Moody’s downgrades French rating

19 November 2012 Last updated at 18:11 ET

The credit ratings agency Moody’s has downgraded France from its top rating.

The country’s debt has been reduced from AAA to AA1 and has kept its negative outlook, meaning it could be downgraded again.

In a statement, Moody’s blamed the risk of a Greek exit from the euro, stalled economic growth and the chances that France will have to contribute to bailing out other countries.

Rival agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded France in January.

Moody’s said the primary reason for the downgrade had been France’s “persistent structural economic challenges” and the threats they pose to economic growth and the government’s coffers.

“These include the rigidities in labour and services markets, and low levels of innovation, which continue to drive France’s gradual but sustained loss of competitiveness and the gradual erosion of its export-oriented industrial base,” Moody’s said.

French finance minister Pierre Moscovici said the downgrade was motivation to pursue structural reforms.

He also blamed the downgrade on the economic management of previous governments and added that France was still committed to cutting its public deficit to 3% of output next year.

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Turbulence on Cuba-Italy flight leaves 30 bruised

ROME (AP) — An airliner flying from Havana to Milan abruptly plunged some 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) when it hit unusually strong turbulence over the Atlantic on Monday, terrifying passengers and leaving some 30 people aboard with bruises and scrapes, airline officials said.

The flight continued to Milan’s Malpensa airport after the plane’s captain determined that it suffered no structural damage and two passengers who are physicians found no serious injuries, Giulio Buzzi, head of the pilots division at Neos Air, told Sky TG24 TV.

The ANSA news agency quoted bruised passenger Edoardo De Lucchi as saying meals were being served when suddenly there was “10 seconds of terror.” He recounted how plates went flying and some passengers not wearing seatbelts bounced about.

Buzzi had said that the drop measured some 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) in a cloudless sky. But Milan daily’s Corriere della Sera’s web site, quoting Neos official Davide Martini, later reported that the plane first bounced up some 500 meters (1,650 feet), then dropped some 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) to some 500 meters (1,650 feet) below the original altitude.

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Soccer-Liverpool’s Sterling apologises to Watson over collision

Nov 18 (Reuters) – Liverpool winger Raheem Sterling has wished Wigan Athletic‘s Ben Watson a speedy recovery after a freak collision between the pair on Saturday left Watson with a suspected shin fracture.

Sterling, who made his England debut midweek, used his Twitter account to offer an apology to Watson following the Reds’ 3-0 win at Anfield.

Midfielder Watson was taken from the pitch in the first half when he was struck just above the shin by Sterling‘s knee as both competed in the air for the ball.

“To Ben Watson I didn’t realise it was serious as that ill (sic) be praying for a speedy recovery mate ill (sic) have you in my prayers every day. #sorry,” posted the 17-year-old.

Following the defeat, Wigan manager Roberto Martinez expressed concern for Watson as well as Gary Caldwell who has a problem with his hamstring.

“The injury to Ben Watson is a really nasty blow and what we believe to be a broken leg,” Martinez told Wigan’s official website (www.wiganlatics.com).

“We will have to assess the injury and the treatment that Ben will need before we can judge how long he is going to be missing.

“Ben was starting to have a very strong season and was putting in some commanding performances and it is a real shame to lose him to an injury like that.”

Martinez also accused Liverpool scorer Luis Suarez of stamping on David Jones. (Reporting By Mark Pangallo; Editing by Mark Meadows; mark.meadows@thomsonreuters.com; +44 20 7542 7933; Reuters Messaging:; mark.meadows.reuters.com@reuters.net)

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Doping-Four year bans proposed under new WADA Code

Nov 18 (Reuters) – Athletes guilty of serious doping offenses will be suspended for four years from 2015 under proposals being considered by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), but there are no plans for a specific rule to ban offenders from the Olympics.

Currently, athletes found guilty of a first major doping offense are handed a two-year ban with any subsequent positive test incurring a life-ban.

The longer ban would be introduced for offenses that include the use of anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, masking agents and trafficking, according to a second draft of the 2015 WADA code which was reviewed over the weekend.

“It is clear … there is a strong desire in the world of sport, from governments and within the anti-doping community to strengthen the sanction articles in the code,” WADA President John Fahey said in a statement.

“This second draft has done that, doubling the length of suspension for serious offenders and widening the scope for anti-doping organizations to impose lifetime bans.”

