Palestinian militants launched a first deadly rocket attack on Israel in over a year, killing a Thai worker today in a strike that challenged Gaza's Hamas rulers and prompted Israel to threaten a powerful response.
The rocket tore into a plastic-covered hothouse in the Israeli community of Netiv Ha'asara an hour after the European Union's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, paid a rare visit by a top diplomat to the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip.
She condemned the attack, as did UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, scheduled to visit the Gaza Strip, Israel and the West Bank on Saturday and Sunday.
A previously unknown group, Ansar al-Sunna, believed to share the hardline ideology of al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the strike, the first from the Gaza Strip to kill anyone in Israel since it ended its war in the enclave in January 2009.
"This is a crossing of the red line, which Israel cannot accept. The Israeli response will be appropriate. It will be strong," Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom told reporters.
The attack, followed by a second strike that caused no casualties, was launched a day before the international Quartet of Middle East mediators was to meet in Moscow to discuss ways to revive peace talks frozen since December 2008.
But the incident could have more of an impact on internal Palestinian politics than on the Middle East peace process, which Hamas has refused to join and which is at an impasse over Israeli settlement policy on occupied land Palestinians want for a state.
Hamas Islamists, who seized the Gaza Strip in 2007, had been urging other militant groups not to strike Israel, voicing concern about possible Israeli retaliation.
Those so-called Salafi groups, whose agenda of "jihad," or holy war, against the West is contrary to Hamas's nationalist goals, have been challenging Hamas with a series of bombings against its officials and facilities.
Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai, however, said Israel held Hamas responsible for any cross-border attacks because the group controlled the Gaza Strip.
"Israel is not interested in a military confrontation but will not allow its citizens to be attacked," Vilnai said.
In a letter of complaint to UN chief Ban and to the Security Council, Israel's UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said attacks such as that today "undoubtedly do not represent a welcoming message" from Gaza just ahead of Ban's trip.
She urged Ban to "to express the unequivocal expectation of the international community" for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, seized by Gaza militants in 2006.
Strikes against Israel since the Gaza war have been met by air raids against militants or suspected weapons-making facilities.
"The Jihadist mission came in response to the Zionist assaults against the Ibrahimi and al-Aqsa mosques and the continued Zionist aggression against our people in Jerusalem," Ansar al-Sunna said in a statement.
Israel angered Palestinians by rededicating an 18th-century synagogue this week in Jerusalem, some 400 metres from al-Aqsa, and announcing a plan to renovate holy sites in the West Bank town of Hebron, holy to Muslims and Jews.
Hamas avoided praising the rocket attack but steered clear of comments that could be seen by Palestinians in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip as disapproving of the strike.
"The government of the Zionist enemy, which has launched a war against the Palestinian people and against holy sites and al-Aqsa mosque, bears the responsibility for all the escalation," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said.
The Al-Aqsa Martrys Brigades a wing of the mainstream Fatah movement also claimed responsibility for the attack.
Palestinian militants in Gaza have carried out sporadic rocket and mortar bomb attacks on Israel since the end of the three-week Gaza war, usually without causing any casualties.
More than 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, were killed in that offensive, launched with the declared aim of curbing rocket attacks. Thirteen Israelis, among them three civilians, were killed.
A second rocket fired from Gaza after darkness struck in an open area in Israel, causing no casualties, a military spokesman said. In all five rockets have hit Israel this week, up from an average of once a week in the past year, officials said.
Separately today, the US Treasury imposed sanctions against two firms in Gaza - Islamic National Bank and Al-Aqsa Television - for their ties to Hamas, though bank officials have denied any political affiliation.
It said the bank served members of Hamas' military wing, and the television station aired programs "designed to recruit children to become Hamas armed fighters and suicide bombers upon reaching adulthood."
Mohammed Abu Thraya, deputy director of the Al-Aqsa station called on world media outlets to condemn what he called an assault by Israel and the US against "free media."
Reuters