Hamas threatens revenge after attacks kill 15 in Gaza
Israel's government is to rule out contact with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and declare the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority a ‘hostile entity,’ an Israeli government spokesman said Sunday.
The security Cabinet, a small group of top officials, recommended Sunday that Israel cut all ties with the PA, including Abbas, ruling out the possibility that Israel would negotiate with the moderate Palestinian president in an effort to bypass the Islamist Hamas group, spokesman Asaf Shariv said.
As the armed wing of Hamas threatened to avenge the killing of 15 Palestinians in weekend strikes on the Gaza Strip, Israel's acting premier, Ehud Olmert, pledged there would be no let-up in military operations as long as militants continued to fire rockets from the territory.
‘One thing must be clear: Whoever fires Qassam rockets, whoever is engaged in terrorist activity, is a legitimate target and will be dealt with without hesitation by the security forces,’ Olmert told a Cabinet meeting.
Israel has already persuaded the European Union and United States to cut direct aid payments to the cash-strapped PA.
The prospects of a Hamas U-turn looked particularly dim Sunday after its armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, vowed to avenge the Israeli attacks. ‘The Zionist enemy will pay a high price and will drink from the same cup from which our people drink day and night,’ it warned in a statement.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyya held his own emergency Cabinet meeting Sunday to discuss the weekend of violence, the deadliest since Hamas's sweeping victory in a January parliamentary election.
Spokesman Ghazi Hamad said after the meeting that the government would lobby the United Nations in a bid to halt Israel's attacks.
‘The Cabinet wanted to know why the U.S. and EU do not condemn these Israeli massacres while at the same time they are halting the aid to the Palestinian people,’ he said.
The latest victim of the violence was a 29-year-old taxi driver, Yasser Abu Jarad, killed by a tank shell near a national security post in the Beit Hanun region of the northern Gaza Strip as he dropped off members of a military unit. Another 23 people were wounded in other strikes during the course of the day.
A series of air strikes on the Gaza Strip Friday night and Saturday left 14 people dead.
Violence also flared in the West Bank when a wanted Palestinian gunman was shot dead during an Israeli raid near Bethlehem, and two female students were wounded by gunfire in Nablus.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Finance Minister Omar Abdel Razek said in interviews published Sunday that the Hamas-led government's financial crisis is worse than he thought and he does not know when he will be able to pay salaries for the government's 140,000 workers.
Haniyya acknowledged last week that his government was broke and had missed its April 1 pay date.
At the time, Abdel Razek said Hamas was in touch with Gulf Arab countries to raise money and expected to pay the salaries by April 15. But in interviews to Palestinian newspapers Sunday, Abdel Razek said he no longer expects to meet even that target.
In Gaza City, government spokesman Ghaza Hamad said officials were in touch with Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, and other Arab sources to raise money to pay the salaries. ‘We have received positive signs in this regard,’ he said.
Palestinian officials said Arab Bank, the largest financial institution in the Palestinian territories, also has asked the government to withdraw its money, fearing it could be sanctioned for dealing with Hamas. Arab Bank did not return calls.
The government is the biggest employer in the West Bank and Gaza , and its salaries support about one-third of the Palestinian population. - Agencies