Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas today suggested he would not head a unity government the Islamist movement is trying to forge with the rival Fatah faction so as to lift a Western embargo.
Mr Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas leader, told worshippers at a Gaza mosque that Western powers did not want him to be part of the new administration. "[They have] one condition, that the siege will not be lifted unless the prime minister is changed.
"When the issue is like this, the siege on one hand, the prime minister on the another . . . I prefer the siege be lifted and the suffering ended," Mr Haniyeh said.
Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said Israel will keep targeting Palestinian rocket squads in Gaza despite the risk of inadvertently hitting civilians. He spoke yesterday as tens of thousands of Palestinians buried 18 victims of an errant Israeli artillery strike.
Mr Olmert said the artillery was meant to hit an orange grove from which troops saw rockets fired seconds earlier but instead hit homes in Beit Hanoun, some 500 metres away.
An Israeli military statement said the inquiry determined the problem was a "technical failure" in the system that directs the fire.
Defence Minister Amir Peretz ordered the military to "re-evaluate its policy of artillery fire in Gaza, including the safety range," his ministry said.
Women collapsed in grief, gunmen fired in the air and a man hoisted his dead baby aloft during the funeral procession in the northern Gaza border town of Beit Hanoun, where several Israeli shells struck a residential area early on Wednesday. All of the dead belonged to a single extended family.