Israel rejects ceasefire on fifth day of conflict

Published on Wednesday 31 December 2008 10:14

ISRAELI leaders have decided to reject an immediate 48-hour pause in fighting and push ahead with the devastating air offensive against Hamas, pounding targets through pouring rain as the Gaza Strip entered its fifth day of battle.

Israel is facing growing international pressure to halt the assault, and Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert discussed a ceasefire proposal with his foreign and defence ministers overnight.

According to government officials the meeting ended with a decision to continue operations and a top forum of cabinet ministers entrusted with security matters will discuss the continuation of the offensive today.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting's contents were classified.

France's foreign minister says he and French president Nicolas Sarkozy are considering the possibility of going to Israel amid European efforts to end the violence.

Bernard Kouchner says he and Mr Sarkozy will be in southern Lebanon on Monday, and "we will see if it is possible to go to Israel".

Mr Kouchner chaired an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers in Paris yesterday over the Gaza fighting. The 27 EU nations urged Israel and Hamas to accept an "immediate and permanent ceasefire". France holds the EU presidency until midnight.

Speaking on RTL radio today, Mr Kouchner expressed hope that Israel does not launch a ground operation in Gaza.

He says a humanitarian truce is not enough and that any ceasefire must be lasting.

The moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is set to meet later today with Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in Jordan to discuss a possible ceasefire. Mr Abbas will also meet with Jordan's King Abdullah II. Both Jordan and Turkey have mediated in the past between Israel and its enemies.

Underlying the Israeli decision to keep fighting are the mightier weapons that Hamas has smuggled into Gaza through underground tunnels along the border with Egypt. If previously militants had relied on crude home-made rockets that could fly just 12 miles to terrorise Israeli border communities, they are now firing industrial-grade weapons that have dramatically expanded their range and put more than one-tenth of Israel's population in their sights.

More than two dozens rockets and mortar shells were fired by midday today, including five that hit in and around the major southern Israeli city of Beersheba, 22 miles from Gaza. One hit an empty school.

Another landed in a small farming community about 20 miles south-east of Tel Aviv. No serious casualties were reported.

School was cancelled in large swaths of Israel's south because of the rocket threat. The 18,000 students at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, southern Israel's only university, were also told to stay home.

Early today, Israeli aircraft pounded smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border in another attempt to sever the lifeline that keeps Hamas in power by supplying weapons, food and fuel.

• Britain renews call for Gaza ceasefire

• Little time for tears as Israelis bury their dead and demand vengeance