The draft does not, however, consider a former International Olympic Committee (IOC) rule regarding Olympic participation, which was ruled in non-compliance with the WADA Code in 2011 by sport’s highest court, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

The IOC rule, introduced in 2008, banned athletes from participating at the next Olympic Games if they had been suspended for six months or longer.

After the rule was ruled non-compliant, Britain was forced to overturn lifetime Olympic bans on their drug cheats.

“The rational is if more four-year sanctions are delivered, then there won’t be any need for (the IOC rule) because the athletes will be missing the next Olympics,” WADA spokesman Terence O’Rorke said by telephone from Montreal.

The new WADA Code draft also includes a proposal that to be prohibited, substances or methods must be performance enhancing, contrary to the spirit of sport or contrary to the health of athletes.

The proposed code will undergo further review between now and March 2013, when it will be presented to the WADA Foundation Board before a final draft is prepared for ratification at the world anti-doping conference in Johannesburg next November.

“Athletes must know that there is a heavy price to pay for intentional doping,” Fahey said. “I am confident this draft will deliver that message loud and clear.”

WADA also said its funding would be frozen for a second successive year at approximately $ 28 million in 2013.

“This freeze is not ideal for the fight against doping in sport,” Fahey said. “It is widely accepted that doping is a major issue no longer restricted to the sporting world, and that it must be addressed by society as a whole.” (Reporting by Gene Cherry in Salvo, North Carolina, editing by Nick Mulvenney)

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Virgin wins Heathrow routes bid

18 November 2012 Last updated at 22:19 ET

Virgin Atlantic has been offered the rights to operate Heathrow links to Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

Sir Richard Branson’s airline bid successfully for the London landing slots formerly operated by BMI.

The slots were released to others by regulators as a condition of allowing the takeover earlier this year of BMI by British Airways’ owner IAG.

Virgin Atlantic intends to start operating the new services from the end of next March.

BA already flew between Heathrow and Scotland in competition with BMI, and the European Commission ruled that the London airport’s scarce and valuable slots had to be released to other airlines for links to Edinburgh and Aberdeen, as well as Cairo and Moscow, where BMI and BA had formerly competed.

Virgin Atlantic is to lease Airbus A320s from another operator on its new routes.

Its first move into short-haul flights began last August, when it announced a new route between Manchester and Heathrow, building on an often bitter, 28-year rivalry between British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.

Continue reading the main story

We have fought hard for the right to fly short-haul”

End Quote Steve Ridgeway Virgin Atlantic chief executive

The only other airline known to have put in a bid for the slots was Aer Lingus.

Steve Ridgeway, chief executive of Virgin Atlantic, said: “We have fought hard for the right to fly short-haul and take a strong challenge to British Airways within these shores.

“This is the beginning of an exciting new era in Virgin Atlantic history and we now feel a responsibility to everyone that has supported us in this challenge.”

The airline is to finalise its timetable plans over the next two weeks.

Edinburgh Airport chief executive Gordon Dewar said the new regular service would provide choice for travelling to Heathrow and open up a new set of onward destinations for passengers.

Scotland’s Transport Minister Keith Brown said it was a welcome announcement for both passengers and the air industry.

Mr Brown added: “The detail will be worked out over the next couple of weeks but we are pleased that the European Commission has taken note of the need for both Edinburgh and Aberdeen to be served and that Virgin Atlantic will now be able to operate from two of Scotland’s most important cities.”

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Rebels in Congo reach door of Goma

GOMA, Congo (AP) — A Rwandan-backed rebel group advanced to within 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) of Goma, a crucial provincial capital in eastern Congo, marking the first time that rebels have come this close since 2008.

Congolese army spokesman Col. Olivier Hamuli said the fighting has been going on since 6 a.m. Sunday and the front line has moved to just a few kilometers (miles) outside the city. After more than nine hours of violent clashes the two sides took a break, with M23 rebels establishing a checkpoint just 100 meters (yards) away from one held by the military in the village of Munigi, exactly 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) outside the Goma city line.

Contacted by telephone on the front line, M23 rebel spokesman Col. Vianney Kazarama said the group will spend the night in Goma.

“We are about to take the town. We will spend the night in Goma tonight,” said Kazarama. “We are confident that we can take Goma and then our next step will be to take Bukavu,” he said mentioning the capital of the next province to the south.

