Israel bombards Gaza, US backs ceasefire proposal

Source: Agencies  |   2009-1-8  |     ONLINE EDITION

ISRAELI warplanes bombed targets across the Gaza Strip today and tanks advanced on Palestinian guerrillas as US backing for a truce proposal raised expectations of an end to the offensive.

Residents in Gaza described the overnight bombardments to the east of the city as among the heaviest of the 13-day-old offensive. In the south of the territory a phalanx of tanks advanced closer to the town of Khan Younis, witnesses said.

Although Israel pressed on with the offensive, it said it accepted the "principles" of a European-Egyptian ceasefire proposal. The United States urged Israel to study the plan.

"We believe a ceasefire is necessary," said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Israel's assault resumed after a brief pause yestersday to help Gaza's 1.5 million people stock up on much-needed supplies. It was the first break in the nearly two-week offensive in which medics say 658 Palestinians have been killed.

But with both George W. Bush's outgoing administration and President-elect Barack Obama speaking out on the need for peace, officials said Israel would send an envoy to Cairo to discuss how the Egyptian plan might be implemented.

That may take several days. In the meantime, Israeli military commanders appear determined to keep up the pressure on the ground, even if a decision on whether to launch a new phase by targeting militants in Gaza's urban centres was put off.

Rice echoed Israel's concerns that a deal must achieve its goal of stopping the Hamas Islamists who rule Gaza from hitting Israel with rockets. "It has to be a ceasefire that will not allow a return to the status quo," she said. Hamas said it was looking at the Egyptian plan, brokered by France, which addresses Israel's demand that Hamas be prevented from rearming through smuggling tunnels from Egypt and also addresses Hamas's call for an end to Israel's blockade of Gaza.

Twenty people were killed on Wednesday, medics said, including three children in an air strike on a car. It took the total of Palestinian deaths since Dec. 27 to at least 658 -- the bloodiest episode in decades of Israel-Palestinian conflict.

UN officials have said a quarter of the Palestinian dead were civilians, while other accounts put that proportion higher.

Ten Israelis have died in the past 13 days, seven of them soldiers, including four killed by "friendly" fire.


TRUCE TALK

Tuesday's killing by Israeli shells of 42 people, including women and children sheltering in a United Nations-run school in Jabalya refugee camp, intensified international pressure on Israel to call a halt. UN officials denied an Israeli army account that militants had been firing from the school.

Israel has said it will press on until Hamas can no longer hit its southern towns with rockets.

Israeli leaders, censured by voters over a costly war against Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas in 2006, face a parliamentary election in a month and will want to show the public the campaign in Gaza has met that objective.

However, US involvement of the kind that helped end the Lebanon war and which was perceived as absent in the first week of the Gaza fighting may indicate that, whatever the state of combat on the ground, a ceasefire could be on the cards.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: "There is a broad understanding on the general principles of a solution."

A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, cautioned: "Translating those principles into practical action is a challenge that is still ahead of us."

Obama, who has steered clear of involvement ahead of his inauguration on Jan. 20, said he would "engage immediately" on the Middle East situation once he took office.

Some Israeli analysts say Israel faces a deadline to wrap up its campaign by the time Obama is sworn in, or risk a strain in ties with Washington at the outset of the new administration.