AS GAZA’S skies echoed to Israeli artillery fire and sonic booms yesterday the Palestinian Prime Minister delivered a defiant sermon urging his followers to stand firm and warning Israel to halt its offensive if it wanted to free a captured soldier.

Ismail Haniya accused Israel of imposing collective punishment on ordinary Palestinians with airstrikes that have crippled bridges and a power station, blacking out half of Gaza.

Humanitarian agencies voiced alarm at the likely impact of hospitals, bakeries, water treatment plants and emergency services running out of electricity and diesel to fuel their generators.

Israel insists that its campaign is to pressure the Palestinians into releasing Corporal Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted by militants during a raid on an Israeli military base last Sunday. It has sealed off all crossings into Gaza, cut off petrol and bombed the Interior Ministry, which Israeli officials said was used by the Hamas leadership to plan and direct terrorist attacks.

A Hamas spokesman indicated last night that the militants holding Corporal Shalit wanted 1,000 Palestinians released from Israeli jails in return for his freedom. A claim by the radical Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades that they had kidnapped a second soldier was being treated with scepticism by Israeli officials.

In the West Bank Israel has increased pressure on the Islamist group by rounding up eight Hamas Cabinet ministers and dozens of MPs and senior officials.

Mr Haniya, one of Hamas’s most accomplished orators, yesterday gave a fiery hour-long sermon during Friday prayers, saying Israel was “driving the Gaza Strip to a war zone”, but insisting that the pressure would not cause his Government to fall.

“This is a war against the Palestinians. They are targeting our ministers, targeting the Palestinian Legislative Council and the Government, and we tell them from this mosque that these activities will not defeat us, it will not force us to recognise the Israelis,” he told the packed al-Mahatta mosque in Jabalya, northern Gaza.

As he left, in an armoured Mercedes after Israeli threats to assassinate Hamas leaders, Gaza was grinding to a halt.

With its only power station rendered useless by an airstrike, half the 40km (24 mile) coastal strip is without power for hours at a time and filling stations have run out of petrol.

Shifa Hospital said that it had to switch off all its computers to allow operating theatres, dialysis machines and intensive care units to run off overloaded generators.

Mahmoud Bahadder, 30, said his three-year son Moamin was so scared by sonic booms that he woke up at night and ran for his toy gun. “I told my son ‘Don’t be afraid, they [the Israelis] aren’t here. But children don’t understand.”

Alvaro de Soto, the UN Middle East envoy, has given warning of an “emergency situation” and the World Food Programme said it was concerned about the looming crisis.

“The WFP is extremely concerned about the humanitarian impact of the current Israeli military offensive on the civilian population in Gaza against the already critical backdrop of a serious humanitarian crisis in the territory,” said Arnold Vercken, the programme’s Country Director. Israel said it had held off from a full-scale offensive on Gaza because of Egyptian intermediaries’ progress in efforts to free Corporal Shalit.

Putting further pressure on Hamas, Israel stripped a Minister and three MPs of their right to live in Jerusalem. Khaled Abu Arafeh, the Jerusalem Affairs Minister, and Mohammed Abu Teir, Ahmed Attun and Mohammed Totah, face expulsion to the West Bank

timesonline.co.uk/mideast
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