Israeli official warns Palestinians of "shoah"

by Joseph Nasr and Adam Entous, Reuters

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A senior Israeli official warned Palestinians in Gaza on Friday they risked a "shoah" if rocket fire continued, using the Hebrew term for holocaust as the Jewish state contemplated invading the Hamas-run enclave.

Aides rushed to insist the deputy defense minister had meant the word only in its alternative meaning as a general disaster.

But the strength of the language reflected Israel’s anger over the recent rocket fire. Israel has responded with two days of air strikes that have killed 33 Palestinians.

Hamas, which organized rallies in Gaza, held the comment up as proof their enemies were the "new Nazis."

Friday saw only a handful of attacks and no deaths. After dark, missiles hit two workshops that the army said made Qassam rockets which routinely hit border towns and killed an Israeli on Wednesday.

Political sources said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was wary of launching a major ground offensive and Israeli public radio stations quoted security sources saying that, while plans for an assault were being prepared, such an invasion was not imminent.

The United States, whose Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due next week to visit Olmert and Palestinian leaders in the occupied West Bank, urged Israel to "consider the consequences" of its action. Bloodshed could derail Washington’s hopes of a peace deal this year before President George W. Bush steps down.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has shared Israel’s hostility to Hamas since the Islamists routed his forces in Gaza in June, called Israeli threats "dangerous." Even Palestinians who want to see Hamas defeated are outraged that at least 15 civilians including children and a baby were among the 33 dead.

Israel’s deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai told Army Radio: "The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger ’shoah’ because we will use all our might to defend ourselves."

The word "shoah" is rarely used in Israel beyond discussions of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews. Many Israelis are loath to countenance its use to describe other contemporary events.

Vilnai’s spokesman and a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said, however, he had employed the word only to mean "disaster."

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Israeli leaders said rockets from the blockaded territory may leave them no choice but to launch a broader offensive into the crowded coastal strip, which is home to 1.5 million people and which Israel occupied for 38 years until 2005.

Though rocket fire has long disrupted life in small Israeli border towns since then, the killing of an Israeli on Wednesday, the first such death since May, has increased public pressure on Olmert’s already unpopular coalition government to act.

Hamas has also raised the stakes by firing Soviet-designed Katyusha missiles, more powerful and accurate than improvised Gazan Qassams, to strike the much larger city of Ashkelon.

Visiting there, Defence Minister Ehud Barak said an Israeli response was "required" and that "Hamas bears responsibility for this deterioration and it will also bear the results."

Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who was Abbas’s prime minister until June, told supporters: "This is a proof of Israel’s pre-planned aggressive intentions against our people.

"They want the world to condemn what they call the Holocaust and now they are threatening our people with a holocaust."

According to Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Barak has sought to prepare the way for an offensive by sending confidential messages to world leaders, including Rice.

"Israel is not keen on and rushing for an offensive, but Hamas is leaving us no choice," Barak told them, Yedioth said.

However, chastened by his 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Olmert is wary of an operation that would incur more casualties when Israel is reluctant to re-occupy Gaza long-term.

Rice has voiced concern for Palestinian civilian deaths but stopped short of calling for Israeli restraint. Officials say she will make clear support for Israel’s right to defend itself.

Abbas’s office issued a statement saying: "He demands that Israel halt its attack and demands that all factions adhere to immediate calm and to stop the firing of rockets."

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Wafa Amr in Ramallah; Writing by Adam Entous and Joseph Nasr; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

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