Israel pressed its assault on the Gaza Strip early Sunday, deploying warplanes and naval vessels to pummel the coastal enclave as Israeli forces widened the onslaught from mostly military targets to media offices and centres of government infrastructure including on Saturday the four-story headquarters of the Hamas prime minister.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu coupled developments on the ground with a blunt warning that Israel was ready to significantly expand the attack, a possible reference to a much-heralded ground attack.
“We are exacting a heavy price from Hamas and the terrorist organisations and the Israel Defense Forces are prepared for a significant expansion of the operation,” he told his cabinet, referring directly to the call-up of thousands of reservists that, coupled with a massing of armour on the Gaza border, many analysts have interpreted as preparations for a possible invasion.
“I appreciate the rapid and impressive mobilisation of the reservists who have come from all over the country and turned out for the mission at hand,” he said. “Reservist and conscript soldiers are ready for any order they might receive.”
Netanyahu’s remarks were reported shortly after Israel’s “Iron Dome” defense shield intercepted at least one rocket aimed at Tel Aviv on Sunday, Israeli officials said, in the latest of several salvoes that have illustrated Hamas’s ability to extend the range of its attacks.
The crash of explosions pierced the Gaza City quiet several times throughout the early morning, with one attack injuring several journalists at a communications building, witnesses said.
A rocket fired from Gaza ploughed through the roof of an apartment building in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon but there were no immediate reports of casualties there.
The onslaught continued despite talks in Cairo that Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi said Saturday night he thought could soon result in a ceasefire. Prime Minister Netanyahu said he would consider a comprehensive ceasefire if the launches from Gaza stop.
The attack on the office of the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, one of several on government installations, came a day after he hosted his Egyptian counterpart in that very building on Friday, a sign of Hamas’s new legitimacy in a radically redrawn Arab world.
That stature was underscored Saturday by a visit to Gaza from the Tunisian foreign minister and the rapid convergence in Cairo of two Hamas allies, the prime minister of Turkey and the crown prince of Qatar, for talks with the Egyptian president and the chairman of Hamas on a possible cease-fire.
But Mark Regev, a spokesman for Netanyahu, denied reports that a truce was imminent.
It was unclear whether the deal under discussion in Cairo would solely suspend the fighting or include other issues. Hamas — which won elections in Gaza in 2006 and took full control in 2007 but is considered a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States — wants to turn its Rafah crossing with Egypt into a free-trade zone and seeks Israel’s withdrawal from the 1,000-foot buffer it patrols on Gaza’s northern and eastern borders.
For his part, Netanyahu spoke with the leaders of Britain, Germany, Italy, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, according to a statement from his office. On Sunday, he said he appreciated the “understanding they are displaying for Israel’s right to defend itself.”
As the fighting entered its fifth day, the conflict showed no sign of abating.
Palestinian news agencies reported that two children were killed in a predawn strike on Sunday in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. The Israeli military said it had “targeted dozens of underground launchers” overnight and also hit what it called a Hamas training base and command centre.
The Israeli Navy “targeted terror sites on the northern Gaza shore line,” the statement said, in repeated rounds of multiple missiles that could be easily heard.
Among the buildings Israel hit overnight were two containing the offices of local media outlets. A statement from the Israeli Defense Forces initially described one of its targets as “a communications facility used by Hamas to carry out terror activity against the state of Israel.” Within minutes, the IDF recalled that statement and replaced it with one referring to “a communications antenna.”
Salama Marouf of the Hamas media office issued a statement condemning what he called an “immoral massacre against the media” and calling the attack a “confession” by Israel “that it has lost the media battle.”
Six journalists were injured in the first attack, around 2:30 am, in the Shawa and Hossari Building in downtown Gaza City, which houses two local radio stations — one run by the militant Islamic Jihad — and the offices of the Ma’an Palestinian news agency as well as the German broadcaster ARD.
One of the journalists injured on Sunday, Khader Zahar of the Beirut-based Al Quds satellite channel, lost a leg in the explosion, which hit its 11th-floor studio.