The M23 rebel group is made up of soldiers from a now-defunct rebel army, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, a group made-up primarily of fighters from the Tutsi ethnic group, the ethnicity that was targeted in Rwanda‘s 1994 genocide. In 2008, the CNDP led by Rwandan commando Gen. Laurent Nkunda marched his soldiers to the doorstep of Goma, abruptly stopping just before taking the city.

In the negotiations that followed and which culminated in a March 23, 2009 peace deal, the CNDP agreed to disband and their fighters joined the national army of Congo. They did not pick up their arms again until this spring, when hundreds of ex-CNDP fighters defected from the army in April, claiming that the Congolese government had failed to uphold their end of the 2009 agreement.

Reports, including one by the United Nations Group of Experts, have shown that M23 is actively being backed by Rwanda and the new rebellion is likely linked to the fight to control Congo’s rich mineral wealth.

The latest fighting broke out Thursday and led to the deaths of 151 rebels and two soldiers. On Saturday U.N. attack helicopters targeted M23 positions in eastern Congo.

Also on Saturday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon had called Rwandan President Paul Kagame “to request that he use his influence on the M23 to help calm the situation and restrain M23 from continuing their attack,” according to peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous who spoke at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Saturday.

North Kivu governor Julien Paluku said Saturday that the Congolese army had earlier retreated from Kibumba, which is 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Goma, after thousands of Rwandans, who he says were backing the rebels, attacked early Saturday.

“Rwandan forces bombarded our positions in Kibumba since early this morning and an estimated 3,500 crossed the border to attack us,” he said Saturday.

In downtown Goma, panicked residents had come out to try to get more information on what was happening. A 45-year-old mother of five said that she has nowhere to go.

“I don’t really know what is happening, I’ve seen soldiers and tanks in the streets and that scares me,” said Imaculee Kahindo. Asked if she planned to leave the city, she said: “What can we do? I will probably hide in my house with my children.”

Hamuli, the spokesman for the Congolese army, denied reports that soldiers were fleeing.

In 2008 as Nkunda’s CNDP rebels amassed at the gates of Goma, reporters inside the city were able to see Congolese soldiers running in the opposite direction, after having abandoned their posts. The Congolese army is notoriously dysfunctional with soldiers paid only small amounts, making it difficult to secure their loyalties during heavy fighting.

“We are fighting 3 kilometers from Goma, just past the airport. And our troops are strong enough to resist the rebels,” said Hamuli. “We won’t let the M23 march into our town,” he said. Asked if his troops were fleeing, he added: “These are false rumors. We are not going anywhere.”

U.N. peacekeeping chief Ladsous said that the rebels were very well-equipped, including with night vision equipment allowing them to fight at night.

Reports by United Nations experts have accused Rwanda, as well as Uganda, of supporting the rebels. Both countries strongly deny any involvement and Uganda said if the charges continue it will pull its peacekeeping troops out of Somalia, where they are playing an important role in pushing out the Islamist extremist rebels.

The U.N. Security Council called for an immediate stop to the violence following a two-hour, closed-door emergency meeting. The council said it would add sanctions against M23 rebels and demanded that rebels immediately stop their advance toward the provincial capital of Goma.

“We must stop the M23″ because Goma’s fall “would, inevitably, turn into a humanitarian crisis,” said France‘s U.N. Ambassador, Gerard Araud. He added that U.N. officials would decide in the coming days which M23 leaders to target for additional sanctions.

___

Associated Press writer Maria Sanminiatelli at the United Nations and Rukmini Callimachi in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.

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Apple, Samsung allowed to add products in U.S. patent lawsuit

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge allowed Samsung Electronics Co Ltd to pursue claims the iPhone5 infringes its patents on Thursday, while also allowing Apple Inc to add claims that the Samsung Galaxy Note, Galaxy S III and the Jelly Bean operating system violate its patents.

The ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal in San Jose, California, was the latest development in a continuing legal war by Apple against manufacturers like Samsung whose products use Google Inc’s Android software.

Representatives for both Apple and Samsung declined comment.

The case is one of two patent infringement lawsuits pending in the U.S. District Court in San Jose by Apple against Samsung. An earlier lawsuit by Apple that related to different patents resulted in a $ 1.05 billion jury verdict against Samsung on August 24.

Apple filed the second lawsuit in February, alleging that various Samsung smartphone and tablet products including the Galaxy Nexus infringed eight of its patents.

