Israeli ground troops fought heavy battles
with Palestinian militants on Gaza City's outskirts Monday, as Foreign Minister
Tzipi Livni said only Israel would decide when it would stop its offensive in
Gaza and Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said the movement's fighters had an
"appointment with victory."
Looking exhausted after spending all 17 days of the Israeli assault in hiding,
Haniya said in a pre-recorded speech that "we are working on two parallel
tracks, the first is the track of resistance and steadfastness and the second
is the political track to confront the military aggression on our people."
The fighting ground on, however, and at least 10 Palestinians - among them two
women, two children and a paramedic - were killed as Israel used tanks and
artillery, as well as air support in the battles, which concentrated on Gaza
City's southern and eastern-most neighbourhoods, dpa
reported.
Israel also accused Hamas of violating a three-hour humanitarian truce that
took effect Monday morning, allowing international organizations to pick up and
distribute aid. Some 164 trucks with food, medical supplies, blankets and other
items were entering though the Kerem Shalom and Karni crossings, the military
said.
By late evening, Palestinian militants had fired more than 20 rockets and
mortars into Israel, several of them during the humanitarian respite from 0800
to 1100 GMT.
The number of rockets appears to be dwindling, compared to the approximately 50
fired in the earlier days of the offensive.
Israel also kept up its airstrikes, carrying out more than 60 attacks.
Targets included 20 smuggling tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt border, and nine squads
of gunmen, a military spokeswoman said.
Targets destroyed earlier in overnight air strikes were mostly houses of Hamas
activists, were rockets were stored and tunnels hidden, a spokesman said.
As the Israeli ground troops continued to encircle Gaza City, heavy gunbattles
were also taking place east of Khan Younis, in the south and east of Jabaliya
and Beit Lahiya, in the north, Palestinian witnesses told local radio stations.
The Israeli ground troops, who since Sunday for the first time included reserve
soldiers, have so far avoided pushing deeper into populated areas, where Hamas
is believed to have a strategic advantage. But they are making
"limited" advances, witnesses said.
Both the armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad faction claimed in separate
statements sent to journalists that they had managed to "block"
Israeli advances deeper into southern and eastern Gaza City.
But the Israeli military said it was at this stage not trying to penetrate
densely populated areas.
The Palestinian toll on day 17 of Israel's Gaza offensive stands at 905 killed
and 4,100 injured, said Gaza emergency services chief Mo'aweya Hassanein.
Thirteen Israelis have been killed and dozens injured.
Israel launched the offensive in a bid to end more than seven years of rocket
and mortar attacks from Gaza at its southern towns and villages.
According to figures from the Israeli Defence Ministry, about 400 of the dead
are members of Hamas' armed wing and security forces. It said that as the
offensive was in its third week, a total of 2,200 targets throughout Gaza have been hit, among them some 260 smuggling tunnels.
Palestinian militants fired more than 642 rockets into Israel during that time, some 90 of them imported, Russian-type Grads.
Livni maintained the Gaza offensive had hurt Hamas' ability to fire rockets
into Israel and "changed the equation" between Israel and the radical Islamic movement ruling Gaza.
It had also restored Israel's "deterrence" against militant factions
seeking to attack it - Hamas now understands that Israel will act
"wildly" to any such attacks against it, she said.
"I don't accept that in a war against terror the UN decides when to
stop," the defiant Israeli foreign minister told Israel Radio Monday
morning.
She insisted that according to her estimate, the international community was
not expecting Israel to implement Thursday's UN security council ceasefire
resolution "immediately."
Israel, she said, was now acting to prevent Hamas from stocking up on new
long-range rockets and wanted both Egyptian and international assistance in
stopping weapons-smuggling to Gaza, which she said had to be blocked "also
beyond Egypt."
"One has to understand it begins in Iran," she said.
Caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he hoped to see a quick end to the
offensive, but stressed it would go on until Hamas completely ceased its rocket
fire and until smuggling tunnels were decimated. We are "closer than in
the past" to achieving quiet in southern Israel and to ending weapons smuggling
into Gaza, he told students at a French school just south-east of Tel Aviv.
He added Israel was not at war with the people of Gaza and
"apologized" for every innocent child or adult killed in the strip.
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