Envoy Suggests Un Force for Gaza

Israel, the Palestinians and the UN should consider an international peacekeeping force in Gaza, the UN's new special envoy to the Middle East said today.

The suggestion from Michael Williams came as Israel launched fresh air strikes and arrested more than 30 Hamas officials in response to continuing rocket attacks from Gaza.

Israel has resisted the idea of peacekeepers in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, but its opposition may have been tempered by the effectiveness of Unifil, the UN force sent into Lebanon after last summer's conflict with Hizbullah.

"I'm not sure this (Unifil) is the right model for Gaza," Mr Williams said. "But I think that this is one of the things that we, the UN, and Israel and the Palestinians need to be thinking about for the future."

Mr Williams, who helped put together the international force for southern Lebanon, added. "It goes without saying it would be a hard task to pull it together. But I have no doubt that if we came to that juncture, we could get such an international force."

Earlier, Israeli planes struck the offices of money changers and businesses in the Gaza strip that it said had transferred funding from Iran, Syria and Lebanon for terrorist activities by Hamas and other groups.

"Millions of dollars has been transferred each month to terror organizations in the Gaza Strip, which has enabled the purchase and manufacture of weaponry and the carrying out of attacks against Israeli civilians, including Qassam [rocket] launchings," the military said.

In its roundup of senior Hamas officials, Israel arrested the education minister, Nasser Shaer, considered a pragmatist in the movement.

His wife, Huda, said soldiers knocked on the door of their home in the West Bank city of Nablus and took him away.

"I asked them, 'Why are you taking him?' The officer said, 'We have orders'," she told Reuters.

Israeli forces also seized at least three Hamas MPs, the mayor and deputy mayor of Nablus and other Hamas officials in neighboring towns and villages, Hamas officials said.

Israel last year drew international criticism when it conducted a similar operation last year against Hamas ministers and MPs in the West Bank.

Hamas, whose leaders include the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, accuses Israel and the west of siding with President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction.

The arrests and air strikes came after Hamas rebuffed Mr Abbas's call for a halt to rocket attacks by Gaza militants on Israeli towns.

The Islamist group and others said they would only consider a halt in rocket attacks if Israel first called off all military operations in Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel has rebuffed similar demands in the past, arguing that its West Bank operations are essential to preventing militant attacks.

Israel's attacks on Gaza come on top of fighting between Hamas Islamists and Mr Abbas's secular Fatah faction in the past week in which 50 Palestinians have died.

The fighting left their two-month-old unity government in tatters.
Israeli air strikes have killed at least 35 Palestinians over the past eight days. Israel says some 200 rockets have been launched into its territory over the same period, killing one woman, injuring dozens and causing significant damage to property.

The Quartet of Middle East peace mediators is scheduled to meet in Berlin on May 30 amid the upsurge of violence not just in Gaza, but also in Lebanon.

"We are greatly concerned about the latest violence and escalation in the Gaza Strip and in parts of Lebanon," a German foreign ministry spokesman said yesterday.

The meeting of Quartet members - the EU, Russia, the UN and the US - will follow a gathering of G8 foreign ministers on the same day in Potsdam.