Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, has said the military has nearly completed the goals set for the war on Gaza, as ground forces continue to advance on the edges of Gaza City.
“Israel is getting close to achieving the goals it set for itself,” he said at an Israeli cabinet meeting on Sunday.
He told ministers that Israel had “dealt Hamas an unprecedented blow … It will never be the same Hamas,” Oved Yehezkel, the Israeli cabinet secretary, said.

Thousands of demonstrators poured onto the streets of major European cities on Sunday to protest for a second day against Israel’s assault on Gaza, but there was no repeat of Saturday’s widespread violent clashes with police.
Around 30,000 people demonstrated in Brussels, some carrying models of bloodied Gaza children, while more than 1,000 formed a human chain to march through Rome as Italy’s defence minister warned Muslims against provocative prayers in public squares.

Israel and Hamas vowed to keep fighting on Sunday, ignoring international calls to stop the Gaza conflict which entered a 16th day with heavy clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian guerrillas.
Hamas’s leader in exile, Khaled Meshaal, said his Islamist group would not consider a truce until Israel ended its military offensive and lifted a blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Israel sent tanks deeper into the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave and threatened to intensify its air and ground assaults against militants who fired more rockets into the Jewish state.

Israel has dropped leaflets on the Gaza Strip warning residents that it is to escalate its military action.
There is speculation the leaflets may mean Israel will adopt new tactics in its battle with Palestinian militants.
Israel says it has attacked dozens more Hamas targets, including what it says were rocket-launching sites, weapons stores and smuggling tunnels.

A number of prominent British Jews have written an open letter calling on the Israeli government to halt its military operations in Gaza immediately.
The letter, published in the Observer, warns the military action, far from improving security, will strengthen extremism and destabilise the region.
The signatories, who declare themselves “passionate supporters of Israel”, include several rabbis.
The first major rally in support of Israel in the UK will take place later.

In July 2006, Israeli troops were two weeks into their unsuccessful campaign to rescue captured soldier Gilad Shalit when the Shia Muslim political and militant movement attacked from the north.
Its fighters launched dozens of Katyusha rockets and mortars at Israel and seized two more soldiers and killed eight others in cross-border raids.
It was seen as a dramatic gesture of solidarity with the Palestinians, but Israel’s response was far more dramatic and devastating to Lebanon.

JERUSALEM — A few weeks ago, Defense Minister Ehud Barak was considered a dead man walking in Israeli politics. Members of his Labor Party were plotting to replace him after elections on Feb. 10, if not before. Under his leadership, the storied party of David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir had sunk so low in the polls that there was serious talk it might disappear.
No one is talking like that now. Twelve days into a punishing war that he is leading against Hamas in Gaza, Labor’s poll numbers are spiking. Mr. …

JERUSALEM — Israel’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza threatened to broaden on Thursday as at least three rockets were fired into the north of Israel from Lebanon.
The rockets, presumably launched in support of Hamas, could presage the opening of a second front. The Israeli Army, in a brief statement, said it “responded with fire against the source of the rockets,” which landed near the town of Nahariya. Two Israelis were slightly wounded, the police said.

Fighting intensified on the northern outskirts of Gaza City yesterday as a Hamas leader warned that the Islamists would kill Jewish children anywhere in the world in revenge for Israel’s devastating assault.
“They have legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the children of Palestine,” Mahmoud Zahar said in a televised broadcast recorded at a secret location. “They have legitimised the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people.”
Mr Zahar made his first appearance since Israel launched its offensive. Dressed in a dark suit, he …

Israeli mortar rounds blasted a United Nations-run school that had been converted into a refugee shelter for hundreds of Palestinians displaced by the ten-day war in Gaza, killing more than 40 people today.
It was one of three UN schools hit by Israeli ordnance today. The strike against the Fakhora school in the northern town of Jabaliya was the deadliest single attack of an already blood-soaked offensive.
Israeli army officials said that their forces had been targeted by Hamas mortar fire from within the school compound. They named two alleged Hamas …