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Tanks roll into gaza over hostage claims Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2247202,00.htmlhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2247202,00.html
Second hostage claim as Israeli tanks roll into Gaza
By Lee Glendinning and agencies
Stephen Farrell's East of Eden weblog
Advancing Israel tanks and troops have sent Palestinian families fleeing in southern Gaza - as fears grow that a second Israeli teenager has been taken hostage.
Speaking hours after the Israeli army began attacks in Gaza, the Israeli Prime Minister today threatened "extreme action" to bring home Corporal Gilad Shalit, the kidnapped teenage soldier seized by militants in a raid on Sunday. Ehud Olmert signalled that there would be ongoing military action until the hostage was released.
"We won't hesitate to carry out extreme action to bring Gilat back to his family," he said. "All the military activity that started overnight will continue in the coming days.
"We do not intend to reoccupy Gaza. We do not intend to stay there. We have one objective, and that is to bring Gilat home."
Meantime fears were growing over a missing West Bank settler whom militants of the Popular Resistance Committees have said they are holding.
Police have not yet confirmed Eliahu Asheri,18, has been kidnapped, saying only that he is missing. But the PRC have displayed what they said was a copy of the teenager's Israeli identity card and the group threatened to kill him if Israeli did not stop its action in Gaza.
His mother, Miriam pleaded for his safe return today.
"We turn to those who are holding Eliahu and really, really request that they take care of him," she told Israeli radio station. "We really hope that they will return him alive."
Mr Olmert, who holds the Hamas government of the Palestinian Authority responsible for the soldier's abduction reiterated that he would not negotiate Shalit's release.
Militants who seized Corporal Shalit in a pre-dawn raid on Sunday had demanded the release of Palestinian women and children from Israeli jails in return for information about his whereabouts.
The demand was instantly rejected by the Israeli government, who insisted there was to be no bargaining and no agreements.
Israeli tanks and troops entered southern Gaza early this morning taking up positions in two locations east of Rafah, on the Egyptian border.
The ground incursion was heralded by a series of air raids, destroying two bridges along the main north-south highway and knocking out the transformers at a power station, plunging the territory into darkness.
Fighter planes flew low over Gaza City, shattering windows. Families loaded possessions into horse-drawn carts and fled.
"All the people are leaving. They’re heading west because we’re afraid of the sweep, we’re escaping the invasion," said unemployed Auda Adwan, 20, one of dozens of stragglers walking into Rafah.
The Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority has denounced Israel's action as "military madness".
"This Israeli military escalation is unjustified. Waging such military madness on a grand scale will have big consequences," government spokesman Ghazi Hamad told the WAFA news agency.
The EU has urged all parties to show restraint and avoid further escalation in the conflict.
The military manouevres threaten to derail a tentative understanding between Hamas and Israel. Yesterday, the Islamist party accepted the so-called 'prisoner's charter' which implicitly recognises Israel's right to exist.
The U-turn could see the Hamas-led Government — anathema to Israel and the West — replaced within weeks by a national unity coalition.
The escalating conflict with Israel appears to be uniting the Islamist and secular parties within the Palestinian Authority, possibly ending a power struggle between the ruling party Hamas and the President Mahmoud Abbas.
Details of the agreement remained unclear, but Palestinians hoped that the prospect of the secular Fatah party and other factions joining the Government might end international sanctions and make it possible for Abbas to revive negotiations with Israel.
Hamas has long advocated the destruction of Israel, but the plan calls for a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza territories captured by Israel in 1967 — implicitly recognising Israel’s existence in the rest of historic Palestine.
Israel has dismissed the agreement as irrelevant for as long as an Israeli soldier remains captive.
Mark Regev, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: "It’s a tragedy that the responsible Palestinian leadership was not giving its full attention to the release of our soldier. We really are at the edge of a cliff."
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