Ten people died in three separate incidents yesterday as the Middle East death toll reached 56 since the US-orchestrated peace summit in Aqaba on June 4th.
Early yesterday seven Palestinians, including a militant, his wife and their two children, were killed in Gaza and an Israeli was shot dead while shopping in a village near the West Bank city of Jenin. Late last night, two Islamic Jihad militants were shot dead by Israeli undercover troops in the West Bank. The death toll of 56 includes 32 Palestinians and 24 Israelis.
The missile attack by Israeli helicopters on senior Hamas militant Yasser Taha in Gaza was the fifth strike by Israel at members of the Islamic group in the last 48 hours and came a day after a Hamas suicide-bomber blew himself up on a bus in Jerusalem, killing 17 people.
Desperate to salvage the road map peace plan, officials in the Bush administration yesterday shifted their focus to Hamas, singling the group out as the main culprit in the latest round of bloodletting and trying to enlist the support of moderate Arab states in curbing the radical Islamic group. "The issue is Hamas, the terrorists are Hamas," the White House spokesman, Mr Ari Fleischer, told reporters travelling with President Bush.
On Tuesday, Mr Bush had chastised the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, for ordering an assassination attempt - it failed - on one of the most high-profile Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip. Yesterday however, Mr Fleischer said: "The issue is not Israel, the issue is not the Palestinian Authority, the issue is terrorists who are killing in an attempt to stop the [peace\] process."
The Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, said he had been on the phone "to the leaders in the region, to encourage them to come down hard on Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organisations". The National Security Adviser, Ms Condoleezza Rice, pointed a finger at Palestinian leaders. "There is not going to be any pass for any Palestinian leadership in fighting terror," she said.
As both sides yesterday buried their dead from the previous day's carnage, Hamas vowed further revenge while Israeli defence officials signalled that the army had been given orders to crush the Islamic group. One official said the military had been told "to use everything they have" to smash Hamas's military leadership.
Mr Sharon told his cabinet he could not wait around for the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Mr Mahmoud Abbas, to begin fighting terror. "If I need to choose between the war on terror and supporting Abu Mazen \, I will choose the first option," he told his cabinet.
Hamas responded to the assault on its senior members by issuing a "travel advisory" to foreigners yesterday, telling them to "leave the Zionist entity immediately to preserve their lives". With the latest surge in violence threatening to engulf the US-backed peace plan, Mr Powell yesterday urged leaders in Egypt and Saudi Arabia to exert their influence in an attempt to stymie Hamas.
The Secretary of State is also expected to meet officials from the US, the UN, the EU and Russia in an effort to save the road map. The meeting will likely take place on June 22nd in Aqaba.After speaking by phone yesterday to the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Silvan Shalom, and the Jordanian Foreign Minister, Mr Marwan Muasher, Mr Powell said he was "encouraging the Palestinian leadership . . . the Israeli leadership to act with determination, to punch through this wave of violence, to make sure that it does not stop us".
The US envoy Mr John Wolf is also expected to arrive in the region over the weekend to head an American team which has been given the task of monitoring implementation of the road map.
The Bush administration faces a dilemma: while it is sympathetic to Israel's war on Hamas, it knows that this war also threatens to undermine the political process as well as Mr Abbas, who has called on armed Palestinian militias to cease attacks on Israelis.
Israel says military has orders to crush Hamas: page 12