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    Israel Launches Offensive in Gaza City; Palestinians Fire Rockets into Sderot
    The Associated Press

    Tuesday 21 November 2006

Hamas commander killed in gun battle.

    Gaza City, Gaza Strip - The Israeli army moved into Gaza City early Tuesday, killing a local Hamas leader and an elderly woman in a gunbattle that erupted after troops tried to arrest the commander, the Islamic group and the military said.

    Palestinian militants fired at least two rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot, critically wounding one person, Israeli rescue services said. One rocket landed about a half-mile from a convoy carrying the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, who was touring the town.

    Taking up sniper positions on rooftops in Gaza City's Zeitoun neighborhood, troops moved on the home of Wael Hassanin, the local commander in the ruling Palestinian group, witnesses said.

    Hamas gunmen flocked to the area as troops called on loudspeakers for Hassanin and his brother, Ibrahim, to surrender, said the militants' mother, who identified herself only as Umm Mahmoud. Shooting broke out between the gunmen and the Israeli forces, who were backed by dozens of tanks and armored vehicles.

    Wael Hassanin, 26, was killed in the fighting, Hamas said in a statement. His brother was arrested, their mother said. A 70-year-old woman was also killed in the battle, Palestinian medical officials said.

    The military operation, which began at about 2 a.m., was part of the latest Israeli attempt to halt Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza. In the hours before the offensive, Gaza militants fired at least 25 homemade rockets into Israel, the groups said in statements. An Israeli woman was killed in one rocket strike last week.

    After dawn Tuesday, Israeli troops spread out into a second area of Gaza City, taking up positions east of the Jabaliya neighborhood, an area militants often use to fire rockets.

    Israeli bulldozers plowed through farms, ripping up irrigation systems and destroying greenhouses and fields, Palestinian security officials said. A transformer that provides about 60 percent of the power to the Zeitoun neighborhood was destroyed.

    The army confirmed that there was an ongoing operation in the city, but declined to provide further details.

    Israel Steps up Pressure on Gaza

    The Israeli army has increased its military pressure on Gaza in recent weeks, launching a largely ineffective operation in the northern town of Beit Hanoun earlier this month. The air force has been targeting militants and areas where arms are believed stored.

    After nightfall Monday, two Hamas militants were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a car in Gaza City, Hamas officials said. The Israeli military said it targeted a car carrying "terrorist activists."

    After the airstrike, Palestinians streamed to a house in Gaza City, saying the owner, a Hamas activist, had received a warning from Israel that the house was to be targeted. Such demonstrations foiled three previous Israeli attacks on houses in recent days.

    The violence in Gaza has been accompanied in recent months by increasing poverty brought on by international sanctions slapped on the Hamas-led government that took power in March.

    The United States, Europe and other Western countries cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority, demanding the Islamic group recognize Israel, accept existing peace deals and renounce violence. Hamas has rejected the conditions.

    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah Party head who was elected separately, had hoped to convince Western countries to lift the boycott by establishing a government of experts to replace the Hamas-led body. But on Monday Fatah officials suddenly announced that months of negotiations had broken down without agreement on the key issues.

    It wasn't clear whether the suspension was the sign of a real crisis or simply a negotiating tactic by Abbas' weakened Fatah Party.

    Hamas officials denied any serious trouble and late Monday Abbas again held talks in Gaza with Haniyeh, in a meeting described by officials as cordial.

    In Damascus, Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal held talks with Abbas envoy Ahmed Qureia, but the meeting focused on proposals for bringing Hamas into the PLO, a separate issue that has long been under discussion without progress.

    Go to Original

    Peace Process On Pause
    By Seth Ackerman
    TomPaine.com

    Tuesday 21 November 2006

    Palestinian leaders are once again in talks on forming a national unity government to end the international siege that has crippled life in the occupied territories. But while meetings between President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas representatives are happening in cities like Cairo and Amman, the real decisions will be made in Washington.

    Since Hamas' victory in last January's parliamentary elections, the policy of the "international community" has actually been set in the Oval Office. Diplomatic contacts have been frozen, peace talks are indefinitely deferred and international aid has been halted. Even as conditions deteriorate in the territories and fighting between Israel and Palestinian groups escalates, Washington insists there will be no change in policy until Hamas signs on to its famous three demands: It must recognize Israel, renounce violence and sign up to the Road Map.

