MIDDLE EAST: Anger mounts over Israeli offensive as troops move further into Lebanon

Palestinians marched across the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Tuesday (August 1) voicing anger over the on-going Israeli campaign in Lebanon after Israel gave a green light to widen its ground offensive. In Gaza, hundreds of Palestinians from various factions rallied in protest of an Israeli air strike that killed at least 54 civilians, including 37 children in the Lebanese village of Qana. Protesters carried signs reading: 'US and Israel war criminals,' 'smart bomb idiot leaders', 'US is a fascist state,' 'ally US: terror is self defence. non ally: self defence is terror.' In Jerusalem, at least two dozen people gathered outside the Unites States consulate to protest the Israeli attacks on Lebanese targets and what they called the 'American Double Standard'. Israeli soldiers and police dispersed the demonstrators in east Jerusalem beating and arresting three protesters, a Palestinian man and a woman, as well as an American man. Palestinian protesters, including Palestinian lawyers urged for the prosecution of Israeli leaders at the Hague. Some held posters of Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and yellow flags of Hizbollah, as well as Lebanese flags. Israeli officials expressed sorrow over the bombing of the Lebanese village, but blamed Hizbollah for using Lebanese civilians as a 'human shield'. In northern Israel, at the Biranit, Israeli defence minister toured the army base and addressed soldiers there, telling them the upcoming few days would be crucial. "The next few days will be crucial to defeat, the knowledge and the chance that in the future terrorist dare to harm the Israeli homefront and that is why all the formal procedure, the improved conditions after the cabinet meeting and the continuation of the operation to create a new international security force we insist that they have the power to to maintain the new situation which we are creating. The force must succeed at keeping Hizbollah out of south Lebanon," Peretz told soldiers. Meanwhile, Israeli tanks stationed near the Lebanese border continued with their artillery fire towards southern Lebanon, while there were reports of Israeli ground troops operating a few kilometres into southern Lebanon. In video distributed by the Israeli army, footage shot from a pilot's cockpit allegedly shows rockets being launched from the village towards Israel, and then the Israeli airstrikes. The death toll and the grim television images coming out of the southern Lebanese village had intensified international pressure on Israel to accept an immediate ceasefire. Israel launched its offensive on Lebanon after Hizbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in a cross-border raid last month. The Israeli government promised an investigation into the bloodiest single attack during Israel's 19-day-old offensive on Hizbollah. The on-going offensive of Lebanon coincided with a deadly campaign in the Gaza Strip triggered in June by a cross-border raid where an Israeli soldier was captured. In the latest violence, an Israeli aircraft fired a missile near a car in northern Gaza, killing a Palestinian teenager and a woman, medics and witnesses said. An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops had fired at a location from which militants had fired rockets into southern Israel a short time earlier, but would not confirm what type of strike the military had launched. The witnesses said the missile landed near the car outside the town of Beit Lahiya, killing a woman and wounding three other Palestinians inside the car. A 14-year-old Palestinian bystander was killed by shrapnel, Palestinian medics said. The Israeli army has killed 154 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians, in Gaza since it began an offensive to stop gunmen from firing rockets into Israel and to pressure militants to free a soldier that armed groups captured on June 25.

ITN Source | August 1, 2006

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