Samsung denied infringement and filed a cross-complaint alleging that Apple’s iPhone and iPad infringed eight of its patents.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh issued a preliminary injunction against pretrial sales of the Nexus in June. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned the sales ban on October 11.

Following the debut of the iPhone on September 21, Samsung sought to add it as an Apple product that infringed its patents. Apple moved likewise to add the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, Samsung Galaxy S III and the Jelly Bean operating system in connection with the Galaxy Nexus.

In his ruling Thursday, Grewal said Samsung acted with “reasonable diligence” in asking the court to allow it to add the iPhone 5 to the case.

Apple did not oppose adding the iPhone5. Nevertheless, Grewal warned Apple to “think twice before opposing similar amendments reflecting other newly released products — e.g. the iPad 4 and iPad mini — that Samsung may propose in the near future.”

The case is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., et al., U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, 12-cv-00630.

(Reporting By Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Richard Pullin)

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Irish rally for government action on abortion

DUBLIN (Reuters) – At least 5,000 people marched to the offices of Ireland‘s socially conservative prime minister on Saturday to call for clearer guidelines on abortion following the death of a woman denied a termination.

It was the largest of a wave of protests across Ireland in recent days in response to the death of 31-year old Indian woman Savita Halappanavar who died of septicaemia following a miscarriage 17 weeks into her pregnancy.

The Irish health authority (HSE) has launched an inquiry into the death, which has reopened a decades-long debate over whether the government should legislate to explicitly allow abortion when the health of a mother is at risk.

Activists in the overwhelmingly Catholic country, which has some of the world’s most restrictive laws on abortion, say the refusal by doctors to terminate the pregnancy earlier may have contributed to Halappanavar‘s death.

“A vibrant, healthy woman starting her family life has died needlessly … because of the failure of successive governments to deal with this issue,” independent member of parliament Clare Daly told the crowd, which responded with chants of “shame.”

Irish law does not specify exactly when the threat to the life or health of the mother is high enough to justify a termination, leaving doctors to decide. Critics say this means doctors’ personal beliefs can play a role.

Despite a dramatic waning of the influence of the Catholic Church, which dominated politics in Ireland until the 1980s, successive governments have been loath to legislate on an issue they fear could alienate conservative voters.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny, whose ruling Fine Gael party made an election pledge not to introduce new laws allowing abortion, on Friday said he would not be rushed into a decision on the issue.

Halappanavar was admitted to hospital in severe pain on October 21 and asked for a termination after doctors told her the baby would not survive, according to her husband Praveen.

The foetus was surgically removed when its heartbeat stopped days later, but her family believes the delay contributed to the blood poisoning that killed Halappanavar on October 28.

“I just feel outrage,” said Mary Sheehan, a midwife in her 50s, who took part in the march with a sign that read “Vatican Republic killed Savita. “I want the message to out her parents that the Irish people are demanding change.”

The crowd also targeted the government’s junior coalition partner, the Labour Party, which is more socially liberal, for not doing more to force change on the issue, chanting “shame on Labour.”

(Reporting by Conor Humphries; editing by Jason Webb)

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To Get Rich in China Is Not So Glorious

In the course of a U.S. presidential campaign, the American public is bombarded with surveys asking voters to rank the relative importance of various issues, and whether they think the country is overall on the right track. Not so in China, where another leadership transition has just concluded, with the 18th Party Congress choosing Xi Jinping to succeed Hu Jintao as party secretary now and, in March, as president of China.

But a handful of recent studies do give some insight into public sentiment in the world’s second-largest economy on the eve of its once-in-a-decade leadership transition. The upshot: More wealth buys more cars and handbags, but not necessarily happiness—and white-collar workers in China’s fast-changing economy are the most likely in the world to say they’re more stressed out this year than last. Overall life satisfaction has declined since 1990.

“Sometimes I feel like I am driving down an expressway, speeding from one place to another, but I forgot the reason and I do not know the final destination,” says Rebecca Jiang, a 29-year-old civil servant. The petite woman, sipping a fruit smoothie at a teahouse, in many ways seems to be living the modern Chinese dream: Jiang moved from her hometown in Anhui province to Beijing for college in 2002; she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from respected universities, scored well on the highly competitive civil-servant exam, and in June got married. Yet these achievements have not erased the gnawing feeling that she is racing just to stay in place: “I do not have the time or energy to enjoy the scenery. Maybe it is about my personal goals: I am so busy I do not know what I really like, who I want to be. I am just traveling around. I am speeding even.”

