HOWZAT

“This is a very dangerous and very dark moment, partly because of the lives that have been lost and the humanitarian crisis that exists; partly because of the threat to the chance of the comprehensive peace that is so important for the Palestinians, but also for Israel’ and partly for the fuel for radicalism that can be argued by some to be the right response.”

“There is no point in me denying my fear that this will fuel radicalism,” he said. “That is one of the dangers we face at the moment.”

The fresh wave of air strikes targeted the Islamic University in Gaza, a hotbed of support for Hamas but also an important educational institute for Gaza’s students, who are denied access to the outside world by the Israeli blockade of the Strip. Israel said that it struck at laboratories in the university that had been used to develop Hamas’s rocket-firing capability. About half a million Israelis are now within range of the militants’ crude but sometimes deadly projectiles.

Israeli military aircraft also blew up the Interior Ministry building and destroyed a house close to the home of Ismail Haniyah, the Hamas leader who served as Palestinian prime minister before the deadly rift between Hamas and its mainstream rivals, Fatah, who now rule only the West Bank.

Expert View

It is Hamas’ actions that have precipitated the current, inevitable, crisis

Richard Beeston, Foreign Editor

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Hospitals in Gaza were already short of supplies and equipment before the offensive, and have been swamped with casualties in the latest bombardment. Israel has insisted that its strikes are aimed at Hamas-linked buildings or groups, but the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said that at least 51 civilians had died as Israel rained high explosives on the crowded cities of the tiny coastal strip.

In a war of attrition fought with high-altitude air strikes or unguided missiles, the casualty lists are messy. According to Hamas sources, one of the casualties of the Israeli air raids was Corporal Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier captured in a Hamas cross-border raid in summer 2006. The Israeli incursion that followed his capture was matched by another cross-border raid to the north, by the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, triggering a deadly month-long war.

The Israeli bombardment has also killed several members of Fatah, the Palestinian group that is trying to hold peace talks with Israel. Three prisoners killed by an air strike on Gaza City’s central jail were Fatah members, as were many police men killed in an initial bombing of a police graduation ceremony on Saturday, in which dozens died.

The construction worker killed in the Palestinian rocket strike on Ashkelon was an Israeli Arab, police said

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