GAZA CITY: Senior UN officials examined the extent of war damage in Gaza on Thursday as Israel warned that it would strike again if Hamas began to rearm through smuggling tunnels.
UN Middle East coordinator Robert Serry and UN humanitarian chief John Holmes were touring sites to assess relief efforts following the Israeli assault that left much of the impoverished coastal strip in ruins, officials said. Two women, two children and an elderly man were wounded on Thursday by fire from Israeli navy boats patrolling the Mediterranean, medics said.
Otherwise mutual Israeli and Hamas ceasefires were holding for a fifth day, with Israel warning it would hit the territory again if Hamas uses smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian border to re-arm. “For the tunnels, nothing will be as it was before,” Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told public radio. “Things must be clear - Israel reserves the right to react militarily against the tunnels once and for all.
“If we have to act, we will do so, we will exercise our right to legitimate defence, we will not leave our fate ... to the Egyptians, nor to the Europeans nor to the Americans,” she said. During its massive 22-day offensive in the Palestinian territory, Israel bombed hundreds of tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt border, destroying 150, according to Defence Minister Ehud Barak who on Wednesday issued a warning similar to Livni’s.
“If we are forced to, there will be more attacks,” Barak said. “During the operation that we have carried out in the Gaza Strip we have destroyed 150 tunnels, including some which were targeted several times,” he said. The underground networks are used to smuggle supplies into the coastal strip that Israel has kept sealed to all but basic humanitarian supplies.
Israel declared a ceasefire on Sunday after guarantees from Cairo and Washington to secure the enclave’s porous border with Egypt. Since then hundreds of Palestinians have set about repairing the tunnels damaged by Israeli bombings. “In a month, we’ll be able to get back to work,” Abu Mussa, the owner of one tunnel, told AFP as a crew of three teens hoisted bucketsful of earth with the help of a pulley from the bomb crater that covered the entrance to his tunnel.
In a final casualty toll, Gaza medics said the Israeli offensive had killed 1,330 people, half of them civilians including 437 children. Another 5,450 were wounded, including 1,890 children. Meanwhile, army radio reported that Israeli officials had softened their position about releasing Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli conscript who was seized by Palestinian fighters in June 2006.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday he expected Israel to provide urgently a full explanation of attacks on UN facilities in Gaza and said those responsible must be held accountable. Reporting to the UN Security Council on a trip to the Middle East, Ban said the recent violence in Gaza was a sign of “collective political failure” and called for a “massive international effort” to end the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Palestinian political leaders said on Wednesday any resumption of peace talks with Israel would require the Jewish state to commit to withdraw from land occupied in 1967 and freeze all settlement activity. agencies
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