DUBAI (Agencies)
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suspended peace negotiations with Israel on Sunday, as Saudi Arabia compared Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip to Nazi war crimes.
Israeli forces killed 61 people in Hamas-ruled Gaza on Saturday, the bloodiest day for Palestinians since an uprising against Israeli occupation began in 2000. Almost half the dead were civilians, including children.
The offensive was launched after a rocket killed an Israeli on Wednesday. It has taken Israeli troops deeper into the Gaza Strip and in larger numbers than at any time since Israel pulled troops and settlers out of the territory in 2005, 38 years after its capture.
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Saudi reaction "Saudi Arabia, which condemns the Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people and the threats of Israeli officials to transform Gaza into an inferno, sees that Israel is simulating through these actions the Nazi war crimes," the Saudi official news agency SPA reported.
"Therefore, Saudi Arabia urges the international community, peace-sponsoring countries and the international Quartet to work to curb the Israeli military machine and stop it from carrying out mass killings and destruction against the Palestinian people and their properties."
The Saudi statement appeared to refer to a warning by Israel's deputy defense minister that Gazans risked a "shoah" -- a Hebrew word for holocaust -- if rocket fire into Israel did not stop. Aides later said he meant disaster and not holocaust.
Earlier, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon accused Israel of using "excessive force". He demanded a halt to air and ground attacks that killed 61 people on Saturday, the bloodiest day for Palestinians since the 1980s, and militants' rocket salvoes.
"With all due respect ... no one has the right to preach morality to Israel for employing its elementary right of self-defense," Olmert said. |
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Palestinian reaction Hamas, an Islamist group which seized Gaza after routing forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, held the comment up as proof their Israeli enemies were the "new Nazis."
Abbas had ordered "the suspension of negotiations ... until (Israeli) aggression is stopped", a senior aide to the Palestinian leader said in the West Bank city of Ramallah. He designated Sunday a day of mourning.
But he stopped short of declaring dead the U.S.-brokered statehood talks opposed by Hamas Islamists who seized control of the Gaza Strip from his Fatah movement in June.
Arye Mekel, spokesman for Israel's chief negotiator, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, said Abbas's decision was a mistake and expressed hope the talks would resume "in the very near future". |
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Violence A 21-month-old Palestinian girl, two other civilians and three militants were killed in the latest fighting in the Gaza Strip, raising the Palestinian death toll in five days of bloodshed to more than 100, medical officials said.
Anti-Israeli demonstrations erupted in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces confronting stone-throwers near the town of Hebron shot dead a 14-year-old boy wearing a Hamas headband, witnesses said.
Nine rockets slammed into southern Israel, wounding four people, Israeli ambulance workers said.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to meet Abbas and Olmert this week. Washington has said it hoped Israeli-Palestinian talks can lead to a statehood deal before President George W. Bush leaves office in January. |
