Gaza teacher killed in Israel raid

Teacher Hani Naim was buried in Beit Hanoun [AFP]

Israeli raids on Gaza have killed a teacher and seven
Palestinian fighters in an assault on the Hamas-controlled
territory following a suicide bombing and rocket fire
into Israel this week.

Hani Shaban Naim, 43, a father of five, was killed early
on Thursday by an Israeli missile in his classroom in the
northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.

The Israeli army said the missile, which also wounded three
students in the agricultural college, was aimed at
a rocket-firing crew nearby.

During the raid, Palestinian fighters exchanged fire
with Israeli soldiers as Israeli tanks drove several hundred
metres into Gaza before dawn on Thursday.

Residents said Israeli tanks and heavy bulldozers broke the
border fence to gain access to the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli military spokesman confirmed that
"an army operation is under way".

Six Hamas men were killed in the clashes, three by
missiles and two by gunfire, Abu Obeida, a spokesman
for Hamas's military wing, said.

One Hamas fighter died later in hospital
due to his wounds.

The Islamic Jihad faction said one of its
members also died in the fighting.

Teacher death

Suheir Naim, Hani's widow, said feelings
of hatred were increasing.

"What's the fault of my children and other children who lose their fathers?
When a small Israeli child is killed, the whole world turns upside down.
But who cares about us?" she said.

David Chater, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Gaza, s
aid the "war in Gaza" was escalating on two fronts.

"On the economics front the Israeli high court has
authorised further cuts on electricity and fuel supplies
into Gaza," he reported.

The cuts to electricity were permitted after Israel's supreme
court rejected a petition by 10 Israeli and Palestinian
human rights organisations last week, challenging Israel's
planned reductions.

"And on the military front," he said. "Israel is increasing
its attacks on the armed wing of Hamas.

"But civilians are falling on both fronts."

Bassim Naim, the former government health minister, told Al
Jazeera that attempts by the Israelis to break the Palestinians
commitment would not work.

"As citizens under occupation, it is our normal right to use all
the legal ways of resistance, to liberate our lands," he said.

Confrontations

Attacks by Israel on Gaza have killed 19 Palestinians,
mostly fighters, in the past week alone.

Israeli regularly carries out raids on the Gaza Strip in what it
says is an effort to stop Palestinian fighters from launching
homemade rockets into southern Israel.

On Wednesday, a Hamas rocket hit Kibbutz Beeri, an
Israeli communal village about 6km from the border
fence, police said.

Two sisters, aged 12 and two, were hurt as they played in
their yard, but escaped serious injury.

Their mother was taken to a hospital and treated for shock.

On Thursday, Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, said
he would continue the bombardment of Gaza as long as
rocket fire continued.

"If the rocket fire from Gaza continues, we will intensify
our operations and strikes against the other side,
until a solution is found," he said.

Al Jazeera's correspondent said there was
no answer, as far as the Israel security
forces were concerned, to these rocket
attacks from the Gaza Strip.

Israel's defence minister said raids on Gaza
would continue as long as rocket fire did

"That's why many people fear that the Israeli ministry of defence is
beginning to look at plans for a much larger incursion into
the Gaza Strip," Chater reported.

On Thursday, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a media adviser to
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, said that
Abbas was trying to co-ordinate a ceasefire with Israel
in order to stop the violence in the Gaza Strip, despite
the territory being controlled by Hamas.

"Just as the president expressed his readiness to lift the
suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza by re-assuming
responsibility for the border crossings, the president is
also ready to try to reach a mutual ceasefire [with Israel]
in order to stop the ongoing massacres in the Gaza Strip,"
he said.

Hamas promptly rejected the offer. Spokesman Fawzi
Barhoum branded it a "blackmail attempt against the
Palestinian people whom [Abbas] has left to be massacred".

Following a meeting with Abbas, Tony Blair,
the Middle East Quartet envoy, said on Thursday
that efforts have to continue to help the population
of Gaza while "isolating the extremists" until national
reconciliation "between the West Bank and Gaza" is achieved.

"There will be one Palestinian state, not two," he said.