JERUSALEM, Dec. 27 — A day after two teenage boys were badly wounded by a rocket fired from Gaza, Israel ordered the military on Wednesday to resume attacks on Palestinians firing such rockets.
The order was issued a month after a cease-fire was declared between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza. The Palestinians promised to stop rocket fire on Nov. 26, and the Israelis promised not to carry out military activities inside Gaza.
But as of Wednesday night, according to the Israeli Army, 66 rockets had been launched toward Israel since then and 52 had landed there. The ruling militant group Hamas said it was respecting the cease-fire but was doing nothing to stop other militant groups, like Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, which is linked to Fatah, Hamas’s rival.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, encouraged by the United States to support the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and to restart talks with the Palestinians, had ordered the military not to respond, but political pressure to do so was growing. Mr. Olmert was being criticized from the left by his own defense minister, Amir Peretz of the Labor Party, and from the right by Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Likud.
That pressure heightened overnight, when a Qassam rocket launched by Islamic Jihad hit two 14-year-old boys walking home in Sderot, an Israeli border town. The youths were taken to a hospital in Ashkelon. One, Adir Ghasad, was in critical but stable condition, peppered with shrapnel, the hospital said; the other, Matan Cohen, was in serious condition. Matan had been injured once before by Qassam shrapnel, his friends told Israeli news media.
So on Wednesday morning Mr. Olmert ordered the military, including the air force, to resume action against those firing the rockets. The military will be permitted to strike before, while or after rockets are launched.
The military will not, however, be allowed to fire shells into open areas near the border to deter rocket-launching teams from entering them. Errant Israeli shells, usually from tanks or artillery, have in the past hit houses and other populated areas, killing uninvolved civilians. Nor will the air force be allowed to bomb weapons caches or individuals not involved in rocket firing.
Mr. Olmert said in a statement that otherwise, “Israel will continue to maintain the cease-fire and work with the Palestinian Authority so that immediate steps are taken to halt the Qassam firings.”
The cease-fire was intended to break the cycle of violence, but Palestinian rocket fire continued intermittently. Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa — which supposedly is loyal to Mr. Abbas, who has opposed the rocket fire as counterproductive — say they are responding to Israeli military actions in the occupied West Bank, an area not part of the truce.
Mr. Abbas had said that he had the agreement of all Palestinian factions for the cease-fire, but Islamic Jihad, largely directed by Iran, has never respected such an agreement, and on Wednesday threatened to increase the rocket fire.
The Hamas government spokesman, Ghazi Hamad, criticized the Israeli decision as aggression, but he added, “We still believe this agreement is alive, and both sides should respect this agreement because it is in the interest of our people.”
A Labor Party minister and former defense minister, Benjamin Eliezer, told Israel Radio: “We cannot restrain ourselves anymore. It’s good that we did, because the entire world saw that we did above and beyond, but we cannot turn an entire town into a graveyard.”
Mr. Netanyahu called on the government to take over northern Gaza and occupy the areas from which rockets are fired and to take control over the border of Gaza with Egypt to stop arms smuggling.
The Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, was in a snowy Jerusalem on Wednesday preparing for a summit meeting on Jan. 4 in Sharm el-Sheik, an Egyptian Red Sea resort, between Mr. Olmert and President Hosni Mubarak.
Egypt has been trying to advance talks with the Palestinians and to secure the release of an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who was captured in June, in return for more than 1,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails.
“We oppose the Qassam attacks on Israel,” Mr. Aboul Gheit said. “We hope that Israel will continue to show restraint. We need to continue with the peace process because that is the way to progress.”
Mr. Abbas was in Cairo on Wednesday, where he met with Mr. Mubarak.
He said after the meeting that when he met with Mr. Olmert on Saturday night, he proposed what he described as backdoor meetings with Mr. Olmert, The Associated Press reported.
“It is the right time to talk,” Mr. Abbas told reporters. “We have the idea of a backdoor channel between us and the Israelis, with the participation of one or all members of the quartet to discuss all the issues of the final status,” he said. The quartet members are the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations, which oversee the peace efforts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/wo...el&oref=slogin
The Hamas government spokesman, Ghazi Hamad, criticized the Israeli decision as aggression
Oh please, self-defense is aggression? They should just smile as Qassams are launched at them?