Abbas denounces 'Zionist enemy'

Palestinian presidential front-runner Mahmoud Abbas on denounced Israel as the “Zionist enemy” today – his harshest language yet on the campaign trail -, after Israeli tank shells slammed into a strawberry patch, killing seven Palestinians, many of them children.

Israel insisted the shells hit militants who were firing mortar shells at Israeli targets, but a senior army commander apologised for civilian casualties. It was the bloodiest strike in Gaza in three months.

Abbas’ rhetoric has grown increasingly hard-line during his four day campaign swing through Gaza as he reached out to younger, more militant Palestinians ahead of the January 9 election.

But his comments in condemning the deaths were his most inflammatory.

“We came to you today, while we are praying for the souls of the martyrs who were killed today by the shells of the Zionist enemy in Beit Lahiya,” Abbas told thousands of supporters, using a term for Israel usually employed by Islamic militants.

In response, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom broke his government’s policy of not criticising Abbas during the campaign.

“Israel is very concerned about Abu Mazen’s recent statements which are very militant ... and the like of which we haven’t heard in a long time,” he said, referring to Abbas by his nickname.

Israel considers Abbas a moderate and a pragmatist because of his previous statements against Palestinian violence.

After endorsing Palestinian refugees’ and their descendants’ “right of return” to homes they left in the war following Israel’s creation in 1948 – a deal-breaker for Israel – and identifying with Palestinian militants in defiance of an Israeli and US demand that he dismantle violent groups, Abbas on Tuesday introduced another potential obstacle to a peace accord.

Addressing supporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah after his return from Gaza on Tuesday, Abbas said a peace accord “must get approval in a Palestinian referendum, both here in the homeland and abroad in the exile,” granting a veto to millions of Palestinians who do not live in the West Bank and Gaza.

While still in Gaza, Abbas came close to the fighting, with two loud explosions going off as he was about to visit survivors of the shelling at a Gaza hospital.

The military said Palestinians were apparently firing home-made rockets from near the hospital at the time. Palestinian security officials said the explosions were Israeli tank shells fired in response to the Palestinian rockets.

The fighting began when militants fired mortar rounds that wounded an Israeli woman. Tanks hit back with two shells that slammed into fields as farmers picked strawberries and potatoes, witnesses said.

The military said the shells were aimed at nine masked militants involved in firing the mortar rounds, and soldiers confirmed that members of the cell were hit.

However, Dr Mahmoud al-Asli, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the town of Beit Lahiya, said the dead were between the ages of 11 and 17. He named the seven victims and said six were from the Ghaben family, including three brothers. The Ghaben family confirmed the names and ages given by the hospital.

Six people were wounded, including four in critical condition, doctors said. At the hospital, the floor of the emergency room was covered with blood.

When the coffins of the three brothers arrived at the Ghaben home, an aunt, Amina, opened one box and smeared blood from the body on her clothes as an act of remembrance. “Is that an adult? It’s a child, “ she said. ”He went in the morning to help his father and brothers pick strawberries.”

Members of several militant groups paid their condolences, but none claimed the dead as members.

The Israeli military insisted it was informed by Palestinian liaison officers that six of the seven were 17 and older, and that four or five of them were members of the Islamic militant group Hamas.

Lieutenant Avi Levy, the area army commander, gave a guarded apology. “If we hit innocent Palestinians, I’m sorry for that,” he said. “You have to remember that the (militant) groups fire from the cover of these heavily populated civilian areas.”

The incident was the single deadliest in Gaza since September when an Israeli tank fired a shell at a group of gunmen in the Jebaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, killing seven Palestinians and wounding 23.

Palestinian militants have stepped up mortar and rocket fire on Israeli settlements in Gaza and border towns in recent weeks as rival militant groups jockey for power ahead of a planned Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in the summer, trying to portray the pullback as a retreat under fire.