This is the ‘shock and awe’ part of the campaign, and it looks like the Israelis were pretty successful in taking out some good targets. They really worked the surprise factor in this operation. To me, the ground campaign is the one to watch, and Omert has a lot riding on this one. The memories of the 2006 campaign in Lebanon are still fresh, and you can bet that Hamas has studied the crap out of how Hezbollah worked the angles in that war. –Matt
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Israel pounds Gaza for second day
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
Reuters
Sunday, December 28, 2008; 9:23 AM
GAZA (Reuters) – Israel destroyed Hamas’s main Gaza security complex in an air strike on Sunday and prepared for a possible invasion of the territory after killing nearly 290 Palestinians in the opening rounds of a powerful offensive.
Israel said the campaign that began on Saturday was a response to almost daily rocket and mortar fire that intensified after Hamas, an Islamist group in charge of the coastal enclave Israel quit in 2005, ended a six-month ceasefire a week ago.
Despite the air attacks, militants fired some 80 rockets into Israel, emergency services said. In one of the longest-reaching salvoes, two rockets struck near Ashdod, a main port 30 km (18 miles) from Gaza, causing no casualties.
Israeli tanks deployed on the edge of the Gaza Strip, poised to enter the densely populated enclave of 1.5 million Palestinians. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s cabinet approved a call-up of 6,500 reservists, a government official said.
“Israel will continue (the campaign) until we have a new security environment in the south, when the population there will no longer live in terror and in fear of constant rocket barrages,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Olmert.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum urged Palestinian groups to use “all available means, including martyrdom operations” — a reference to suicide bombings in Israel — to “protect the Palestinian people.”
Keeping pressure on Hamas after bombing runs that turned Saturday into one of the bloodiest days for Palestinians in 60 years of conflict, Israeli aircraft flattened the group’s main security compound in Gaza, killing at least four security men.
A militant was also killed in an air strike on a car in the northern Gaza Strip.
The deaths raised to 287 the number of Palestinians killed since Saturday, when Israel launched what one Israeli newspaper columnist described as “shock and awe” air strikes against Hamas facilities. More than 700 Palestinians were wounded.
“Palestine has never seen an uglier massacre,” Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said.
One Israeli was killed on Saturday by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip.
WEST BANK VIOLENCE
Israeli military affairs commentators said the Israeli offensive did not appear to be aimed at retaking the Gaza Strip or destroying its Hamas government — ambitious goals that could prove difficult and politically risky before Israel’s February 10 parliamentary election.
Instead, they said, Israel wanted to bolster its deterrence power and force Hamas into a new truce that would bring a long-term halt to cross-border rocket salvoes.
Violence spread to the occupied West Bank, where Israeli soldiers opened fire at rock-throwing Palestinian protesters. Palestinian medical officials said one Palestinian was killed.
In Hebron, also in the West Bank, Palestinian forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah shot and wounded three people during a protest by Islamist groups in support of Hamas, a Reuters reporter at the scene said.
The U.N. Security Council, responding to the Gaza operation, called on all sides to cease fire.
Brushing aside the appeal, an Israeli official said Israel was feeling little international pressure to halt its operations.
“We haven’t received any initiatives from anyone to intervene,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
In the Gaza Strip, where normally bustling streets were largely empty of traffic, Palestinians stood outside their homes to chat with neighbors about dangers ahead as the roar of Israeli aircraft and thunder of explosions echoed in the distance.
“I kept my children at home. No need to study today,” one Palestinian parent said.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered schools, due to reopen on Tuesday after the Jewish holiday of Hannukah, to remain shut in southern Israeli communities.
Along the Gaza border, a Reuters photographer saw Israeli soldiers cleaning the barrels of their tanks taking cover under the armored vehicles as Palestinian rockets flew overhead.
Abbas, speaking in Cairo, blamed Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip from Fatah in 2007, for triggering Israel’s raids by not extending the ceasefire that Egypt brokered in June.
U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration, in its final weeks in office, put the onus on Hamas to prevent more violence.
Aid groups said they feared a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Hospitals said they were running out of supplies because of a long-standing Israeli-led blockade.
Palestinian officials said 10 truckloads of flour and medical supplies were transferred to the territory through an Israeli border terminal on Sunday.
Hamas, which won a parliamentary election in 2006 but was shunned by the West over its refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel, estimated at least 180 members of its security forces had been killed with at least 15 women and some children.
Among the dead were seven teenage students at a U.N.-run school. They were killed in an air strike on Saturday while waiting for a bus, said Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
“Death is everywhere this morning,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch, Dan Williams, Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Douglas Hamilton and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, and Wafa Amr in Ramallah, Writing by Jeffrey Heller, Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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