Netanyahu: Israel Ready To Widen Offensive

November 18th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Jeffrey Heller
GAZA/JERUSALEM, Nov 18 (Reuters) – Israel bombed Palestinian militant targets in the Gaza Strip from air and sea for a fifth straight day on Sunday, preparing for a possible ground invasion while also spelling out its conditions for a truce.
Palestinian fire into Israel subsided during the night but resumed in the morning, with rockets targeting the country’s commercial capital Tel Aviv for a fourth day. The two missiles were shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome air shield.
Speaking shortly after the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was ready to widen its offensive.
“We are exacting a heavy price from Hamas and the terrorist organisations and the Israel Defence Forces are prepared for a significant expansion of the operation,” he said at a cabinet meeting, giving no further details.
Some 51 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, including 14 children, have been killed since the Israeli offensive began, Palestinian officials said, with hundreds wounded. More than 500 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel, killing three civilians and wounding dozens.
Israel unleashed intensive air strikes on Wednesday, killing the military commander of the Islamist Hamas movement that governs Gaza and spurns peace with the Jewish state.
Israel’s declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and press Hamas into stopping cross-border rocket fire that has bedevilled Israeli border towns for years and is now displaying greater range, putting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the crosshairs.
Air raids continued past midnight into Sunday, with warships shelling from the sea. Two Gaza City media buildings were hit, witnesses said, wounding six journalists and damaging facilities belonging to Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV as well as Britain’s Sky News.
An employee of Beirut-based al Quds television station lost his leg in the attack, medics said.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said the strike had targeted a rooftop “transmission antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity”. International media organisations demanded further clarification.
Three other attacks killed three children and wounded 14 other people, medical officials said, with heavy thuds regularly jolting the small, densely populated coastal enclave.
Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi said in Cairo, as his security deputies sought to broker a truce with Hamas leaders, that “there are some indications that there is a possibility of a ceasefire soon, but we do not yet have firm guarantees”.
Egypt has mediated previous ceasefire deals between Israel and Hamas, the latest of which unravelled with recent violence.
A Palestinian official told Reuters the truce discussions would continue in Cairo on Sunday, saying “there is hope”, but that it was too early to say whether the efforts would succeed.
At a Gaza news conference, Hamas military spokesman Abu Ubaida voiced defiance, saying: “This round of confrontation will not be the last against the Zionist enemy and it is only the beginning.”

SYRIAN FRONT
Israel’s military also saw action along the northern frontier, firing into Syria on Saturday in what it said was a response to shooting aimed at its troops in the occupied Golan Heights. Israel’s chief military spokesman, citing Arab media, said it appeared Syrian soldiers were killed in the incident.
There were no reported casualties on the Israeli side from the shootings, the third case this month of violence that has been seen as a spillover of battles between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and rebels trying to overthrow him.
With tanks and artillery poised along the Gaza frontier for a possible ground operation, Israel’s cabinet decided on Friday to double the current reserve troop quota set for the offensive to 75,000. Some 30,000 soldiers have already been called up.
“If there is quiet in the south and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel’s citizens, nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack,” Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon wrote on Twitter.
Israel’s operation so far has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called its right to self-defence, but there was also a growing number of appeals from them to seek an end to the hostilities.
Netanyahu, in his comments at Sunday’s cabinet session, said he had emphasised in telephone conversations with world leaders “the effort Israel is making to avoid harming civilians, while Hamas and the terrorist organisations are making every effort to hit civilian targets in Israel”.
Israel withdrew settlers from Gaza in 2005 and two years later Hamas took control of the slender, impoverished territory, which the Israelis have kept under blockade.

PRESSURE ON SIDES TO “DE-ESCALATE”
British Prime Minister David Cameron “expressed concern over the risk of the conflict escalating further and the danger of further civilian casualties on both sides”, in a conversation with Netanyahu, a spokesperson for Cameron said.
Britain was “putting pressure on both sides to de-escalate,” the spokesman said, adding that Cameron had urged Netanyahu “to do everything possible to bring the conflict to an end.”
Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, said the United States would like to see the conflict resolved through “de-escalation” and diplomacy, but also believed Israel had the right to self-defence.
Diplomats at the United Nations said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was expected to visit Israel and Egypt in the coming week to push for an end to the fighting.
A possible move into the Gaza Strip and the risk of major casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Netanyahu, favoured to win a January election.
The last Gaza war, a three-week Israeli blitz and invasion over the New Year of 2008-09, killed 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died in the conflict.
The current flare-up around Gaza has fanned the fires of a Middle East ignited by a series of Arab uprisings and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.
One significant change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, which may narrow Israel’s manoeuvring room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.
In attacks on Saturday, Israel destroyed the house of a Hamas commander near the Egyptian border.
Casualties there were averted however, because Israel had fired non-exploding missiles at the building beforehand from a drone, which the militant’s family understood as a warning to flee, witnesses said.
Israeli aircraft also bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza on Saturday, including the offices of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and a police headquarters.
Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile interceptor system has destroyed more than 200 incoming rockets from Gaza in mid-air since Wednesday, saving Israeli towns and cities from potentially significant damage.
However, one rocket salvo unleashed on Sunday evaded Iron Dome and wounded two people when it hit a house in the coastal city of Ashkelon, police said.

