Hamas Pledges Attacks on Israel

The military wing of Hamas vowed Friday to resume attacks against Israel after Palestinian Authority officials blamed Israel for the deaths of at least 10 Palestinians, including seven civilians at a beach.

Hamas, which now controls the Palestinian government, has largely observed a conditional cease-fire for more than a year, though it declared in March that it no longer had “interest or enthusiasm” in the truce.

A resumption of attacks would escalate violence in the region at a time when smaller militant groups are carrying out only sporadic assaults against Israel.

The Hamas statement came as the Israeli military said it was investigating whether an artillery shell fired by its forces struck the beachgoers in the northern Gaza Strip.

“The Zionist massacres are opening the fight. This means that the earthquake in the Zionist cities will start again,” the Hamas military wing said in a statement released late Friday. The group said it would decide where and when to retaliate.

Hamas in September announced a similar resumption of strikes against Israel after a fatal explosion in a Gaza refugee camp, only to back off when Israeli forces responded to its rocket attacks with fierce airstrikes and a wave of arrests.

Hamas carried out dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks on Israel before the truce.

There was no immediate response from Israeli officials to the Hamas declaration. In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. regretted that innocent Palestinians had been killed.

“The United States calls for mutual restraint and urges Israelis and Palestinians to avoid all actions that could exacerbate tensions further,” he said.

Palestinian Authority officials said Friday that an artillery shell, apparently fired from a Israeli naval ship positioned in the Mediterranean Sea, struck near a family picnicking at the beach. Three children were among the seven killed, they said. About 30 people were reported injured.

The Israeli military said an initial investigation had ruled out fire by gunships or aircraft, but it was looking into whether the shell may have come from a land-based weapon.

Military spokeswoman Capt. Noa Meir said the army’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, had ordered a halt to all artillery fire into the Gaza Strip until the investigation was completed. The military expressed regret for any harm to Palestinian civilians.

Hardest hit was the Ghalia family, which lost six members, among them the father, one of his two wives, an infant boy and an 18-month-old girl, the Associated Press reported.

Nasreen Ghalia said it was the second tragedy to strike her family. An Israeli shell hit the family’s farm two years ago, killing four family members, she said.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Friday’s deaths in Gaza as “a crime of annihilation against the Palestinian people.”

Israel regularly fires shells into an area of the northern Gaza Strip from which some Palestinian militant groups often launch Kassam rockets into southern Israel.

Israeli officials said the Palestinian rocket fire increased this week, and included six salvos Friday after an Israeli airstrike killed a Palestinian militant leader, Jamal abu Samhadana. One of those rockets struck the southern Israeli town of Sderot, but there were no reports of injuries.

In a separate Israeli airstrike Friday, three people in the northern Gaza Strip were killed when a missile hit the car in which they were riding. Israeli military officials said they were returning from firing a Kassam rocket toward Sderot. But Palestinians said the three were on their way to check out reports that a relative had been wounded during an earlier Israeli attack.

Another airstrike in the same area injured four Hamas militants, Palestinian officials said.

In the southern Gaza Strip, tens of thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of fighters toting guns and banners, packed a soccer stadium to mourn Abu Samhadana.

The militant leader’s shrouded body was carried into the stadium in the town of Rafah amid the crackle of automatic weapons fire and shouts calling for retaliation. His group, the Popular Resistance Committees, has claimed responsibility for numerous fatal attacks on Israelis and is suspected in a 2003 roadside bombing in Gaza that killed three Americans.

In April, the Hamas government named Abu Samhadana director-general in the Interior Ministry and assigned him to lead a new 3,000-member militia that has been at the center of a power struggle between the militant group and Abbas’ Fatah faction.

The Palestinian Authority president vetoed the new militia but Hamas deployed the forces anyway, exacerbating tensions with Fatah that have led to clashes between the two groups.

Three other militants died along with Abu Samhadana, whom Israel had tried to kill on several occasions.

Meanwhile, Palestinian officials said Abbas was expected to issue a decree today calling for a referendum on Palestinian statehood that would implicitly recognize Israel, something Hamas has refused to do despite a cutoff in Western aid. Under the plan, which Hamas opposes, Palestinians would vote July 31 on a program that is based on a document drawn up by well-known Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.

Such a referendum would represent a bold gambit by Abbas, a relative moderate who has been widely considered weak and reluctant to confront Hamas. But Abbas and Hamas could hammer out a unified political program before then and agree to cancel the vote.

Hamas leaders have claimed that Abbas lacks the legal authority to call a referendum in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and urged him to instead continue negotiations. The factions have yet to agree on a shared program despite weeks of talks aimed at ending the factional clashes.

The so-called prisoners’ initiative, for which polls show wide support, essentially tracks Fatah’s political platform in calling for a Palestinian state next to Israel.

Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction, has defied international pressure to recognize the Jewish state, renounce violence and honor agreements with Israel reached under Fatah.

The United States and the European Union classify Hamas as a terrorist organization and have cut off direct aid to the Palestinian Authority, worsening a financial crisis in place even before the group won elections in January. Israel also has withheld about $50 million monthly in tax revenue and customs duties that it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

The lack of money has left the Hamas government largely unable to pay the 165,000 employees.

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Special correspondent Fayed abu Shammaleh in Gaza City contributed to this report.