| Israel kills Hamas commander |
GAZA CITY Hamas vow-ed revenge on Saturday after Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip killed a senior commander and wounded eight other people.
The overnight Israeli raids came after a rocket fired from the strip hit a southern Israeli city.
One Hamas fighter was killed in an airstrike on a caravan near the Magazhi refugee camp in the centre of the Palestinian enclave, a Hamas official said. The Israeli military said the site was “a weapons-manufacturing warehouse.”
The military wing of Hamas identified the man as Issa Al Batran, 40, and said he was a senior field commander.
“These new Zionist crimes will not pass without answer,” the statement said.
Hundreds of Hamas supporters attended his funeral.
In Occupied Ramallah, Palestinian officials said US President Barack Obama has warned Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas that failure to resume direct peace talks with Israel could undermine US-Palestinian ties.
Obama made the warning in a letter to Abbas but also pledged to rally Arab, European and Russian support for the Palestinians if direct negotiations resume, a Palestinian official said on the condition of anonymity.
“In the letter, President Obama warned President Abbas that his refusal to enter into direct negotiations with Israel next month will have consequences for American-Palestinian relations,” the official said.
The 16-point letter had a “carrot-and-stick appro-ach,” he added.
Obama stressed “it is high time to resume direct negotiations with Israel” and told Abbas that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is ready to resume direct negotiations.”
The letter warned that “Obama will absolutely not accept the rejection of his recommendation to move to direct negotiations and that there will be consequences for such a rejection in the form of a lack of trust in President Abbas and the Palestinian side,” the official said.
Obama pledged that his administration would work to extend an Israeli moratorium on Jewish settlements due to expire in September if Abbas resumes direct negotiations, he added.
“But in case of a refusal its assistance on that issue will be very limited,” he said, quoting from the letter in Arabic.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat confirmed that Abbas received a letter from the US president on July 16.
In Gaza, Israel has tried to kill Batran in the past. His wife and five sons were killed in an attack on his house during Israel’s three-week offensive on the territory in December 2008.
Aircraft also fired at least four missiles at buildings used by Hamas security forces in Gaza City, wounding eight people, several of them seriously, said Muawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza emergency services.
The site targeted used to house the offices of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas before his Fatah party was ousted from Gaza by the Hamas in 2007.
Fearing further strikes, Hamas ordered the evacuation of all its security offices, a security source said.
Warplanes also hit smuggling tunnels on the border with Egypt without causing casualties, witnesses said.
Agence France-Presse
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