Israel stepped up air attacks in the Gaza Strip Monday, killing
at least five Palestinians, and a senior Israeli cabinet minister
said all Hamas leaders involved in cross-border rocket fire could
be targeted.
"I don't distinguish between those who carry out the (rocket)
attacks and those who give the orders. I say we have to put them
all in the crosshairs," National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin
Ben-Eliezer said on Israel Radio.
Thousands of Hamas supporters took to the streets of Gaza City
and gunmen fired into the air, vowing revenge, one day after an
Israeli air strike on the home of Hamas politician Khalil
al-Hayya.
Hamas said only two of the eight people killed in Sunday's
attack were gunmen. Hayya was not injured, though he lost seven
family members in the strike.
"We will keep to the same path until we win one of two goals:
victory or martyrdom," Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a
Hamas leader, said at the funeral service.
Israeli aircraft carried out a series of attacks in the
territory Monday. At least four members of Islamic Jihad, on their
way to launch rockets at Israel, were killed in an air strike that
destroyed their car near the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, the
militant group said.
"The Zionist attack will not stop rocket fire against Zionist
towns," said Abu Ahmed, spokesman of Islamic Jihad's armed wing.
"Leaders of the Zionist enemy will pay a price."
One man was killed in an earlier attack on what Israel called a
rocket manufacturing facility and Palestinians described as a
stonemason's shop. The air strikes also knocked out electricity to
about 50,000 people.
Israel's security Cabinet decided on Sunday to escalate military
action in response to constant rocket attacks from Gaza, which have
caused injuries but no deaths and have put political pressure on
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to act.
The Israeli military moves and an Egyptian-mediated ceasefire
seem to have largely calmed more than a week of intense fighting
between the rival Hamas and Fatah factions, in which nearly 50
people were killed.
But in a new incident, unidentified gunmen shot and wounded six
Hamas men in a book shop in the Gaza town of Khan Younis.
Hamas, which last carried out a suicide bombing in Israel in
2004, threatened to respond to the attack on Hayya's home with "an
earthquake" against the Jewish state.
Israel's Internal Security Minister, Avi Dichter, said Hamas'
leader-in-exile Khaled Meshaal, whom Israel tried to assassinate in
Jordan in 1997, would not be immune to attack.
Dichter also said on Israel Radio that Haniyeh, who lives in
Gaza, could be targeted should he become involved in ordering
rocket fire.
(China Daily via agencies May 22, 2007)
