- Title: MIDEAST: Israeli PM says will he will press ahead with Gaza raids
- Date: 11th July 2006
- Summary: WIDE SHOT AMBULANCE ARRIVING AT HOSPITAL; TWO DEAD BODIES BEING REELED INSIDE HOSPITAL; MOTHER OF ONE OF THE DEAD CRYING OUTSIDE; VIEW OF THREE DEAD BODIES IN MORGUE; WIDE CROWD OF PEOPLE BEBEATH SIGN READING 'ALSHIFA HOSPITAL' (5 SHOTS)
- Embargoed: 26th July 2006 13:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: Domestic Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA6ENZQGXKZ8AQHWU5KK1QQXK7W
- Story Text: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected on Monday (July 10, 2006) international criticism of Israel's offensive in Gaza and demands by militants to free Palestinian prisoners in exchange for an abducted Israeli soldier.
A series of Israeli air strikes in Gaza killed eight Palestinians, at least four of them militants.
Olmert, speaking to foreign media, said operations in Gaza to press for the soldier's release and an end to cross-border rocket attacks against Israel would continue indefinitely.
He also reaffirmed his commitment to his plan to redraw the Jewish settlement map in the occupied West Bank unilaterally in the absence of peace talks with the Palestinians, but acknowledged "this will be difficult".
Olmert told reporters that he will not release prisoners for the trade of Corporal Gilad Shalit to Hamas, the 19-year-old tank gunner abducted in Israel on June 25 and taken to Gaza by militants who tunnelled under a border fence.
Militant groups, including the armed wing of the governing Hamas movement that kidnapped Shalit, have demanded Israel free more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Olmert has said he would not bend to what he termed extortion.
At a rare news conference in Damascus after Olmert spoke in Jerusalem, Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Meshaal said the Palestinian people are united on the insistence to swap the captured soldier with prisoners in the jails of the Zionist enemy calling the soldier a prisoner of war.
Israeli leaders have hinted strongly that Israel, which pulled troops and settlers out of Gaza last year, could kill Meshaal and other Hamas leaders if any harm came to Shalit.
Lashing out at the European Union, which has been outspoken in its criticism of Israel's ground and air assaults, Olmert said the bloc should have focused instead on daily home-made rocket fire by militants in Gaza against the Jewish state, rockets have cause minimum casualties and damage.
More than 55 Palestinians, including about 20 civilians, have been killed since the Israeli offensive began, Gaza residents said. At least two of the air strikes on Monday targeted militants as they prepared to fire rockets into Israel.
Olmert said Israel had "no particular desire to topple" the Hamas-led government despite the arrest by the Israeli military of dozens of Hamas officials and its Gaza raids.
In Gaza city, Palestinian female militants displayed their weapons on Monday (July 10) amid an Israeli offensive launched in Gaza to free an abducted soldier and halt rocket fire.
Some dozen women wearing camouflage uniform and gripping rifles marched through Gaza city in a show of force as Israeli tanks continued to push deep into Gaza.
"We announce today from here that we have rearranged the Al Aqsa Brigades female suicide unit. To stand in the face of this aggression against our beloved Strip and our valuable nation of Palestine," said a masked spokeswoman, Im El Abed for the female members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement.
Militants in Gaza fired several rockets into Israel on Monday, causing no casualties.
The salvoes have raised new questions in Israel over Olmert's "realignment plan" to evacuate isolated Jewish settlements in the West Bank while strengthening large blocs.
Olmert said he had not changed his "basic commitment" to the blueprint, which Palestinians have condemned as effective annexation of land they want for a state.
The plan has been largely sidelined by events in Gaza and met with scepticism by some world leaders, who have voiced opposition to unilateral moves. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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