TEL AVIV, Jan 17, (Agencies): Israel called off its three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, saying it had achieved its objectives against the Hamas Islamist group in a campaign that killed more than 1,200 Palestinians. Hamas warned that it was not ready to give up, however. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Israelis in a televised address from the national army headquarters in Tel Aviv: “The conditions have been created that our aims, as declared, were attained fully, and beyond.”
The ceasefire, which he said responded to an appeal from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, would start from 2 am (0000 GMT) on Sunday, he said, but troops would remain for now in the Gaza Strip and Hamas would be “surprised again” if it attacked.

He said Hamas was “beaten badly” and its ability to fire rockets into southern Israel, the main stated goal of the assault launched on Dec 27, had been severely limited. Nonetheless, rockets landed in Israel even minutes before he spoke and Hamas leaders said they would continue to fight for an end to Israel’s closure of much of Gaza’s trade and a withdrawal of the Israeli forces from their territory. “A unilateral ceasefire does not mean ending the aggression and ending the siege. These constitute acts of war and so this will not mean an end to resistance,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told Reuters in Gaza.

After weeks of frenetic diplomacy revolving around Egyptian mediation, Israel chose to shun a negotiated accord with Hamas and to simply hold its fire, denying the Islamists, who are committed to the destruction of the Jewish state, the deal they sought on easing Israel’s punitive blockade on the territory. Olmert said: “The campaign has proven Israel’s power and strengthened its deterrence.”
He also said he would work with Mubarak to tighten security on Gaza’s Egyptian border — a key goal of Israel which wants to prevent Hamas rearming through smuggling tunnels. Despite the lack of any clear deal at this stage, Mubarak invited a pack of European leaders to a short-notice summit on Sunday that is meant to come up with ways to bolster the truce in Gaza and to ease the plight of the 1.5 million people penned in to the 45-kms (28-miles) sliver of coast.

Most of those, their nerves shredded and sleepless with fear and bereavement, just want the war to be over: “We do not care how, we want a ceasefire. We want to go back to our homes. Our children need to go back to sleep in their beds,” said Ali Hassan, 34 and a father of five, in the city of Gaza.
Figures from an independent Palestinian human rights group put the number of civilians killed in three weeks of aerial bombardment and a two-week-long ground offensive backed by tanks and artillery at over 700. Hundreds of fighters have also died. Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed.

Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said some 5,300 wounded had been treated, many at sanctions-hit and chaotic hospitals. It put the death toll to Saturday at 1,206, including 410 children. Of these, two young boys were killed early on Saturday at a United Nations-run school where hundreds of people had taken refuge. UN officials called for war crimes inquiries and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called it an “outrageous attack”. Israel accuses Hamas fighters of hiding among civilians and says its troops do all they can to avoid hitting the innocent in an territory where half the population is aged under 18.

Israel launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip on Dec 27 and ground troops pushed into the coastal enclave a week later.  Without an accord with Hamas, diplomats said they feared Israel would let only a trickle of goods into Gaza, hampering reconstruction and creating more hardship for its people.
“There is no agreement with Hamas,” the Israeli official said earlier, adding that Israel would reserve the right to act if Hamas continued firing or launched rockets across the border. Mubarak urged Israel to end its Gaza operation immediately and said he planned to host a reconstruction conference, but did not say when. Mubarak will also host Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and UN chief Ban in Sharm el-Sheikh on Sunday, along with the leaders of France, Britain, Germany, Turkey, Italy and Spain.

Genocide
Kuwait late Friday expressed concern at the continued Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip, describing it as “genocide and war crimes,” and urged Israel to comply with ceasefire resolution 1860. Addressing the General Assembly’s 10th emergency special session on the situation in Gaza, Kuwaiti counselor Jassem Al-Najem said there was “genocide” occurring in Gaza, and Israel’s actions had constituted “war crimes” against a defenseless people, which undermined its claims of self-defense and that it was the only democratic country in the region.

He expressed concern that the ongoing aggression is in defiance of international demands to ensure an immediate ceasefire. The military aggression against civilians, he noted, violated international law and only fuelled the cycle of violence and hatred. Recalling that a series of air raids and use of phosphorous bombs had caused more than 1,000 deaths, Al-Najem said Israel must implement ceasefire resolution 1860 and the Fourth Geneva Convention. He indicated that Palestinians being killed by Israel had suffered under a blockade for years, and every minute there were new victims, with Israel’s targeting of schools and bombing of UNRWA facilities. He called for an independent inquiry into the aggression and urged donors to support institutions working in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Urging an immediate cessation of hostilities and ceasefire, he said security could not be ensured through tyranny and the targeting of civilians. It could only result from a credible political process.
He recalled that Kuwait would host an Arab Economic Summit next week and such issues would be at the top of its agenda. He thanked General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto for his honorable position from day one of the aggression and for calling the assembly’s session. UN officials have said war crimes may have been committed during Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip — a suggestion Israeli officials reject out of hand. “These claims of war crimes are not supported by the slightest piece of evidence,” Yigal Palmor, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said when asked if there was any chance of a case being brought to the International Criminal Court.

UN officials expressed outrage after Israeli tank fire killed two boys in a UN school on Saturday.John Ging, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, said he was concerned about possible war crimes. “These two little boys are as innocent, indisputably, as they are dead,” Ging told Reuters as Israel’s offensive entered its 4th week. “The question now being asked is: is this and the killing of all other innocent civilians in Gaza a war crime?” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay called for independent investigations into possible war crimes after Israel’s shelling of another UN school compound killed 42 people, including women and children, on Jan 6. Israel says the area near the compound was being used by militants to fire rockets.

The sheer number of Palestinian dead in the conflict — 1,200, of whom 410 are children — has also led to calls by human rights groups and aid workers for Israel to face examination under international criminal law, specifically on the issue of “proportionality” in the prosecution of the war. Palmor said Israel’s army had nothing to answer for. “The army has a legal department that advises it and gives its opinion on measures that are taken,” he said. “As far as we know, the army has not done anything that is contrary to international law. Everything it did was according to international law and within international standards.” Yet Israeli army commanders admit they have seldom carried out such a full-throttle assault on an enemy.

“We’ve used artillery shells, tanks and helicopters for close-range assistance. I don’t remember when we ever fired mortars in Gaza before,” a battalion commander told Haaretz newspaper, which described Israel as acting like a steamroller. A Palestinian rights group on Wednesday urged the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel, producing a 25-page petition alleging that Israel was using “terrorist weapons to conduct crimes against humanity.” The ICC prosecutor in the Hague responded by saying the court had no jurisdiction to investigate in Gaza. The ICC can investigate war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed on the territory of, or by a national of, a state. But Gaza is not a state. “In Gaza at present, the ICC lacks such jurisdiction,” the prosecutor said in a statement.

While Israel has not signed the Rome Statute that enshrined the ICC, it can still be investigated, but it would require the UN Security Council to call for such a move. Any such proposal would likely draw a veto from Israel’s ally, the United States. “If you look at the ICC and the cases it has taken, whether it’s the Congo, or Uganda, or potentially Sudan, they are looking at mass genocide or actions against children that are unprovoked or grotesque,” said Jonathan Drimmer, an expert in war crimes issues at Steptoe & Johnson, a US law firm. “I think it’s unlikely that it has legs to go to the International Criminal Court... That’s not to excuse completely Israel’s conduct, but it is to say that you do have complicating factors in assessing possible prosecutions that don’t exist in other cases that the ICC has taken,” he told Reuters.