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THE 3rd DAY

ISRAEL: STILL SHOOTING

BUT NOT MOVING

(Today's headline in CNN World News Asia, midday edition)

First of all some summaries about the latest developments in the last 24 hours:

Government orders freeze on IDF operation in north Gaza

Mubarak: Hamas offers terms for soldier's release

(Haaretz, Israel, reported in the morning)

Read the full text here:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/732506.html

The Guardian, GB, published following in the midday(local time, CET):

Hope for captive as Gaza bombing goes on


Officials inspect the damage to the Palestinian interior ministry building following

Israeli air strikes on Gaza city. Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images
 

Jets and helicopters fired missiles at government buildings and roads while the army fired hundreds of artillery shells at northern Gaza. Israeli jets caused sonic booms over Gaza City through the night and morning.

Israeli officials said that military operations were continuing to maintain pressure on Palestinians holding Corporal Gilad Shalit, although a plan to take over the town of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza had been postponed.

Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, said in a newspaper interview that Hamas had given conditional approval for the release of the 19-year-old soldier. He said that Israel had not yet agreed to the conditions, which he did not stipulate.

Cpl Shalit is believed to be in the custody of militants of Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees, who are demanding that Israel free Palestinian prisoners in return for his release.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, said: "We are talking to the international community, such as the European Union and Egypt. If we can achieve the release of our soldier through international intervention, then we can de-escalate the situation."

He said that Israel's limited military action was an important factor in diplomatic activity. "We waited a full three days before we moved. Our limited operations have augmented the chances of success of diplomacy."

Israel has massed troops and armour in and around Gaza, carried out scores of air raids and fired hundreds of artillery shells. One man, a member of Islamic Jihad, has been killed and several people have received light injuries. However, the entire population of Gaza has been subjected to electricity cuts, fuel shortages and the constant threat of violence.

Since Sunday, Israel has closed all the terminals that supply Gaza with food and goods. John Ging, the Gaza operations director for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides services for refugees in Gaza, said that his organisation had stockpiled food in recent weeks and had reserves to last a couple of weeks.

"The main problem is fuel and electricity. We have limited reserves of fuel and we are facing increasing demands for the little we have. Fuel is needed for generators to power hospitals and water and sewage pumps. The electricity cuts are causing real hardship," he said.

Mr Regev said that Israeli action was also aimed at harassing Hamas and preventing the firing of homemade Qassam rockets at Israel. "There was a long period of time when Hamas was not involved in hands-on terrorism and we did not target them. If they are going to get back into terrorism, we have every right to respond," he said.

Israel today revoked the right of four prominent members of Hamas to live in Jerusalem. The four, Khaled Abu Arafa, the minister of Jerusalem affairs, and three Palestinian legislative council members, Mohammed Abu Teir, Ahmed Abu Atoun and Mohammed Totach, were among the 64 Hamas members arrested yesterday.

Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel in 1967, have many of the same rights as other Israelis but are not citizens and do not vote in Israeli elections. The removal of the men's residency right means they and their family will be in effect exiled in the West Bank.

Israel also fired missiles at the individual offices of Hamas officials of the interior ministry in Gaza City. Senior members of Hamas have been in hiding for most of the week, fearing that Israel will assassinate them as it did with two other Hamas leaders, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, in 2004.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1809847,00.html

Hamas says Israel is out to destroy its administration

In Gaza, Shelter Sought (Washington Post)

Just a short while ago Ynet/Yedioth Ahronoth reported this(its includes a video report about last night's attack against the ministry of the Interior in Gaza City):

LATEST "NEWS":

According to the German magazine Der Spiegel the Al Aqsa Brigades (a part of Abbas' Fatah) boasted themselves today with a new kidnapping of a Israeli soldier in the West Bank..

But actually especially Isreali sources didn't confirm it until now. Just two days ago Al Aqsa Brigades announced a similar thing... but in fact it was just empty prattle. The problem (or perhaps better said the luck): sometimes the Palestinian "resistance fighters" can't differentiate between their wishes and the reality.. Hopefully today it is the same!

Ynet news ticker right now is writing: "The Israel Defense Forces is looking into a claim made by a group belonging to the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades that its people have abducted an IDF soldiers in the West Bank area.

IDF officials said that there was no official confirmation of the Palestinian report at this stage, but the issue was being checked. Senior al-Aqsa members told Ynet that they were not aware of a soldier being kidnapped by the organization."

Already yesterday(6.29) the German(bourgeois) magazine Der Spiegel published following article:

"There Will be More Abductions"

As Israel worries about the well-being of a soldier held hostage in the Gaza Strip, an abducted Jewish settler in the West Bank has been found dead in Ramallah. Have militant Palestinians decided to copy the tactics used by Islamic extremists in Iraq? A visit with Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Brigade.

