GAZA CITY, Sept 27: Israel vowed on Tuesday to continue targeting members of Palestinian groups and carried out more air raids in the Gaza Strip despite a pledge by the Islamic factions to cease their attacks.
Hamas, meanwhile, upped the stakes by releasing a video of an Israeli whom it said it had kidnapped in the Ramallah region of the West Bank and then killed.
The 11-second video which was distributed to media organisations in Gaza showed a blindfolded Sasson Nouriel, who came from the outskirts of Jerusalem, appeal in halting Arabic for Israel to release Palestinian prisoners.
Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz told reporters on a tour of an artillery unit deployed along the northern Gaza border: “If we don’t have quiet, the terror organisations will not know quiet.
“If (Hamas’s Gaza chief) Mahmud al-Zahar or Ismail Haniya or any of the others (Hamas leaders) continue firing Qassam rockets, we will send them to the place where both Rantissi and Yassin are,” he said.
Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was assassinated in an Israeli air strike in March 2004. His successor, Abdelaziz Rantissi, was also killed in a similar air strike several weeks later.
Mofaz’s comments came after the army arrested 91 Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists during an overnight sweep through the West Bank, an army spokesman said.
Ibrahim Abu al-Naja, the head of a committee grouping representatives of the armed Palestinian factions, said the organisations had agreed to stop attacks from Gaza, where Israel ended 38 years of military rule two weeks ago.
“All factions on the steering committee have agreed to stop armed resistance operations from the Gaza Strip to protect the interests of our people,” he told AFP.
Naja said the deal would protect Palestinians from a “catastrophe” at the hands of the army.
Following a meeting of the committee later on Tuesday, a panel member and Islamic Jihad leader, Saled el-Baatsh, said “we remain committed to ceasefire that we proclaimed in Cairo” in March. That was a reference to a deal struck in talks with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas.
Yet shortly after Baatsh spoke another homemade rocket was fired from Gaza on the nearby Israeli town of Sderot, a favourite target for militants, causing some damage but no casualties, an army spokeswoman said.
Hamas announced on Sunday it had ordered a halt to rocket attacks from Gaza. A senior Islamic Jihad source said on Tuesday that its armed wing had followed suit.
But Mofaz dismissed the factions’ pledge, saying the army would “continue to use all means necessary” to halt the rocket attacks.
“We will decide (what is quiet), not Mahmud al-Zahar and not anyone else,” he said.
Israeli air strikes have killed two Hamas and two Jihad militants since Saturday.
The spike of violence began after Hamas blamed a blast at a rally in northern Gaza on Israel which killed 15 Palestinians, and began firing a salvo of rockets into the Jewish state.
Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority said the explosion was caused by a missile which exploded inside a Hamas jeep.
Overnight, the air force bombed three bridges in northern Gaza that they said were used by militants to access rocket-launching sites.
Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina accused Israel of trying to destroy hopes of calm following its Gaza pullout.—AFP