    The media have portrayed Bush's demands as a way of forcing Hamas to moderate its stance so that peace negotiations with Israel can resume. But the truth is almost exactly the opposite. Over the past year or two, Hamas' political leadership has pushed the movement towards an unprecedented degree of diplomatic flexibility, despite its continuing militant rhetoric. Last winter, the party campaigned on a platform of supporting peace talks led by Abbas and party leaders have repeatedly pushed for a mutual cease-fire with Israel. While refusing to recognize Israel itself, Hamas' government program calls for a national referendum on any peace deal that grants recognition to the Jewish state.

    But that is precisely what worries Jerusalem and Washington. In any negotiations that happen while Hamas is in power, "the Palestinian positions will stiffen enormously," as Ha'aretz 's Danny Rubinstein wrote last year. Yet with Bush's strong support, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert came into office with a plan to keep a permanent grip over East Jerusalem and the three large settlement blocs surrounding it, while evacuating the smaller isolated settlements in the West Bank. Whatever else it might support, Hamas would never give its consent to Olmert's plan.

    Hamas' leadership has been deeply divided over how just far to go in softening the party's stance in exchange for international legitimacy and aid. The strategy of moderates like Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has been to nudge the group as far as possible towards a tacit acceptance of Israel without provoking dissent from the group's more militant members. In exchange, he hopes to win recognition, aid and period of calm, to prove to the hardliners in his own party that pragmatism will yield benefits. On a recent trip to London, Haniyeh's advisor, Ahmad Yousef, pitched the idea of a 10-year cease-fire with Israel. "We need to change people's minds on how they look at the conflict, and it will take time," he told The Guardian . "The climate will change if we have a period of peace."

    But the Bush administration has deliberately set demands it knows Hamas can't swallow. As The New York Times reported last February, the U.S. officials who drafted the conditions "do not expect Hamas to meet them." Instead, they are determined to force out the elected Palestinian government - peacefully if possible, but if necessary, by fomenting a Palestinian civil war. At a recent meeting of the international diplomatic "Quartet," General Keith Dayton, the American security envoy, pitched the idea of building up a "Special Presidential Guard" around Abbas to crush Hamas militias in house-to-house fighting. European diplomats at the meeting were appalled, but the Americans are reported to have already begun assembling the force.

    Bush's moves to block a return to the peace table accelerated in September after Palestinian negotiators reached a breakthrough in talks on forming a national unity government. At the risk of alienating hardline elements in his own party, Prime Minister Haniyeh decided to accept the 2002 Arab League peace plan - which calls for full peace and normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for a withdrawal to the 1967 borders - as the diplomatic stance for the new joint government.

    Hanyieh was encouraged by signs that key European leaders were willing to resume contacts with a Palestinian government that embraced the formula. But within days, Bush held a White House meeting with Abbas' advisors to warn that the Arab League plan is "not enough" and that Washington would refuse cooperation with a government formed on those terms. Desperate for U.S. support, Abbas backtracked, insisting publicly that Hamas accept Bush's three conditions in order for a unity government to go forward.

    Since then, the political initiative has returned to the more hardline elements in Hamas led by Damascus-based exile leader Khaled Meshaal. Locked in a rivalry with the increasingly popular prime minister, Meshaal has signaled his interest in a government of technocrats chosen jointly by Fatah and Hamas, which would have the effect of sidelining Haniyeh. Talks are now underway for the so-called "non-political" government and Haniyeh has said he is willing to resign if the move will bring eased conditions for the Palestinian people.

    But once again, the decision rests with President Bush. No deal will go forward without guarantees that the international siege will be lifted. With Democrats in full support of Bush's Mideast policy and Europeans unable to influence Washington, the stalemate could degenerate until the conflict explodes yet again.

    --------

    Seth Ackerman is a contributing writer to FAIR. His piece for the October issue of Fair's magazine Extra!, "Mixed Signals," covers the history of misrepresentation of the Hamas government's stance towards negotiations and peaceable co-existence with Israel.