Jerusalem – Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday he would push ahead with the army’s wide-scale offensive in the Gaza Strip, saying the fight to free an abducted soldier and stop militant rocket fire would last for a “long time.”
The 12-day-old operation has caused widespread destruction in Gaza, left 51 Palestinians dead and led to international complaints that Israel was using excessive force.
Despite the offensive, militants launched three rockets into Israel on Sunday, wounding one person in the town of Sderot and damaging a house. Also, militants linked to the Palestinians’ ruling Hamas party maintained their refusal to free Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19, who was captured in a June 25 raid, or reveal his condition.
Speaking to the Israeli Cabinet, Ol mert counseled patience.
“We’re talking about a war that will continue for a long time, and it is complicated,” Olmert said, according to a meeting participant. “This is a war for which we cannot set down a timetable and we can’t say how long it will continue.”
The Cabinet expressed unanimous support for the military action in Gaza and Olmert’s refusal to negotiate with the militants, who demanded the release of 1,500 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for information about Shalit.
Israeli security officials told the Cabinet that the offensive, the army’s largest operation in Gaza since Israel withdrew from the territory last summer, was likely to force the militants to scale back their demands, according to the participant in the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
But Palestinians were widely supportive of the militants’ actions. A poll released Sunday showed that 77 percent of those questioned backed Shalit’s kidnapping and 67 percent said they supported further abductions. Sixty-nine percent said the soldier should be released only in exchange for prisoners.
The survey of 1,197 Palestinians by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
Olmert told the Cabinet that before Shalit was captured, he had been planning a prisoner release as a goodwill gesture to moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but now a release appears out of the question.
“It’s not a secret before the kidnapping that we would free prisoners. But we intended to release them to moderate elements and not to terrorist elements,” Olmert said. “The release of prisoners means destroying the moderates in the Palestinian Authority and would signal to the world that Israel can only talk to extremists.”
Since the offensive began June 28, Israeli forces have battered Gaza with artillery barrages and airstrikes. One airstrike Sunday missed a car carrying members of a Hamas rocket squad and killed a bystander instead, Palestinian health officials said.
