Hamas, which has killed more than 250 Israelis in suicide and other attacks, as a terror group. Hamas' parliamentary election sweep last year provoked punishing sanctions against the Palestinian government that have remained in place despite the formation of a national unity government in March.

International donors are demanding that Hamas renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist as a condition for restoring aid. Hamas' decision to resume violence in the form of rocket attacks on Israel is likely linked to the unity government's failure to lift the boycott.

Israeli media reported that between 2,500 to 3,000 of Sderot's 23,000 residents have fled the rocket-battered city in recent days, some leaving on buses organized by the government, and others taking advantage of a Russian-Israeli tycoon's offer to stay in hotels in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Be'er Sheva at his expense.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni showed members of the diplomatic corps video of a Sderot school damaged by rocket fire. "For too long the international community took the situation in the south of Israel as acceptable, as part of life in Israel, and it's not," she told Tel-Aviv based envoys.

http://www.imemc.org/article/48414
Dr. Barghouthi slams attacks against ambulances in Gaza
Wednesday May 16, 2007 23:53 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC saed at imemc dot org

Palestinian Information Minister, Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, slammed on Wednesday that attacks carried by gunmen against Palestinian ambulances in the Gaza Strip, and stated that one medic of the Palestinian Medical Relief was injured after gunmen opened fire at an ambulance in Beit Hanoun.

Dr. Barghouthi stated that Zaher Shbat, was moderately injured when gunmen opened fire at her in Beit Hanoun, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

He added that under no conditions, attacks against ambulances and medical teams should be carried out or tolerated, and stated that medics should be allowed to perform their humanitarian duties without any obstacles.

Dr. Barghouthi called on all conflicting parties to stop these violent clashes in order to avoid the miseries of a civil war. He said that every faction, resident and institution should act in order to lift the Israeli unjust siege and attacks, instead of engaging in internal clashes that would only lead the Palestinians into further destruction and unknown fate.

Despite of the declared ceasefire between Fateh and Hamas, clashes continued in the Gaza Strip.

President Mahmoud Abbas order or Fatah loyalists to withdraw from the streets on Gaza in order to maintain the ceasefire, while Dr. Barghouthi told the Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV that Hamas agreed to “a unilateral ceasefire and is expecting Fateh to follow the lead”.