Israel Steps Up Aerial Strikes in Gaza

JERSUSALEM ? Israel retaliated after Palestinian rocket attacks on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem with airstrikes before dawn Saturday on the Gaza City offices of Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas ? the militant Islamist group that governs Gaza.

The Israeli military said Saturday that it had struck more than 200 targets overnight, including underground rocket launchers and smuggling tunnels in Rafah, on the Gaza-Egypt border.

Along with Mr. Haniya?s headquarters, which was destroyed, the Israeli military said that it struck the police and homeland security headquarters of Hamas, as well as the house of a Hamas commander, Ahmed Randor.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, said government buildings had been targeted because Hamas ?makes no distinction between its terrorist military machine and the government structure.?

?We have seen Hamas consistently using so-called civilian facilities for the purposes of hiding their terrorist military machine, including weapons,? Mr. Regev said.

About 30 rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel on Saturday morning, one landing in the yard of a house. Three soldiers were slightly injured by one of the rockets, the Israeli military said.

Hamas said seven of its members were killed Saturday morning in two separate attacks ? four in Rafah, and three in the Al Maghazi refugee camp, in the middle of the Gaza Strip. Despite the fighting, Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem of Tunisia visited Gaza on Saturday, condemning the Israeli attacks during an appearance at the Al Shifa hospital.

?Israel has to understand that there is an international law and it has to respect the international law to stop the aggression against the Palestinian people,? Mr. Abdessalem said, according to The Associated Press.

On Friday, emboldened by displays of Egyptian solidarity and undeterred by Israel?s advanced aerial firepower, Palestinian militants under siege in Gaza broadened their rocket targets, aiming at Jerusalem for the first time, sending a second volley screeching toward Tel Aviv and pushing the Israelis closer to a ground invasion.

Israel?s government more than doubled the number of army reservists it could call to combat if needed in the increasingly lethal showdown in Gaza with Hamas fighters and their affiliates, after they fired more than 700 rockets into southern Israel over the last year. The escalation has raised fears of a new chapter of war in the intractable Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Israeli military closed some roads adjacent to Gaza in anticipation of a possible infantry move into the territory, which would be the first Israeli military presence on the ground in Gaza since the three-week invasion of 2008-9.

Ghazi Hamad, the Hamas deputy foreign minister, said Saturday that the Tunisian foreign minister?s visit, following the visit Friday by the Egyptian prime minister, showed that ?we as Palestinians are not alone.?

?All Arab nations are with us and against the occupation,? Mr. Hamad said. ?This will give a strong message to the international community.?

Asked about the possibility of a cease-fire agreement, Mr. Hamad said Israel would have to agree to cancel the buffer zone, a strip of land almost 1,000 feet wide along the northern and eastern Gaza borders where Israel does not allow people to go; those who enter can be shot.

The attacks on Hamas government buildings, Mr. Hamad said, are ?a policy of Israel to put pressure on people? but would not significantly change the dynamic of the current fighting.

?Israel has the capacity to destroy all buildings in Gaza, all homes,? he said. ?But this is against humanity.

?They destroyed our government buildings before many times, but we rebuild again,? he added. ?It?s a long struggle, a long story. It will not stop today or tomorrow.?

Many residents of Jerusalem, which Israel claims as its capital despite objections from the city?s large Palestinian population and others throughout the Middle East, were startled Friday when wartime sirens warning of impending danger sounded at dusk, followed by at least two dull thuds. Hamas?s military wing claimed in a statement that they were rockets fired from Gaza, 48 miles away, and had been meant to hit the Israeli Parliament.

The police said one rocket crashed harmlessly in an open area near an Israeli settlement south of Jerusalem. It was unclear where the others landed, but no damage or injuries were reported.

Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Jodi Rudoren, Fares Akram and Tyler Hicks from Gaza City; Alan Cowell from Paris; Rina Castelnuovo from the Gaza-Israel border; and Mayy El Sheikh and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-conflict.html

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