Deadline looms for Israeli hostage in Gaza

Israeli military armoured vehicles travel in Gaza Strip, after crossing the border from Nizmit Hill, July 3, 2006. (Yannis Behrakis/Reuters)

July 3, 2006

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) -Israel built up forces at the edge of the Gaza Strip and fired a missile at a pro-Hamas Palestinian university on Tuesday after rejecting a deadline set by militants to free prisoners in exchange for a captured soldier.

Three factions in Gaza, among them the armed wing of the governing Hamas Islamist group, have given Israel until 6 a.m. -- threatening that it should respond by then if it values the life of the captured soldier.

Refusing to discuss a prisoner swap, Israel has launched its first offensive in the Gaza Strip since quitting the territory last summer and massed troops and armor for a possible expansion of the ground operation.

Palestinian security sources said the number of Israeli armored vehicles in the area had doubled to about 30.

An Israeli air strike in northern Gaza killed one militant and wounded two others. The army said they were planting bombs.

In Gaza City, an Israeli missile hit the Islamic University, a Hamas stronghold. The army said it had attacked a building used by Hamas to plan attacks.

Israel has also hinted that it could assassinate leaders of Hamas, whose government is already under an international aid embargo, if 19-year-old Corporal Gilad Shalit is not freed. He was captured in a raid across the border from Gaza on June 25.

"Woe betide them if they dare harm Gilad Shalit," Justice Minister Haim Ramon told Israeli television on Monday.

"The sky will fall upon them," he said.

The groups first called on Israel to release 400 Palestinian women and youths from its prisons for information about Shalit.

Hamas's Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, the Popular Resistance Committees and the previously unknown Islamic Army subsequently demanded Israel free 1,000 prisoners.

Unless the demands were met, the factions said, "the enemy will bear full responsibility for future consequences."

DIPLOMACY BLOCKED

Mediation by Egypt has failed to bear fruit.

Hamas, which advocates Israel's destruction, does not want to lose face by freeing Shalit without getting something in return. Israel says it does not want to set a precedent that could lead to more abductions.

Hamas sources said Western diplomats, whom they did not name, had told the group that Israel had prepared a 13-man hit list headed by exiled leader Khaled Meshaal and including Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar.

Israel sent troops into the southern Gaza Strip last Wednesday. Tanks pushed just inside the north on Monday in a possible prelude to a deeper incursion into the area, often used by militants firing rockets into Israel.

In New York, the Palestinian United Nations observer urged the U.N. Security Council to compel Israel to end its offensive and free dozens of Hamas officials detained last week.

Riyad Mansour appealed to the Security Council not to "abandon its responsibilities in the face of this rising threat to the already too fragile and unstable security situation in the Middle East."
He did not mention the capture of Shalit.

Western countries, which have cut off aid to the Hamas-led government, have urged the release of the soldier and called on Israel to show restraint.

Israeli aircraft have carried out nightly attacks on Gaza. At least seven Palestinian militants have been killed in the overall operation. A Palestinian official has quoted mediators as saying Shalit was alive after being treated for wounds.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Israeli troops entered a Palestinian police station and seized two men suspected of involvement in the killing of a Jewish settler last week.

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Just a little note Israel in trying to cover their bottom to justice murder, calling everyone militant’s’; they really need to come up with a new set of lies, these you can see through.

Since this whole affair does look more like a lie which whirled around and Israeli soldier named Corporal Gilad Shalit’s life, I do hope Shalit’s family has his shroud ready?

I do agree with many people that this whole affair had nothing to do with a life but a horrific way to try to topple the Hamas government, which was a legal elected government of the Palestinian people whether Israel or the United States liked it or not.

And as for the prisoner’s, I do hope they are freed; but I am seriously in doubt with the fact they are in Israeli prison’s.

The Israeli’s have proved themselves again not to be worth the BM in their toilets, really need to flush the smell is getting rancid!

Link:

US watching Mideast standoff 'carefully'