GAZA: Israel launched air strikes against Palestinian targets across the Gaza Strip on Sunday and said it would continue an open-ended offensive after rebuffing a ceasefire proposed by Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas. Israeli leaders said the military would press on with air and ground assaults until Palestinian militants released Corporal Gilad Shalit, a soldier abducted in a cross-border raid on June 25, and halted rocket fire on Israeli cities. It is a war for which it is impossible to set a timetable, Israel Radio quoted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as telling his cabinet. He repeated, the report said, his refusal to negotiate a prisoner release with militants in exchange for the soldier. Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat called on international aid organizations to help avert human catastrophe in Gaza. Israeli forces have destroyed a main power station there and killed about 50 people, including some 20 civilians, local residents said. Meanwhile, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit urged the European Union on Thursday to exert all efforts to bring an end to the violence in Gaza, the official MENA agency reported. Abul-Gheit has expressed the urgency to exert all efforts to bring an end to the Israeli offensive in the Gaza strip and a return to calm, MENA quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying. This would allow the EU monitors to return to work at the Rafah crossing and [allow] the reopening of the crossing to let Palestinians through, he said. MENA said that Abul-Gheit had spoken with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and his Finnish counterpart Erkki Tuomioja, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, to discuss the situation in Gaza and the problem of the Palestinians stranded on the Egyptian-Palestinian border. The European Union has deployed observers at Rafah at the request of the Palestinian Authority and Israel to monitor agreements on border traffic. The border reopened last November, two months after Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip following a 38-year occupation, under an Israeli-Palestinian agreement brokered by the United States and allowing for EU monitors. The terminal, however, has been closed since June 25 when Palestinians attacked an Israeli army post near the Gaza border, killing two soldiers and abducting another to spark the worst Middle East crisis in months. At least 41 Palestinians have been killed since Israel on Wednesday launched a large-scale incursion into the Gaza Strip in order to free the Israeli soldier and end militant rocket fire. At least three militants were wounded in an early morning air strike near the Karni commercial crossing between Gaza and Israel, Palestinian medics and police said. Israel also bombed a key bridge in northern Gaza, despite an appeal from the United Nations to stop targeting the strip s already badly damaged infrastructure. The army said the goal was to prevent militants from transporting Qassam rockets to launch sites. Let them return the soldier home safely, stop the Qassams, then no problem, we leave Gaza, Israeli Cabinet Minister Meir Shetreet said on Israel Radio. Rocket strikes from the Gaza Strip, territory Israel quit last year in a pullout of troops and settlers, continued. In the latest attacks, a rocket landed in a street in the Israeli town of Sderot, wounding one person, the army said. A second rocket slammed into a house in the border town and three people were treated for shock. Hamas armed wing said it launched the rockets. Earlier in southern Gaza, Israel bombed a militant training camp. No one was hurt. Israel killed seven Palestinians, including a 6-year-old girl and a policeman, on Saturday, Palestinian witnesses said. The Israeli military said it had targeted militants. Whatever happens, whatever mediation take place, their soldier must not be freed. His blood is not dearer than ours, a Palestinian woman said at the funeral of the girl and the child s mother and brother. Witnesses said they were killed by an Israeli missile that struck their house. Israel launched the offensive on June 28 to press the Hamas-led government, already on the brink of financial collapse from a Western aid embargo, to help free Shalit. One Israeli soldier has been killed since the operation began. Israeli tanks left much of the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday but soldiers remained in the southern part of the territory and have deployed close to the outskirts of Gaza City. Haniya said Israel s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a halt to military actions could make it easy for us to end the crisis over Shalit. Major-General Yoav Galant, chief of the Israeli military s southern command, said he saw no reason to stop the offensive as long as militants continued to hold Shalit. We will soon begin operations in other places, Galant told Israeli media. He said troops could continue to operate in Gaza for a month, two months and more, if needed. The offensive has been criticized by the European Union and United Nations, but those organizations wield far less influence on Israel than its main ally, the United States. The Islamist Hamas and other militant groups have demanded Israel make the first move by releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the soldier. Shetreet said to do so would be political suicide for Olmert s government. It would be equivalent to boosting Hamas s political power 100-fold, the Israeli cabinet minister told Israel Radio. Agencies
