Despite the high death toll, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday that the Israeli military attacks against the Gaza Strip will continue.
Ehud Olmert told a press conference in
"We can carry out missions like James Bond and lose the support we have in the international community. In order to preserve this support we must act with patience and cool heads," Olmert said.
So far, some 52 Palestinians have been killed in Operation Summer Rain, out of the 200 killed in the last three months, several infrastructure installations were demolished, in the last 15 days, at least forty of the 52, were killed in the past five days, all of by artillery, gun ships and gun boats attacks on the Gaza Strip.
The online edition of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported a senior Army official as saying that the military will intensify and broaden the scope of its operations in the Gaza Strip during the coming days.
The same officials told Haaretz that Operation Summer Rain is likely to last two months saying that Olmert warned during a cabinet meeting that this was a "war on which it is impossible to set time limits."
While continuing to insist that “Operation Summer Rains” is aimed at releasing the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and ending the firing of home-made Qassam shells into the Israeli territories. The attacks are focused on infrastructure and Palestinian Authority constructions in addition to places, the Israeli army alledge belong to resistance groups.
On Saturday evening, Palestinian medical sources and eyewitnesses in
Ammouna Yousef Hajjaj, 42, her 6-year-old daughter Rawan and her 20-year-old son Mohammad died when an Israeli shell hit their house in the Al-Shujaeyya neighborhood in