From Reuters:

GAZA/JERUSALEM, Nov 18 – Israeli aircraft hit two Gaza media buildings on Sunday, wounding eight journalists and drawing concern from press covering the fighting between Palestinian militants and the Jewish state.

The Israeli military said the attacks were pinpoint strikes on Hamas communication devices located on the buildings’ roofs, and accused the Islamist group of using reporters as human shields to try and protect their operations.

Britain’s Sky News, German ARD, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya, Beirut-based al Quds television and other broadcasters operate from the two buildings, which are a block apart. One employee from al Quds TV lost his leg in the early morning strike.

The attack came on the fifth day of heavy air strikes on the coastal enclave which Israel says are needed to halt repeated militant rocket launches into its territory.

For more on this report, head over to Reuters.

10 Palestinian civilians were reportedly killed on Sunday after an Israeli rocket hit a house in Gaza, Reuters reports.

This would be the most deadly attack on civilians since the offensive began earlier this week. Before this attack, 51 Palestinians (many of them civilians and children) had be killed. This latest attack would bring the death toll among Palestinians to 61.

MNSBC has provided a live camera feed overlooking Gaza. Click here to watch.

From the AP:

CAIRO — Egyptian security officials say a senior Israeli official has arrived in Cairo for talks on reaching a cease-fire to end an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.

The officials said the official arrived at Cairo’s airport and was immediately rushed away from the tarmac into talks. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity under security guidelines, did not identify the Israeli.

Israeli officials declined comment.

Egypt has been leading international efforts to broker a truce to end five days of fighting between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.

Nabil Shaath, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who was in Cairo, confirmed the Israeli’s arrival.

He says there are “serious attempts to reach a cease-fire.”

Shaath was headed to Gaza later Sunday to work on cease-fire efforts.

President Barack Obama on Sunday said that the U.S. is “fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself.”

The comments were made during his visit to Thailand.

Obama also said that the U.S. is seeking an end to violence in the region, according to Reuters. He said that he will know within the next 2 days whether or not progress can be made in ending conflict between Israel and Gaza.

The AP reports that Obama said peace in the region must begin with “no missiles being fired into Israel’s territory.”

“No country on earth would tolerate missiles raining down,” Obama said, according to the AP.

Sunday marked the 5th day of violence in the region. Israel had launched its offensive on Wednesday. Since then, 51 Palestinians, including 14 children, have been killed. In Israel, three civilians have been killed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said that the country was ready for a “significant expansion” of its offensive.

Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai reportedly has said that the goal of the offensive is to “send Gaza back to the middle ages.”

by Alana Horowitz

@ BreakingNews :
President Obama says ‘We are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself’, discussing Gaza crisis during his Thailand visit – @AP

@ billneelyitv :
Israel Dep PM Yishai: “We must blow Gaza back to the Middle Ages destroying all the infrastructure including roads & water”

@ BreakingNews :
Palestinian roving ambassador Afif Safieh tells @SkyNews Gaza conflict is about ‘territory not terrorism’; calls Netanyahu a ‘pyromaniac’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel is ready to widen its offensive, anticipating more attacks from Hamas.

“The Israel Defence Forces are prepared for a significant expansion of the operation,” he said, according to Reuters.

He did not provide any details of what the expansion might look like.

Sunday marks the fifth straight day of fighting between the two countries. Israel began its offensive on Wednesday.

For more on this report, click here.

@ rudoren :
Big 6 am strike here in #Gaza City for the 3day running: two booms, sounding a bit diff than the f16. No need for alarm clock.

The BBC reports:

At around 02:00 (00:00 GMT) on Sunday, the BBC’s Jon Donnison in Gaza City reported hearing more than a dozen shells, apparently fired from Israeli war ships – a new development in Israel’s operation Pillar of Defence.

Air strikes were also heard across Gaza City.