Money is one source of stress. Home prices have quadrupled in a decade in Beijing, but salaries haven’t risen so fast. “My parents and my husband’s parents had to spend all their savings to buy us an apartment,” says Jiang. It’s out near the Sixth Ring Road—the capital’s outermost perimeter—and is a 90-minute to three-hour drive into central Beijing, depending on traffic. They bought it secondhand and paid 2 million RMB, or about $ 317,000.

She and her husband, who works for a multinational company, are keeping up with the rising costs and complexities of life in the crowded megacity—but just barely, she says. “We are too tired to talk in the evenings. We just go to bed, so we can get up early and do it again.” As for her job: “It is not so good as I thought it would be. Sometimes I have to work like a robot. You have to do what you are told to do, not what you think you should do.”

Recently the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences conducted a survey asking residents of China’s capital whether their quality of life had greatly improved, slightly improved, remained the same, or declined over the period 2005 to 2011. One-fifth of respondents said it had improved slightly, but two-fifths said it had declined. (Only 1 percent said life had improved greatly.)

“The fast changes in China as well as the uncertainties about the future create great psychological pressures,” says Peking University sociologist Xia Xueluan. “Happiness does not merely depend on wealth.” He adds: “For migrant workers, their major pressure is to keep up with costs of living, while for the urban white-collar workers, their major pressure is competition: extreme competition for promotion and recognition.”

Regus, a U.K.-based office-space company, this year polled white-collar workers around the globe and asked whether respondents agreed with the statement “My stress levels have risen in the past year.” The country with the highest proportion of “yes” respondents was China, by a significant margin: 75 percent. (No. 2 was Germany, at 58 percent.) Seventy-three percent of respondents in China said their job was a major source of stress.

In October, the Pew Global Attitudes Project released its survey results for China. Half of respondents said that corrupt officials were now a “very big problem” and 48 percent said the gap between rich and poor was. (In 2008, the responses to the same questions were, respectively, 39 percent and 41 percent.) Among Pew’s most arresting findings was identifying a widespread belief that China’s system creates not only inequality of wealth, but also inequality of opportunity. Nearly 8 in 10 respondents agreed with this statement: The “rich just get richer while the poor get poorer.”

“This country has a very unbalanced income structure, and for young working people it’s getting tougher and tougher to make a living” in the leading cities, says Han Cheng, a researcher with an international NGO in Beijing. As he sees it, the country’s meritocratic promise is waning: “Before, everyone was equally poor and unprivileged. But now there is a privileged class, and for people in that class, there are so many ways for them to receive benefits from their family.”

Richard A. Easterlin, an economist at the University of Southern California, in April published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on “life satisfaction” in China over the past two decades. Even as incomes have risen for all socioeconomic groups, he found that the percentage of people reporting their life satisfaction was “good or very good” had declined markedly from 1990 to 2007 for those of low and moderate incomes, while ticking slightly upward for China’s richest.

“One may reasonably ask, how it is possible for life satisfaction not to improve in the face of such a marked advance in per capita GDP from a very low initial level?” Easterlin wrote. “In answer it is pertinent to note the growing evidence of the importance of relative income comparisons and material aspirations in China, which tend to negate the effect of rising income.” In other words, money alone doesn’t bring happiness—having more money than your neighbor might.

Comparing her life to her cousin in her small hometown, Jiang expresses mixed feelings. Her cousin lives just a five-minute walk from her office, works fewer hours, and has a larger apartment for less money. “Sometimes I wonder why I stay in Beijing,” she reflects. But then, after a moment, she points out that if she has a child, living in China’s capital will “give him the chance to start life on a much bigger stage.” Of course, she quickly adds that she isn’t sure she wants a child—“it’s very expensive and takes a lot of energy; public kindergarten slots are hard to get and private ones are very costly. I’m expected to have a child, but I’m just not sure.”

Larson is a Bloomberg Businessweek contributor.

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Israel hits Hamas buildings, shoots down Tel Aviv-bound rocket

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza, and the “Iron Dome” defense system shot down a Tel Aviv-bound rocket on Saturday as Israel geared up for a possible ground invasion.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, said Israeli missiles wrecked the office building of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh – where he had met on Friday with the Egyptian prime minister – and struck a police headquarters.

