JERUSALEM - Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni warned on Tuesday that Israel would keep up its bombardment of Gaza for as long as Palestinians fire rockets, despite the death of a young girl in the latest shelling. “The role of the Israeli army is to defend Israeli civilians, combat terrorism and prevent rocket attacks,” Livni told public radio. “As long as Palestinians fire at residential area, the army must reply.”Her comments came after an eight-year-old Palestinian girl was killed and 12 other people wounded Monday when an Israeli shell struck a house in the Beit Lahiya region of the northern Gaza Strip. A seven-year-old boy was also killed in an Israeli air strike on Friday night while accompanying his father, a local leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, at a militant training base.
Livni said she regretted the deaths of civilians but that it was an inevitable consequence of the fact that militants operated out of residential areas. Israel withdrew all its ground troops from the Gaza Strip last September and its bombardments of the territory have either been carried out from the air or by tank shelling from across the border.
“If the army could locate the terrorists one by one, it would do so. This is what we have tried to do for a long time,” said Livni. “But when the terrorists hide themselves in residential areas, the consequences can be terrible and cost the lives of innocent people,” said the foreign minister. “Unfortunately, it is very difficult to make a distinction (between militants and civilians) in these residential areas.”
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also voiced his regret over civilian deaths at Sunday’s cabinet meeting while pledging there would be no let-up in the military’s activity as long as the rocket attacks continued. “One thing must be clear -- whoever fires Qassam rockets, whoever is engaged in terrorist activity, is a legitimate target and will be dealt with, without hesitation, by the security forces,” Olmert told ministers.