Israel warns of invasion of Gaza, Palestinians threatened with "Holocaust"
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- Written by BBC News BBC News
- Published: 29 February 2008 29 February 2008
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Matan Vilnai said the Palestinians risked a big disaster - using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.
Mr Vilnai said Israel would use all its might to defend itself, after rockets hit the city of Ashkelon, 10km (six miles) from Gaza.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said it was ready for a large-scale Israeli attack.
Israeli air strikes have killed about 30 Palestinians in the past three days.
Four Palestinian boys were killed in an Israeli raid as they played in a field in northern Gaza on Thursday. Several militants, including a Hamas commander, were also killed.
The string of attacks came a day after a rocket fired by Hamas killed an Israeli student on the outskirts of Sderot, about a mile from Gaza, the first such death in nine months.
Read more: Israel warns of invasion of Gaza, Palestinians threatened with "Holocaust"
A Match Made in Heaven: McCain and the End Timers
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- Written by SusanG on DailyKos SusanG on DailyKos
- Published: 28 February 2008 28 February 2008
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McCain won a key endorsement yesterday from the "Bring on Armageddon as fast as you can!" crowd, when John Hagee announced his support.
Read more: A Match Made in Heaven: McCain and the End Timers
Israel bombs Gaza after Hamas rocket attack, 12 Palestinians killed including 4 children
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- Written by Mark Tran and agencies Mark Tran and agencies
- Published: 28 February 2008 28 February 2008
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Israeli warplanes today struck Gaza, killing at least 12 Palestinians, including four children, a day after a rocket killed an Israeli man in the latest upsurge of violence.
Twenty-four Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza strip by Israel since yesterday, when a rocket attack on the border town of Sderot, an attack claimed by the Islamist Hamas group, killed an Israeli for the first time since May.
An Israeli helicopter attacked a police roadblock near the home of Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, wounding several people, Palestinian officials said.
The attack took place about 150 metres from Haniyeh's home in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. Haniyeh, who has been in hiding for several weeks, fearing Israeli assassination, was not believed to be in the area.
The Israeli army had no immediate comment. Most of the Palestinian dead were militants but also included six-month-old Mohammed al-Burai, who died in an air strike on the interior ministry.
Palestinian officials and medical workers said 10 civilians were among the dead. Four of them were boys, aged 10, 12, 13, 15, who were killed while playing football.
Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said the infant was the grandson of a guard living in a family home in the compound of an Unwra school struck in the attack by shrapnel and debris.
The boy's father carried his body, wrapped in a green Hamas flag, at a funeral attended by hundreds.
The latest wave of violence began yesterday when an Israeli air strike killed five Hamas militants in a van. Israeli officials said the dead included men who received weapons and explosives training in Iran. Local media reports quoted anonymous officials as saying the men were planning a large attack against Israel.
Hamas responded by firing more than 40 rockets into Israel, one of the heaviest barrages in months. One rocket landed in an Israeli college campus in Sderot, killing a 47-year-old father of four.
"We are at the height of the battle," the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said in Tokyo, where he met the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, before her visit next week to Israel and the occupied West Bank to try to push along peace talks.
But Olmert appeared to suggest a major Israeli ground operation in Gaza was not imminent, saying Israel's fight against militants was a "long process" and it had "no magic formula" to halt nearly daily cross-border rocket attacks.
Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's top leader in Gaza, said in a statement: "Repeated crimes by the Zionist occupation against our people and the targeting of children are proof that the leaders of the occupation are suffering from hysteria."
Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders have been in hiding for several weeks, fearing assassination by Israel. Israeli planes yesterday attacked Haniyeh's office as well as the interior ministry.
Hamas seized control of Gaza last year from the Fatah forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Israel has been holding peace talks with the Abbas government in the West Bank, but there has been little progress since the US-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, last November.
Fatah condemned both the rocket attacks from Gaza and Israel's air strikes.
"These stupid missiles being launched - firecrackers, but at the end they have killed Israeli civilians - we condemn this, clearly, openly, straightforwardly," the Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki said.
"But at the same time, we condemn all the Israeli incursions into Gaza, killing Palestinian civilians, destroying their houses, preventing them from having a normal life."
Gaza issues toxic water warning
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- Written by BBC News BBC News
- Published: 27 February 2008 27 February 2008
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The authority said Israel's blockade had delayed essential supplies, including chlorine, and there was now a risk of water being contaminated.
The authority said the situation could lead to a health disaster to Gaza's 1.5m inhabitants.
UN officials have asked Israel to lift the blockade. Israel says its actions are to counter militant rocket fire.
The Coastal Municipality Water Utility issued the warning in radio and newspaper advertisements, blaming Israel for the absence of equipment and chemicals for treating water.
It said there had been no deliveries of chlorine through the Israel-controlled goods crossing since 21 January.
Israel has tightened its blockade of the Gaza since the militant Hamas movement took control in June 2007.
Further restrictions on everything except humanitarian and medical supplies were imposed in recent weeks in response to continued rocket and mortar attacks on southern Israel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7267011.stm
Published: 2008/02/27 13:43:22 GMT
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Most Israelis want to hold talks with Hamas
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- Written by James Sturcke James Sturcke
- Published: 27 February 2008 27 February 2008
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