Egypt continues efforts to free soldier “before Gaza is destroyed
RAFAH: Palestinians dug in behind walls and embankments in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday after Israel sent in troops and tanks, and bombarded bridges and a power station from the air to pressure militants to release a captured soldier. No casualties were reported.
It was Israel s first ground offensive since it pulled all of its soldiers and settlers out of Gaza over the summer, and Palestinians, holed up at home, were bracing for a major strike. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel wouldn t balk at extreme action to bring the soldier home, but had no intention of reoccupying Gaza.
The raids followed a landmark agreement Tuesday between Palestinian factions on a political initiative that implicitly recognizes Israel s right to exist, a historic policy shift by Hamas which has long advocated the destruction of the Jewish state. Israel dismissed the deal however as an internal matter .
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas deplored the incursion as a crime against humanity, and a leading Hamas politician issued a call to arms against the Israeli troops.
Overnight, Israeli tanks and soldiers began taking up positions east of the Gaza town of Rafah under cover of tank shells, witnesses and Palestinian security officials said.
Israeli warplanes fired at least nine missiles at Gaza s only power station, cutting electricity to 65 percent of the Gaza Strip, engineers at the station said. The station s three functioning turbines and a gasoline reservoir were engulfed in flames, raising the specter of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, because water pumps in the strip are powered by electricity.
The Israeli military said in a statement that three bridges were attacked to impair the ability of the terrorists to transfer the kidnapped soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19. Knocking down the bridges cut Gaza in two, Palestinian security officials said.
In Cairo, the government was trying to mediate a solution to get the soldier freed in exchange for the release of some Palestinian detainees before Gaza is destroyed, said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Egypt has been talking directly with the exiled leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Khaled Mashaal, who is in Syria, to push him to facilitate the release of the soldier, Egyptian officials said Tuesday. But no breakthrough was yet in sight.
The opposition Muslim Brotherhood said that any aggression on the Gaza strip would be a threat to Egyptian national security.
Any aggression on the Gaza Strip would constitute a threat to Egyptian national security and Egypt must therefore take all necessary measures to prevent an attack, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, the group s supreme guide, had said in a statement prior to Israel’s incursion.
The Muslim Brotherhood calls on the Arab and Islamic people and civil society organizations and the peoples of the world to declare their rejection to any Zionist attempt to attack Gaza, Akef had said, declaring that Friday will be a day for solidarity with the Palestinian people and to show our anger over Zionist aggression.
Akef described the Palestinian attack as a legitimate resistance operation, adding that the abducted soldier should be considered a prisoner of war. [We] call on the kidnappers of the Zionist soldier to consider him a prisoner of war, to be treated in a humane manner, as dictated by Islam and international agreements, said Akef.
Witnesses reported heavy artillery shelling near the long-closed Gaza airport into a village east of Rafah, and warplanes also flew low over Gaza City, rocking the city with sonic booms and shattering windows.
Troops in Israel backed up the assault, firing artillery into Gaza.
We won t hesitate to carry out extreme action to bring Gilad back to his family, Olmert said. All the military activity that started overnight will continue in the coming days.
We do not intend to reoccupy Gaza. We do not intend to stay there. We have one objective, and that is to bring Gilad home, he added.
Olmert repeated that Israel will not negotiate Shalit s release with militant groups.
Shalit was taken captive on Sunday during a Palestinian attack on a military post in southern Israel.
Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said Israel would try to assassinate Khaled Mashaal, a Syrian-based Hamas leader who Israel thinks ordered the soldier s capture.
Hamas militants and allied factions claimed responsibility for the attack on a southern military post on Sunday in which Shalit was captured and two soldiers were killed. The Palestinian government has called for the soldier s release, but Israel thinks the Syria-based leaders called the shots.
Abbas deplored the Israeli invasion in a statement. The president considers the aggression that targeted the civilian infrastructures to be collective punishment and a crime against humanity, the statement said. Abbas, it added, urged the U.S. and international Mideast negotiators to intervene to halt the operation.
Normally bustling streets in southern Gaza were eerily deserted mid-morning, with people holed up inside their homes. A few children from nearby Bedouin encampments played in the streets, and two women in a donkey cart drove near the airport in Rafah.
The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, Gaza s main link to the outside world, has been closed since the attack Sunday in which the Israeli soldier was taken captive.
Masked militants from various armed factions took up defensive positions around Gaza City in the northern part of the strip. Militants said they fired a rocket early Wednesday at the Israeli village of Nahal Oz, the Israeli forces staging area, and at other Israeli targets.
Capt. Jacob Dallal, a military spokesman, said the army was prepared for a long operation, if necessary.
We have a vast variety of military options available to us and everything is on the table, he said. At the same time, Israel is keeping diplomatic channels open during the Gaza operation with the hope that contacts could win the soldier s release, Dallal said.
The militants who seized Shalit have demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails in exchange for information about the captured soldier.
Nizar Rayan, a leading Hamas political figure, urged fighters on the Hamas radio station to take up arms and fight the Israeli troops in the battle of liberating the prisoners.
Rayan urged Palestinians not to give any information about the soldier for free and asked the Palestinians in the West Bank to also revolt against the invasion of Gaza. Defend your prisoners. Work hard until the 10,000 prisoners are free. Don t give any information, he said, referring to all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Ahlan Firwana, the mother of a militant killed in an Israeli raid, was representative of Palestinian public opinion on Wednesday when she said she supported the release of the soldier, on condition that Palestinian prisoners held by Israel also be freed.
Trying to defuse building tensions, negotiators from the ruling Hamas movement said Tuesday they had accepted a document implicitly recognizing Israel. But two Syrian-based Hamas leaders, who hold great weight within the movement, denied a final deal had been reached.
Complicating matters was a new claim by the Hamas-linked Popular Resistance Committees, one of the three groups that carried out Sunday s assault, that it had also kidnapped a Jewish settler in the West Bank.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the report was being taken very seriously, and military officials said there was rising fears the claim was true.
After Israel launched its Gaza assault, the PRC threatened to kill its hostage. AP
