Israeli Forces Positions Tanks on Border Attacking Gaza

Israeli jets hit Hamas targets in Gaza last night as 75,000 reservists were mobilised and tanks massed on the border in readiness for a ground war. It followed a day of air strikes aimed at government buildings in the Gaza strip, including the prime minister's office -- in response, says Israel, to Palestinian rockets targeted at major population centres. Hamas militants continued to trade fire with Israel, with one rocket smashing into an apartment building in the Israeli port city of Ashdod, injuring five people. Two long-range missiles aimed at Tel Aviv forced residents on the bustling beachfront to run for cover. Cheers rang out as one was intercepted before reaching the city, shot down by a newly-installed battery of Israel's 'Iron Dome' missile defence system. The other crashed harmlessly into the Mediterranean. Hamas, the Islamist hardliners who run the Palestinian enclave, said Israeli air strikes hit 200 sites in Gaza, wrecking the office of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh -- scene of a meeting with his Egyptian counterpart on Friday. The strikes also destroyed a police headquarters and the building housing the interior ministry. Officials said 41 Palestinians -- nearly half of them civilians including eight children and a pregnant woman -- had been killed since Israel began its air strikes on Wednesday. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a Hamas rocket the next day. In Jerusalem, targeted by a Palestinian missile on Friday for the first time in four decades, there was little outward sign on the Jewish Sabbath that the attack had any impact on its usually placid pace of life. On Friday, the border at Erez opened unexpectedly and my team of three from Channel 4 News were the last journalists to enter the outskirts of Gaza City. We had to sign waiver forms to enter the official war zone because of the real risk of injury or death. For ten terrifying minutes we sped through no-man's land along unlit, empty streets on the much-shelled Gazan side with only the sound of crickets and rumble of shelling in the background. We came across 18-year-old Zachariya Salah, whose house was blown up a few hours earlier. His right eye was half-closed and he had blood seeping from cuts and a hole in the back of his head. He could not remember anything except waking on Friday in Gaza Hospital. His home had been hit because his father, Abu Hassan Salah, who was not at home, is a senior security official in Hamas and had been targeted by the Israeli Defence Force. The house and those either side of it were obliterated. Five children, neighbours of the family, were also being treated at the hospital. Surgeon and Health Minister Dr Mufeed Mkhallalati said: 'They know this area is really populated -- they know they are going to kill women and children. 'It is deliberate. Totally deliberate.' An explosion seemed to go off every five minutes -- even through the night -- in Gaza. They rattled the windows and rocked the hotel in which we are staying. We taped our windows for blast protection and slept on mattresses on the floor. Meanwhile, Gazans sit and wait. The Israeli tank commanders massed on the border also wait. If a land invasion comes, the force will again be overwhelming -- but the result will only increase the ranks of young men willing to fight for Hamas. Victory for Israel will be bloody for civilians in Gaza -- but at what cost for Israel?

• 2012-11-18T04:11:21+00:00
• Duration: 00:44

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