At 7 am, a missile dropped from an Apache helicopter hit the top of the 15-story Al Shoruq Building, also downtown, witnesses said. The target was the Hamas channel that broadcasts locally, Al Aqsa, but the building also contains offices of the Al Arabiya television network and the Middle East Broadcast Center which runs it, as well as the live studio position of the Iranian television station, and two production companies — Gaza Media Center and Mayadeen — that provide services for Fox News, Sky News, CBS and Al Jazeera.
Nobody was injured in that attack. Witnesses said that everyone in the building fled after a warning missile was fired in the stairwell, two minutes before the attack on the roof.
“This attack on journalists and freedom of expression reflects Israel’s disdain for international law and the little value it affords the lives of Palestinians,” said Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
The Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem said it was “concerned” by the attacks, recalling a United Nations ruling that “journalists, media professionals and associated personnel engaged in dangerous professional missions in areas of armed conflict shall be considered civilians, to be respected and protected as such.”
The ability to gain access to and influence media coverage is critical to both sides seeking to promote their rival claims and versions of the events and arguments underpinning the conflict, recalling the 2008-2009 winter invasion of Gaza that brought international condemnation of Israel.
Israel’s foreign ministry said on Saturday that 22 foreign journalists were prevented by Hamas from leaving the Gaza Strip.
The White House reiterated its strong support for Israel. Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, described rocket fire from Gaza as “the precipitating factor for the conflict.”
“We believe Israel has a right to defend itself, and they’ll make their own decisions about the tactics that they use in that regard,” Rhodes told reporters on Air Force One en route to Asia.
Hamas health officials said Saturday that 45 Palestinians had been killed and 385 wounded since Wednesday’s escalation in the cross-border battle. In Israel, 3 Israeli civilians have died and 63 have been injured. Four soldiers were also wounded on Saturday.
Two rockets were fired at Tel Aviv on Saturday. One landed harmlessly, probably at sea. The other was intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system in the sky above the city. An Iron Dome antimissile battery had been hastily deployed near the city on Saturday in response to the threat of longer-range rockets.
Since Wednesday, Iron Dome has knocked 245 rockets out of the sky, the military said, while 500 have struck Israel. The American-financed system is designed to intercept only rockets streaking toward towns and cities and to ignore those likely to strike open ground.
There have been failures — on Saturday a rocket crashed into an apartment block in the southern port city of Ashdod, injuring five people — but officials have put its success rate at 90 percent.
Analysts said there is no clear end to the conflict in sight, since Israel neither wants to re-engage in Gaza nor to eliminate Hamas and leave the territory to the chaos of more militant factions.
Israel’s stated goals for the operation are to reclaim calm for its residents, deter further rocket attacks and cripple Hamas’s military capabilities. A senior military official said Israel had hit nearly 1,000 sites since Wednesday in what he called “intelligence-driven precision strikes,” and described civilian casualties as “regrettable” but unavoidable because the “terrorist infrastructure is embedded inside the population.”
The military said Saturday that, in addition to the Hamas prime minister’s office, it also struck the police and homeland security headquarters. But Regev said the expansion of the assault to government buildings did not indicate a shift in strategy.
Hamas “makes no distinction between its terrorist military machine and the government structure,” he said. “We have seen Hamas consistently using so-called civilian facilities for the purposes of hiding their terrorist military machine, including weapons.”
While Israeli domestic support for the offensive remained strong, a debate has begun about when and how to bring the operation to an end.
Israel’s military said that it also bombed smuggling tunnels under Rafah and carried out what it described as pinpoint strikes of Hamas commanders. One such attack flattened the home of Ibrahim Salah, head of public relations for the Hamas Interior Ministry, in the Jabaliya refugee camp, one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Salah and his family were not in the house, but 30 people were wounded as the surrounding homes were damaged or destroyed.
Dozens of people, many of them children, swarmed over the rubble pile, where clothing and a bottle of detergent sat along with remnants of lights and furnishings. Hassam Al Dadah, 41, loaded a truck with mattresses, blankets, a refrigerator, couch cushions and a child’s doll.
Dadah, a teacher, said his five children, ages 6 to 14, were being treated at the hospital, and he did not know where the family would spend the night. “I’m a new refugee,” said Dadah. “I don’t have any place to go to.”
© 2012 The New York Times News Service
