Israeli Attacks Intensify In Gaza

(CBS/AP)  Palestinian militants armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades battled Israeli helicopters and tanks Thursday in the bloodiest day since Israel invaded Gaza over a soldier's capture. At least 21 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier died as Israeli forces retook three empty Jewish settlements nearly a year after abandoning them.

The government ordered the offensive after rockets hit the major Israeli city of Ashkelon for the first time, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger.

Israel's main goal in extending its largest operation in Gaza since it unilaterally evacuated the territory was to carve out a temporary buffer zone to prevent militants from firing more rockets at Israel.

Throughout the day, Israeli aircraft targeted Palestinian militants with missile strikes, while Israeli tanks took up positions among tightly packed Palestinian homes. Apache helicopters hovered overhead, firing flares and machine guns to support ground forces engaged in fierce skirmishes with masked Palestinian gunmen.

After touring Gaza main hospital, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of the Islamic militant group Hamas called for international intervention to stop the Israeli offensive, which he called a "crime against humanity."

Haniyeh said the Israeli push was "a desperate effort to undermine the Palestinian government under the pretext of a search for the missing soldier."

Interior Minister Said Siyyam of the ruling Hamas party issued the Palestinian government's first call to arms since Israeli ground forces invaded Gaza last week, appealing to all security forces to fulfill their "religious and moral duty to stand up to this aggression and cowardly Zionist invasion." Siyyam doesn't carry much weight with the security forces, however, because most are loyal to the Fatah party led by the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Earlier this week, Palestinian militants from Hamas fired two rockets into Ashkelon. No one was hurt, but the rockets were the first to reach a major Israeli population center, indicating militants have obtained longer-range weapons.

In other developments:

Hamas gunmen holding kidnapped Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit have not released any information since Israel refused to meet a Tuesday deadline to release more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners. "We're not going to negotiate," Israeli Defense official David Hacham said.

On Thursday, Noam Shalit, the 19-year-old captive's father, urged Israel to consider releasing Palestinian prisoners in exchange for his son. "Everything has a price. I don't think there will be some sort of move to free Gilad without a price. That's not the way it works in the Middle East," the elder Shalit said, in his first comment on the government's handling of the affair.

Acting on behalf of Arab nations, Qatar circulated a draft U.N. Security Council resolution Thursday demanding that Israel end its offensive in the Gaza Strip and release the Palestinian officials it has arrested. The draft faced immediate opposition from the United States and France, which called it unbalanced in its criticism of Israel. France's ambassador said he would offer changes, but U.S. Ambassador John Bolton suggested that Washington opposed the resolution entirely.

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