 
The office in Ramallah is sparsely furnished and unmarked outside. But the space on the seventh floor of this building in the center of the West Bank town belongs to Hamas. Over the past six months -- since the militant Islamic group took power over the Palestinian Authority -- it was possible to meet smiling and smirking Hamas politicians here, patting each other on the backs because they had finally come to power.

But these days, the situation is different. The tired eyes of Ziad Dayeh, a Hamas spokesman, are proof he hasn't gotten much sleep lately. He's been left to handle the group's PR efforts alone following Israel's arrest of two dozen Hamas parliamentarians. "Hamas isn't responsible for this escalation," he claims. "It's not our fault that Israel wasn't prepared from the outset to pay a price for the release of this soldier."

What the spokesman is trying to play down is actually an act of psychological and physical brutality. After two of his companions were killed, Palestinian militants kidnapped a 19-year-old Israeli corporal. For his freedom they demanded the release of some 300 Palestinians women and youths allegedly held in Israeli jails. A deal that Israel's government quickly rejected, even though such prisoner exchanges have taken place in the past. According to the Palestinians, some 12,000 of their people are held in Israeli custody.

Since the incident, the turbulent Middle East has become even more violent. The Israeli army has already moved into the Gaza Strip. Many in the region are asking whether militant Palestinians have developed a horrible new strategy after watching terrorists in Iraq carry out countless kidnappings. Such abductions have so far been rare in Israel and the West Bank. But on Thursday morning, the body of an Israeli settler who had been kidnapped was found in Ramallah. A group called the Popular Resistance Committees said the settler had been "executed," borrowing similar terminology used by Islamists in Iraq.

Two abductions only a few days apart have sparked concerns of a new form of terrorism. Hamas spokesman Dayeh, however, finds nothing wrong with the new tactics. "It's our right!" he says, rationalizing it with a claim that the Israeli army abducts people all the time. It certainly is true that Israeli commandos carry out raids and frequently arrest militant Palestinians by the dozens, holding them for months or longer without charges. But Dayeh won't accept the difference that the Palestinian "hostages" aren't killed in cold blood.

Kidnapping terror

Israel has traditionally been prepared to suffer heavy losses when its security is at stake -- just like the Palestinians. But a living hostage is a traumatic affair. No Israeli who has ever been abducted by Palestinian terrorists -- regardless whether by Hezbollah or leftist Palestinian nationalists -- has ever survived. That goes a long way toward explaining why Israel has threatened to retaliate hard to either free the hostage or extract revenge.

"We aren't afraid," say three young men on the main street of Ramallah. Bombings. Tanks. Curfews. "We've seen it all before and survived," the men, named al-Rahman, Thair and Wisam, say. They justify the kidnappings and murders with the same argument as that of the Hamas-led government, even though they themselves support the Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas. Abductions of Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers in the occupied territories are fine, they argue, but not other civilians or foreigners like in Iraq. "That is forbidden, cowardly and inhumane. But everything else is part of our right to armed resistance."

Such kidnappings might even be organized in the future by a man who calls himself Abd al-Salam. Thin and in his mid-thirties, he's dressed in a white polo shirt and drives a white Fiat Uno. "There will be more of these kinds of abductions," the mid-level member of the al-Aqsa Brigade, the militant wing of Fatah, says. "We have also taken setters as hostages and killed them," he says, referring to the alleged death of a 62-year-old man from Tel Aviv. Israeli authorities claim the man died of natural causes. "They're just trying to calm their people -- pure propaganda," says the Palestinian militiaman.

"You could say we've developed a new tactic," says al-Salam, adding that abductions in the West Bank are likely to become more frequent. Over 100,000 Jewish settlers live in the occupied territories -- handy living targets for militants. Following the deaths of a dozen Palestinian civilians recently, many are ready to extract revenge. "We are sick of it, we must avenge ourselves," says al-Salam, adding that if kidnappings are so painful for the Israelis, the Palestinians should have started doing it earlier.

The scenario of mass kidnappings is the "ultimate nightmare of the Israeli army," according to Israel's press. In the worst case scenario, it could escalate the crisis in the Middle East as the advent of suicide bombings once did. But at the moment, it's impossible to tell whether the militants are simply using the threat of abductions as propaganda. They certainly aren't supported by Palestinian leaders. Both President Abbas and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh are opposed to taking hostages. As is the majority of the Palestinian population. "These idiots," complains an auto mechanic named Salih. "Now the West will think we're just brutal terrorists."

....................................................................................

And when I read/understand it well - just now IDF is intensifying its killing operations in Gaza.. And this might be (unfortunately) really true..