Translated material
Extremists received “Cast Lead”
A new war has begun in the Gaza Strip
It looks like the Middle East will greet the New Year amid an acute crisis that could escalate into a bloody conflict between Israelis and Palestinian militants.Israeli air strikes against Palestinian extremists in the Gaza Strip could escalate into a ground operation in the coming days. The head of the Israeli military department, Ehud Barak, said that “if necessary, Israel will send ground troops into the Gaza Strip.” He announced the call-up of 6.5 thousand reservists, and Israeli armored vehicles and infantry are concentrating near the border with the sector.
Israel's Operation Cast Lead began on Saturday night, a week after the Dec. 19 end of a six-month truce between the Jewish state and the Gaza Strip-controlling Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). Egyptian mediators failed to persuade Hamas to agree to extend the truce. Israel blamed the Islamists for the rocket attacks. By the morning of December 25, more than a hundred rockets and mortar shells were fired into the territory of the Jewish state. The Hamas leadership claimed responsibility for the attacks, accusing Israel of blocking food and fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip.
According to Hamas, the first air attack on the Gaza Strip involved 60 Israeli planes and helicopters, dropping up to 100 tons of bombs on command centers, training camps, industrial facilities, militant and police arsenals. According to Israeli data, among the dead were the head of the Hamas police, Tafik Jabber, his assistant Ismail al-Jaabri and the governor of the central region of the Gaza Strip, Abu Ahmad Ashour. On Sunday night, Israeli aircraft bombed another two dozen targets, including missile assembly shops used to bombard the Jewish state, a mosque where militants allegedly gathered, and the Hamas Al-Aqsa television and radio station. The Israeli Ministry of Defense tells journalists that military action “will take several weeks” - the goal of the operation will be “a complete cessation of Hamas’ terrorist activities against Israel.”
According to reports from the Gaza Strip, as of yesterday, Israeli bombing had killed at least three hundred Palestinians and wounded about a thousand more. Israel says it is targeting militants, their command centers, missile launchers and other infrastructure. “The vast majority of those killed were supporters of the extremist Hamas movement,” Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner said yesterday. “Of the 230 dead, 218 were terrorists who challenged Israel by participating in missile launches into our country.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert emphasized that the purpose of the fighting is to “significantly improve the situation” of residents of the south of the country: “For more than seven years, the life of our citizens in areas adjacent to the Gaza Strip has been completely unbearable. No state can come to terms with such a situation, and we will not agree with it either.” At the same time, Olmert promised not to interfere with the delivery of humanitarian supplies: “Our army is not fighting against civilians in the Gaza Strip, we only want to curb terror.” The Israeli government kept its promise by allowing 30 trucks carrying humanitarian supplies into the Gaza Strip last night.
A Ukrainian citizen and her child were injured during an Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip. The Russian Embassy in Israel is preparing to evacuate compatriots - these are mainly the wives and children of Palestinians who studied in the USSR, and it is extremely difficult to contact them in the current situation. “At this stage, we are trying to understand how many Russian citizens want to leave Gaza in order to form a list on which coordination with the Israeli authorities will begin,” said press attache of the Russian embassy in Israel Anastasia Fedorova. “It’s too early to talk about the timing of a possible evacuation.” So far, 28 Russians and two citizens of Moldova have expressed a desire to leave the enclave sandwiched between Israel and Egypt.
The Islamists responded to the Israeli bombing with continued rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli cities, leading to the death of one person and the wounding of four others in the city of Netivot. Hamas leaders called on all Palestinians to unite in the face of the Israeli attack. “We will not back down even if the Israelis wipe out the Gaza Strip or kill thousands of us,” said Ismail Hannieh, premier of the unrecognized Islamist government in Gaza. Palestinian militants yesterday set a record for the range of rocket launches from the Gaza Strip, for the first time shelling the Israeli city of Ashdod, located 38 km north of the borders of the Palestinian enclave.
The head of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, told reporters yesterday that Hamas could prevent an Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip: “We talked to them and told them: please, we ask you not to leave the ceasefire. Let the truce continue. Perhaps we could have avoided what happened."
“For Hamas and its radical allies, an Israeli ground invasion is the best option. They are not embarrassed that an order of magnitude more Palestinians will die than Israelis,” Professor Georgy Mirsky, chief researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Vremya Novostey. “The current round of violence was provoked by Islamist radicals, and their timing was precise.” In January 2009, the powers of the head of the PNA, Mahmoud Abbas, expire, who proposed holding elections for his successor in a year simultaneously with the parliamentary ones. The radicals rejected this option, and yesterday, when Abbas called on them to stop shelling Israel in exchange for lifting the blockade of the Gaza Strip, they again called for military action, including in the West Bank of Jordan, which could explode the situation in the region. According to the expert, the United States is unlikely to dare to take decisive action due to the transfer of presidential power. Before the February elections in Israel, “the current conflict plays into the hands of the right-wing politician Netanyahu, although the current government has found an ideal pretext for war,” concluded Georgy Mirsky.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the operation "will last as long as necessary." He stated: “There is a time for peace and there is a time for war. Now it's time to fight. Asking us for a truce with Hamas is the same as asking the Americans for a truce with al-Qaeda. We cannot do this.” According to Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, “the terrorists left the Israelis no other choice.” After parliamentary elections in Israel in February 2009, the head of the ruling Kadima party, Livni, may become prime minister, as well as the leader of the right-wing Likud party, Benjamin Netanyahu. He supported the government, saying: “There is a time for disputes, and there is a time for unity. Now is the time for unity. If our enemies think that we cannot forget political differences during hostilities, then they are mistaken.”
Yesterday, members of the UN Security Council, based on the draft proposed by Russia, adopted a statement on the situation in the Middle East. They called on Israel to immediately stop the military operation, which led to “numerous casualties among the Palestinian civilian population,” and Hamas to “immediately stop rocket attacks on Israeli territory.” The parties to the conflict were recommended to immediately open crossing points into the Gaza Strip to allow unimpeded access for assistance to resolve the humanitarian crisis. The adoption of a binding UN Security Council resolution calling for an end to Israeli attacks against the Gaza Strip was blocked by the United States, which has veto power in the Security Council.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, during a telephone conversation with Tzipi Livni, which took place at the initiative of the Israeli side, confirmed Russia’s position in favor of “an urgent cessation of military operations in the Gaza Strip, which have already led to numerous casualties among the Palestinians.” “Moscow considers it necessary to immediately stop large-scale military actions against the Gaza Strip, which have already led to great casualties and suffering for the Palestinian civilian population,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko in a statement. -- At the same time, we call on the Hamas leadership to stop rocket attacks on Israeli territory. We are convinced that the most urgent thing today is to end the armed confrontation, restore calm and get rid of the horror and pain of civilians on both sides.”
Israel's actions were condemned by the foreign ministers of countries that are members of the Arab League. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit pointed out the need to take urgent measures to stop Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip. According to him, at the upcoming meeting of Arab foreign ministers on December 31, a decision must be made on how to achieve a comprehensive ceasefire and restore the truce between Israel and the Palestinians, reached with Egyptian mediation in June last year. Egypt opened the border to wounded Palestinians, and Jordan's King Abdullah II warned Israel that "violence will only worsen the situation and will not provide security for the Jewish state." US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, condemning the shelling of Israel, blamed Hamas for the violation of the truce and another surge in violence in Gaza.