Israel strikes Gaza again
By Sakher Abu El Oun in Gaza City
27sep05
ISRAEL has launched more air strikes in Gaza despite Hamas saying it would halt rocket attacks, casting a shadow over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's bid to stave off a leadership challenge.
The Israeli air force conducted six overnight raids and bombed a field used as a missile launch site by militants in an upsurge of violence that has put in doubt an expected summit between Mr Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas.
Desperate to deflect accusations from his leadership rival Benjamin Netanyahu that his decision to pull troops out of Gaza a fortnight ago had bolstered the Islamist movement Hamas, Mr Sharon's camp said the air strikes and a series of mass arrests had forced the Islamists into a climbdown.
But the spike in violence appeared to deflate Mr Sharon's argument that leaving Gaza would ease friction with the Palestinians and strengthened former premier Netanyahu's hopes of ousting him from the helm of their Likud party, which was voting to decide on the date of a leadership ballot.
Gaza-based militants had fired dozens of rockets into Israel over the weekend, with the Palestinian Authority doing little to stop the barrage.
After an embarrassed Mr Sharon gave his army carte blanche to stop the attacks, Hamas said yesterday its fighters would hold their fire.
"Under our commitment to the national agreement made in Cairo to a cooling down period until the end of 2005, the movement announces it has stopped its operations from the Gaza Strip against the Zionist occupation," Mahmud Zahar, the Hamas leader in its Gaza stronghold, said.
His announcement, however, did not prevent a further six overnight raids on targets that the Israeli army said were used to make or store weapons.
Israeli jets repeatedly broke the sound barrier over Gaza City and the air force bombed an open field in northern Gaza that it said had been used to fire rockets.
Although two members of Hamas and two Islamic Jihad militants were killed in weekend air strikes, there were no reports of casualties in the latest raids.
