ARABS-ISRAEL - May 22 - If Rockets Don't Stop We Will Not Stop, Says Israel.In a radio interview Deputy Defence Minister Ephraim Sneh says Israel could kill Palestinian PM Esmail Haniya of Hamas as part of a military campaign to halt rocket salvoes by the ruling Islamist group in the Gaza Strip Gaza Strip (gäz`ə), (2003 est. pop. 1,330,000) rectangular coastal area, c.140 sq mi (370 sq km), SW Asia, on the Mediterranean Sea adjoining Egypt and Israel, in what was formerly SW Palestine. . Asked if Haniya was on Israel's hit-list, Ephraim Sneh said: I'll put it like this - there is no one who is in the circle of commanders and leaders in Hamas who is immune from a strike. "For what does political Hamas do? It gives the operational approval to those who are doing the fighting", Sneh told Israel Radio. He issued the threat a day after an Israeli woman was killed by a rocket in the southern town of Sderot, the first fatality fa·tal·i·ty n. 1. A death resulting from an accident or disaster. 2. One that is killed as a result of such an occurrence. in a Palestinian rocket attack since November. Israeli air strikes over the past week have so far killed at least 34 Palestinians, medical officials in Gaza said, including four Islamic Jihad Noun 1. Islamic Jihad - a Shiite terrorist organization with strong ties to Iran; seeks to create an Iranian fundamentalist Islamic state in Lebanon; car bombs are the signature weapon militants on May 21 who the group described as a rocket-launching squad. The Israeli army said about 150 rockets have been fired from Gaza in the current wave of violence. Test for diplomacy "If the rockets don't stop, we will not stop", Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz told reporters. He said Israel was "biting its lip" and refraining, for now, from launching a wide-scale ground offensive in Gaza. Meeting Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, Peretz called for immediate international diplomatic intervention to avoid "anarchy in which the Palestinian National Authority Noun 1. Palestinian National Authority - combines the Gaza Strip and the West Bank under a political unit with limited autonomy and a police force; created in 1993 by an agreement between Israel and the PLO Palestine Authority, Palestine National Authority collapses completely". "This is a test for European diplomacy. It is a test for US diplomacy. It is a test for the diplomacy of the free world", Peretz said. Hamas's armed wing said it fired two rockets at Sderot early May 21. Sami Abu Zuhri Sami Abu Zuhri a senior Palestinian spokesman for Hamas was catapulted to notoriety 19 May 2006 when European monitors discovered he had about 900,000 euros concealed in his clothing at a routine border crossing from Egypt to Gaza. , a Hamas official, said Israel must first stop all its attacks on Palestinians before the group and other factions could consider halting their own strikes. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Mahmoud Abbas (Arabic: محمود عباس) (born March 26, 1935), also known by the kunya Abu Mazen is to go to Gaza later to speak to leaders about maintaining law and order after weeks of fighting between his Fatah faction and Hamas, and perhaps about resuming a Gaza truce with Israel, FM Ziad Abu Asaid. The latest Israeli air strikes in Gaza destroyed a metal foundry, which the military said produced weapons, and a building that it described as a "command centre" used by militants. There were no reports of casualties. PM Ehud Olmert was quoted by the YNet news website as telling Sderot residents: There is no immediate solution to the Qassam rockets The Qassam rocket (also Kassam) is a simple steel rocket filled with explosives, produced by the Palestinian Resistance organization or armed resistance movement Hamas. Three models have been used. ". |
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