Israel says Gaza offensive has no timetable

Saeb Erekat has urged aid agencies to avert 'human catastrophe' in Gaza. Picture / Reuters

JERUSALEM - Israel has vowed to pursue air and ground assaults in the Gaza Strip indefinitely, rebuffing a proposed truce and keeping pressure on militants to free an abducted soldier and halt cross-border rocket attacks.

"This is a war that cannot be on a timetable," a senior government official quoted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as telling his cabinet, a day after Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas raised the prospect of a ceasefire.

"There is no intention to reoccupy Gaza in order to stay there, but if certain operations are needed they will be carried out. We will operate, enter and pull out as needed," Olmert was quoted as saying.

Israeli forces launched their offensive, the first such push into Gaza since troops and settlers withdrew from the territory last year, after Palestinian gunmen abducted Corporal Gilad Shalit in a raid into Israel on June 25.

Olmert rejected calls by the three militant factions that grabbed the tank gunner, including the governing Hamas group's armed wing, to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for information about him, the official said.

The official quoted Olmert as saying such a move would strengthen Hamas at the expense of "moderate elements" in the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat urged international aid organizations to help avert "human catastrophe" in Gaza.

Israeli forces have destroyed a main power station there and killed about 50 people, including 20 civilians, residents said.

The offensive has been criticized by the European Union and United Nations, but those organizations wield far less influence on Israel than its main ally, the United States, which has led an international aid boycott of the Hamas-led government.

"Let's remember who started this," Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns told CNN. "It was the outrageous actions of Hamas in violating Israel's sovereignty, in taking the soldier hostage."

The EU said it was gravely concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza and urged Israel to help in allowing aid to be delivered there.

"The presidency of the European Union expresses its grave concern about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip," a statement said.

In the latest violence, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at three targets in Gaza, killing one civilian, and wounding nine others and a gunman.

The civilian died in an air strike on a car carrying two militants in the southern town of Rafah where the gunmen fled the scene, one of them wounded. Four civilians were injured.

Five more civilians were hurt in a separate Israeli air strike on a Hamas weapons van near Gaza City.

Early on Monday, Israeli aircraft bombed and destroyed an Islamic Jihad weapons depot in Gaza City. There were no casualties in that raid.

Despite the Israeli attacks, gunmen fired a rocket that slammed into a street in the Israeli town of Sderot, wounding one person, the army said. A second Qassam damaged a house in the border town. A third rocket strike damaged a hothouse.

Israeli tanks left much of northern Gaza on Saturday but soldiers remained in the southern part of the territory and have deployed close to the outskirts of Gaza City.
Haniyeh said Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and a halt to military actions could "make it easy for us to end the crisis" over Shalit.

Israeli cabinet minister Meir Shetreet countered: "Let them return the soldier home safely, stop the Qassams, then no problem - we leave Gaza."

-REUTERS