Israeli gov’t demands international monitors

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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Israel demanded international monitors as a key term of any future truce with Gaza Strip militants, as its warplanes bombed the parliament building in Gaza City yesterday and its ships attacked coastline positions of the territory's Islamic Hamas rulers.

International agreement to set up such a force would give Israel a way to end its devastating, 6-day-old offensive against Hamas, even as thousands of Israeli ground troops massed along the border in anticipation of a possible land invasion. So far, the campaign to crush rocket fire on southern Israel has been conducted largely from the air, and a poll yesterday showed most Israelis aren't eager to see a ground push, according to an account by The Associated Press.

Military spokeswoman Maj. Avital Leibovich said preparations for a ground operation were complete. "The infantry, the artillery and other forces are ready. They're around the Gaza Strip, waiting for any calls to go inside," Leibovich said.

More than 400 Gazans have been killed and some 1,700 have been wounded since Israel embarked on its aerial campaign on Saturday, Gaza health officials said. The U.N. said the Gaza death toll includes more than 60 civilians, 34 of them children. Three Israeli civilians and one soldier have also died in rocket attacks that have reached deeper into Israel than ever before, bringing one-eighth of Israel's population within rocket range.

"We have no interest in a long war. We do not desire a broad campaign. We want quiet," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a meeting of mayors of southern Israeli cities yesterday. "We don't want to display our might, but we will employ it if necessary."

’Under conditions’
Olmert, who rebuffed a French proposal for a two-day timeout, won't agree to a truce unless international monitors take responsibility for enforcing it, government officials said. He's made this point in talks with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other world leaders who are pressing for an end to the violence, they added. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were confidential.

An Abbas confidant said the Palestinian president supported international involvement. "We are asking for a cease-fire and an international presence to monitor Israel's commitment to it," aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh said.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Hamas movement said yesterday it was accepting "under conditions" an EU proposal for a ceasefire with Israel around Gaza, according to an account by Agence France-Presse.

"Hamas accepts this initiative on the condition that the aggression stops, that the blockade is lifted, that all the border crossings are opened and that it gets international guarantees that the occupier will not restart its terrorist war," spokesman Fawzi Barhum said in a statement. "A ceasefire deal must be part of a global agreement including a ceasefire, the lifting of the blockade and the reopening of all the border crossings," he said.

The Rafah border terminal between Egypt and Gaza should no longer function under a restrictive 2005 agreement, he said.

The accord requires the presence at Rafah of European observers, video surveillance by Israel and representatives from President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority.

A statement by the European Union released after a foreign ministers meeting in Paris on Tuesday began by a demand of an "unconditional" stop to Hamas rocket attacks. "There must be an unconditional halt to rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel and an end to Israeli military action," the EU statement said.

Explosions
Huge explosions shook Gaza City yesterday as Israeli planes targeted three government buildings, including the parliament. Hospital officials said 25 wounded were evacuated from nearby houses. The military said aircraft also bombed smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border, part of an ongoing attempt to cut off Hamas' last lifeline to the world outside the embattled Palestinian territory.

Aircraft also went after Hamas police and their vehicles. Two people were killed when a car was blown up.

One pre-dawn strike targeting the house of a Hamas operative in northern Gaza killed a 35-year-old woman and wounded eight people, a Gaza Health Ministry official said.

Meanwhile, a senior leader of the Hamas movement, Nizar Rayan, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in its Gaza Strip stronghold, medics told Agence France-Presse yesterday. Rayan is the most senior Hamas official killed since Israel unleashed its bombardment against Gaza City on Saturday.