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Israel: Call off attacks or we invade
Associated Press
Published July 18, 2005
JERUSALEM - Israel threatened Sunday to invade Gaza if Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas does not control militants who have stepped up rocket and mortar attacks ahead of Israel's planned pullout from the coastal strip next month.
Abbas pledged to do his utmost to stop the barrages but warned that an invasion of Gaza would "sabotage everything."
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said all restraints are off and thousands of Israeli troops have massed along the Gaza border. The sudden escalation is the most serious threat yet to a 5-month-old truce that had drastically reduced Palestinian-Israeli violence after more than four years of bloodshed.
More than 100 rockets and mortars have rained down on Gaza settlements and Israeli villages just outside the territory in the past four days. Hamas leaders say they are retaliating for Israeli truce violations.
But one leader said the main reason for the barrage was to show that Israeli settlers were fleeing Gaza under fire rather than in a planned evacuation.
In violence Sunday, Israeli soldiers killed a Hamas leader and Palestinian infiltrator, and the air force fired on a car in northern Gaza, wounding a bystander. The military said it targeted militants on their way to firing rockets, but missed.
Also, two Israelis were wounded seriously in a Palestinian mortar strike on a Gaza settlement.
Soldiers and tanks were poised to cross the Gaza border fence. Large-scale raids often have followed rocket and mortar barrages but not since the truce took effect Feb. 8.
[Last modified July 18, 2005, 01:38:10]
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