HEAVY FIGHTING IN GAZA; ISRAEL SLAUGHTERS DOZENS OF CIVILIANS
March 2nd, 2008Via: Reuters:
Israeli forces killed 61 people in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, the bloodiest day for Palestinians since an uprising against Israeli occupation began in 2000.
Almost half the dead were civilians, including children.
Israel, which lost two soldiers, seemed ready to press home its fiercest air and ground assault since it pulled troops back to the borders of the coastal enclave in 2005. It blamed rocket attacks by the Islamist Hamas movement for provoking four days of fighting, in which 96 Palestinians have been killed.
The U.N. Security Council prepared to meet in emergency session. A U.N. official in Gaza appealed for international action to end the “inhuman suffering” of its 1.5 million people and said killing women and children would not help Israel.
U.S. President George W. Bush sounded more supportive of his Israeli allies. While regretting all loss of life, his spokesman said: “There is a clear distinction between terrorist rocket attacks that target civilians and action in self-defence.”
More: Guardian: Israeli Minister Threatens to Unleash “Holocaust” in Gaza
Israel’s deputy defence minister yesterday warned his country was close to launching a huge military operation in Gaza and said Palestinians would bring on themselves a “bigger shoah,” using the Hebrew word usually reserved for the Holocaust.
The choice of vocabulary from Matan Vilnai, an often outspoken former army general, was unusually grave – the word is not normally used for anything other than the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews.
Vilnai was speaking about his government’s plans to tackle the continued firing of makeshift rockets, known as Qassams, from Gaza.
“The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves,” he said, in a telephone interview with army radio yesterday morning.
His spokesman later tried to play down the force of his language, saying he meant only “disaster”.
“He did not mean to make any allusion to the genocide,” the spokesman said.
