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Israel, Hamas defy truce calls

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-01-10 09:05

GAZA - Israel pressed on with a punishing Gaza offensive and Hamas sent more rocket salvoes into southern Israeli towns in a two-week-old war that continued to defy international efforts to stop it.

An explosion is seen in the northern Gaza Strip during Israel's offensive January 9, 2009. [Agencies]

The Israeli military said it carried out more than 70 air strikes in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Friday against militants, rocket launching sites and weapons caches, and that the Islamist group fired at least 30 rockets across the border.

Medical officials in the Gaza Strip said the Palestinian death toll had risen to 784. Hamas officials said more than a third were children. Ten Israeli soldiers have been killed, as well as three civilians hit by Hamas rocket fire.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert dismissed as "unworkable" a binding U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an "immediate and durable" ceasefire.

Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip said they were weighing the resolution but objected they had not been consulted. The group said it had sent three of its leaders from Gaza to Cairo to discuss a separate Egyptian ceasefire proposal.

Diplomats said Israel and Egypt were far apart on the plan.

In a telephone call to Olmert, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "expressed disappointment that the violence is continuing on the ground in disregard" of the Security Council resolution, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said.

Senior U.N. officials have no direct contacts with Hamas but Montas said Ban would convey the same message to the group indirectly.

Israel's security cabinet debated for the second time in three days whether to send in reservists for a push into the Gaza Strip's towns and cities. There was no word on the outcome.

"I can't go into operational details. The military pressure on Hamas will continue," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Olmert.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which distributes much of the aid in Gaza, kept some of its operations suspended on Friday after the death of one of its drivers in Israel's offensive.

U.N. aid workers planned to resume their movements in Gaza's rubble-strewn streets as soon as possible after receiving Israeli assurances that they were not being targeted, a U.N. spokeswoman said in New York.

WHITE HOUSE BLAMES HAMAS

The United States, which abstained in the U.N. vote, offered further public support for Israel's military goals.

"This situation will not improve until Hamas stops lobbing rockets into Israel," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

He said President George W. Bush had voiced his concern to Olmert about the humanitarian situation and the loss of civilian lives during the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip.

With the Palestinian civilian death toll already in the hundreds, Israeli actions have drawn outraged denunciations from the Red Cross, U.N. agencies and Arab and European governments.

Hamas wants any ceasefire deal to include the ending of Israel's crippling economic blockade of the Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from the territory.

Israel's key demands are for a complete halt to Hamas rocket fire and for international guarantees to stop the Islamist group rearming via smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt.

Regev said talks with Egypt over the ceasefire proposal would continue, but he did not say when.

The Egyptian initiative, also sponsored by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, may be in trouble, however.

"There is a growing sense that the Egyptian-French plan is not going to work," a senior European diplomat told Reuters.

European and Israeli diplomats said Egypt was objecting to proposals that foreign troops and technicians be stationed on its 15-km (9-mile) border with the Gaza Strip to prevent arms smuggling.

Instead, diplomats said, Egypt was ready to accept technical assistance for its own forces on the border. Israel says the Egyptians have failed in the past to prevent Hamas building up an arsenal of hundreds of Soviet-designed Katyusha missiles.

The onslaught in Gaza, where many civilians including children have been killed, has solid support among Israelis, one month before a parliamentary election. A poll on Friday showed over 90 percent support among Israel's Jewish majority.

For the third day running, the Israeli army held fire in the afternoon to let Gazans stock up on food and other supplies.

The U.N. resolution called for "unimpeded provision" and distribution of aid to Gaza, home to 1.5 million people, as well as measures to halt arms smuggling and open the borders.