Along the Tel Aviv beachfront, volleyball games came to an abrupt halt and people crouched as sirens sounded. Two interceptor rockets streaked into the sky. A flash and an explosion followed as Iron Dome, deployed only hours earlier near the city, destroyed the incoming projectile in mid-air.

With Israeli tanks and artillery positioned along the Gaza border and no end in sight to hostilities now in their fourth day, Tunisia’s foreign minister travelled to the enclave in a show of Arab solidarity.

In Cairo, a presidential source said Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi would hold four-way talks with the Qatari emir, the prime minister of Turkey and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in the Egyptian capital on Saturday to discuss the Gaza crisis.

Egypt has been working to reinstate calm between Israel and Hamas after an informal ceasefire brokered by Cairo unraveled over the past few weeks. Meshaal, who lives in exile, has already held a round of talks with Egyptian security officials.

Officials in Gaza said 43 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians including eight children, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket on Thursday.

Israel unleashed its massive air campaign on Wednesday with the declared goal of deterring Hamas from launching rockets that have plagued its southern communities for years.

The Israeli army said it had zeroed in on a number of government buildings during the night, including Haniyeh’s office, the Hamas Interior Ministry and a police compound.

Taher al-Nono, a spokesman for the Hamas government, held a news conference near the rubble of the prime minister’s office and pledged: “We will declare victory from here.”

Hamas‘s armed wing claimed responsibility for Saturday’s rocket attack on Tel Aviv, the third against the city since Wednesday. It said it fired an Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of Gaza.

“Well that wasn’t such a big deal,” said one woman, who had watched the interception while clinging for protection to the trunk of a baby palm tree on a traffic island.

In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.

Among those killed in airstrikes on Gaza on Saturday were at least four suspected militants riding on motorcycles.

Israel’s operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel’s right to self-defense, along with appeals to avoid civilian casualties.

Hamas, shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, says its cross-border attacks have come in response to Israeli strikes against Palestinian fighters in Gaza.

RESERVIST CALL-UP

At a late night session on Friday, Israeli cabinet ministers decided to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000, political sources said, in a signal Israel was edging closer to an invasion.

Around 16,000 reservists have already been called up.

Asked by reporters whether a ground operation was possible, Major-General Tal Russo, commander of the Israeli forces on the Gaza frontier, said: “Definitely.”

“We have a plan … it will take time. We need to have patience. It won’t be a day or two,” he added.

A possible move into the densely populated Gaza Strip and the risk of major casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, favorite to win a January national election.

Hamas fighters are no match for the Israeli military. The last Gaza war, involving a three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Year period of 2008-09, killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

But the Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

“Israel should understand that many things have changed and that lots of water has run in the Arab river,” Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdesslem said as he surveyed the wreckage from a bomb-blast site in central Gaza.

One major change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, potentially narrowing Israel’s manoeuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.

“DE-ESCALATION”

Netanyahu spoke late on Friday with U.S. President Barack Obama for the second time since the offensive began, the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

“(Netanyahu) expressed his deep appreciation for the U.S. position that Israel has a right to defend itself and thanked him for American aid in purchasing Iron Dome batteries,” the statement added.

The two leaders have had a testy relationship and have been at odds over how to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

A White House official said on Saturday Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to discuss how the two countries could help bring an end to the Gaza conflict.

Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, told reporters that Washington “wants the same thing as the Israelis want”, an end to rocket attacks from Gaza. He said the United States is emphasizing diplomacy and “de-escalation”.

In Berlin, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had spoken to Netanyahu and Egypt’s Mursi, stressing to the Israeli leader that Israel had a right to self-defense and that a ceasefire must be agreed as soon as possible to avoid more bloodshed.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit Israel and Egypt next week to push for an end to the fighting in Gaza, U.N. diplomats said on Friday.

The Israeli military said 492 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since the operation began. Iron Dome intercepted another 245.

In Jerusalem, targeted by a Palestinian rocket on Friday for the first time in 42 years, there was little outward sign on the Jewish Sabbath that the attack had any impact on the usually placid pace of life in the holy city.

Some families in Gaza have abandoned their homes – some of them damaged and others situated near potential Israeli targets – and packed into the houses of friends and relatives.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Douglas Hamilton in Tel Aviv, Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem, Jeff Mason aboard Air Force One, Writing by Jeffrey Heller; editing by Crispian Balmer)

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