Despite Air Force Strikes on Gaza, Qassam and Mortar Fire Continue

by Anshel Pfeffer, Natasha Mozgov aya and Avi Issacharoff
Haaretz
April 4, 2010

http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/1658/despite-air-force-strikes-on-gaza-qassam

Despite strikes by the Israel Air Force on the Gaza Strip early Friday, militants in the coastal territory continued to fire Qassam rockets and mortars into Israel over the weekend.

The air force reportedly struck four facilities in Gaza used as arms storage and weapons manufacturing sites. Palestinian reports indicated that an observation point in the town of Beit Lahia was also struck, along with a factory in Gaza City, where two children were apparently lightly hurt. In all, five Palestinians were said to have been injured in the overnight strikes.

A Qassam rocket and two mortars landed in the Western Negev over the weekend. No casualties or damages were reported. A Color Red missile alert siren was sounded in Ashkelon, forcing residents of the southern coastal city to take shelter. The alert was ultimately deemed a false alarm.

Meanwhile, a 15-year-old Gazan who Palestinians had claimed was killed by Israeli fire last week, returned home alive and well Friday after spending several days in Egyptian custody.

Israeli military officials denied Palestinian media reports that troops had shot and killed Mohammed Al-Farmawi of Rafah as he was trying to cross from Gaza into Israel. A number of Palestinian news agencies, however, reported that he had been found dead by paramedics east of the non-operational Gaza International Airport in Dahaniyeh.

Farmawi's family expressed "overwhelming happiness" that he was unharmed, the Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported.

Armed Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip recently detained several Palestinians who had fired Qassam rockets at Israel, the London-based newspaper Asharq Al Awsat reported yesterday.

The Hamas forces arrested several militants linked to a radical Islamist group in the northern Strip, the report said, an area in which the ruling movement has recently bolstered its security presence to prevent rocket fire.

The head of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said his government is in contact with other Palestinian factions to reach an agreement over a rocket cease-fire - in order to, in his words, "protect our nation."

Meanwhile, however, Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal said in Damascus that all options for confronting Israel remain open, including war. "We will do everything to obtain the rights stolen from us, including confrontation with the enemy," he told journalists, adding that in the event of war, Hamas militants would fight "like men."

Yesterday Meshal hosted the leaders of a number of Palestinian opposition factions at his Damascus home. Ahmed Jibril, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command, said his organization is interested in national reconciliation, but that the current Egyptian-brokered terms for such a resolution are unacceptable because, in his view, they violate Palestinians' rights.

The United States, Britain and France called on both Israel and the Palestinians to avoid escalating an already volatile situation.

Related Topics:  Palestinian Rockets  |  Anshel Pfeffer  |  Avi Issacharoff receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free jewish policy center mailing list