Israeli raids kill 3 Gazans; rockets fired at Israel

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Israeli raids kill 3 Gazans; rockets fired at Israel

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Dan

Reuters – Fri, 9 Dec, 2011

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Violence has flared up between Israel and Gaza, with

the Israeli air force killing three Palestinians and militants firing rockets

deep across the border.

The latest fighting erupted on Thursday when an air strike on a car killed two

militants, one of them from Gaza's governing Islamist group Hamas, whom Israel

accused of planning to send gunmen to attack it through the neighboring Sinai

region of Egypt.

Palestinian militants answered Thursday's air strike with a barrage of rockets,

some of which landed near Beersheba, a city 35 km (30 miles) from Gaza. No one

was hurt. Air-raid sirens summoned residents of southern Israel to shelters.

Another Israeli air strike followed before dawn on Friday, hitting a Hamas

training camp in Gaza City. The blast flattened a nearby home, killing its owner

and wounding his wife and six of their children, two critically, hospital

officials said.

In a statement voicing regret for the civilian casualties, the military said

Palestinian rockets stored next to the camp had stoked the explosion. Hamas

accused Israel of a " massacre " .

" We are pursuing intensive contacts with several Arab and international parties,

and we stress the necessity of this aggression being stopped immediately, "

Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas administration in Gaza, told reporters.

Hamas spurns peacemaking with the Jewish state but has in the past proposed

truces as it sought to consolidate control over Gaza and negotiate power-sharing

with the rival, U.S.-backed Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud

Abbas.

TIES THAT BIND

Instability has spread in Sinai as Cairo struggles to restore order after the

fall of Hosni Mubarak in February.

Armed infiltrators killed eight Israelis on the border with Sinai in August.

Israeli troops repelling the gunmen killed five Egyptian police, triggering

outrage in Cairo that spilled over into the mobbing of Israel's embassy a month

later.

Israel apologized for the Egyptian deaths and Egypt's interim military rulers

vowed to mount security sweeps of Sinai.

Hamas's standing has grown with the political rise of the kindred Egyptian

Muslim Brotherhood, formerly a suppressed though popular opposition group.

Israel worries about the prospects for its landmark 1979 peace accord with

Egypt, which secured the demilitarization of the Sinai.

" The State of Israel is in a bind, " defense analyst Fishman wrote in the

biggest-selling Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

" It can't operate in Sinai in order to defend its sovereignty for fear of its

relations with Egypt ... and because it can't beat the donkey, it beats the

saddle -- and Gaza suffers the blows. "

Some of the Palestinian rockets fired on Thursday and Friday were claimed by a

Fatah-linked militia that lost one of its leaders, Essam Al-Batsh, in Israel's

air strike.

Israel said he had also been involved in a 2007 suicide bombing that killed

three people in Eilat, a Red Sea port abutting Egypt. The Eilat area went on

security alert this week, with the military citing fear of infiltration from

Sinai.

Hamas had no comment on the rockets. It has kept out of some of the recent

fighting in Gaza, much of which has been between Israel and Islamic Jihad, a

different Palestinian armed faction.

The chief of Israel's military, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, told parliament

last month a new Israeli offensive in Gaza could be " drawing close " because of

the rocket threat.

That stirred speculation that Israel, which launched a devastating war on Hamas

in 2008-2009, might mobilize for a similar assault ahead of the possible

installation of a new Islamist-led government in Egypt.

Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser, warned that could

backfire by providing an electoral boost to the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt's

ultra-conservative Salafis.

" An operation in Gaza is liable to play into their hands, with a kind of

acceleration of political processes that you don't want, " Eiland told Israel

Radio.

(Writing by Dan ; Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by

)

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