Abbas suspends talks with Israel
Middle East Desk Report

GAZA—Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suspended peace negotiations with Israel on Sunday, demanding it end a Gaza offensive that has killed more than 100 Palestinians, many of them civilians.
Israel said it was acting in self-defense in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to curb constant cross-border rocket attacks by militants and threatened to intensify its ground and air campaign despite allegations it was using excessive force.
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. 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.” 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.
“Israel has no intention of stopping the fight against the terrorist organizations even for a minute,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his cabinet, facing the new challenge of long-range rockets hitting the major southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. 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.
European Union president Slovenia condemned Israel’s attacks as disproportionate and violating international law. The presidency statement also called for an immediate halt to the rocket fire. “With all due respect ... no one has the right to preach morality to Israel for employing its elementary right of self-defense,” Olmert said. Abbas designated Sunday a day of mourning.
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.
One Israeli has been killed by a rocket launched from Gaza since the current surge in bloodshed began. Hamas has said such salvoes would stop if Israel abandoned operations in the Gaza Strip and raids against militants in the occupied West Bank.
“We are acting to hit the Hamas infrastructure ... the final target is to bring an end to the firing of Qassams,” defense Minister Ehud Barak said about the crude rockets. “This will not be achieved in the next two days, but we will continue the activity with all our strength. And we need to prepare for escalation, because the big ground operation is real and tangible,” Barak said.
Meeting in emergency session, the U.N. Security Council said it was deeply concerned about civilian deaths in southern Israel and the Gaza Strip and urged a cessation of violence. “We are capable of sustaining the fight and tolerating (attacks) beyond the expectations of the enemy,” said Abu Ubaida, spokesman of Hamas’s Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades. Olmert has been under pressure from some of his cabinet members to launch a broader offensive in the Gaza Strip, especially after militants began firing longer-range Katyusha rockets at Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 people.