Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert responded saying he "regretted" the loss of life, but he dismissed the killings as the consequence of a "technical" failure in the Israeli military's response to rockets fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip. Olmert also warned that Tel Aviv would continue to target Gaza in response to such attacks.

On November 11, Washington vetoed a resolution proposed by Qatar at a session of the United Nations Security Council condemning the Israeli attack, despite the agreement of diplomats from largely Arab countries to substantially weaken the wording.

On November 8, early in the morning, artillery shells fired from Israeli tanks struck several homes in Beit Hanoun, killing 18 Palestinian civilians as they slept. All of those killed were members of a prominent family in the town. Another 54 people were wounded.

The Israeli military said the artillery fire was in response to rockets that had been fired into Israel from an orange grove in the city about 500 yards from the homes.

The attack came shortly after Israeli forces withdrew from a week-long offensive in Gaza in which 52 Palestinians were killed.

Protests against the killings occurred in several Middle Eastern capitals. In Jordan, the Associated Press reported that 1,000 people took to the streets to denounce the Israeli attack. In Sudan 2,000 gathered outside the United Nations mission and burned U.S. and Israeli flags.

In Cairo, Egypt, 3,000 people reportedly gathered at the Al-Azhar Mosque in response to a call by the Muslim Brotherhood. The group also organized another rally in Alexandria that drew 2,000 people. The Brotherhood, while officially illegal, has 88 members of parliament seated as independents. Several of them led the protests.

Just days before departing for Washington to meet with U.S. president George Bush, the Israeli prime minister offered to release "many" Palestinian prisoners in exchange for an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, captured by Hamas last June. Olmert said he would make the deal on the condition that Hamas hand over Shalit to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. Olmert, in turn, would release Palestinian prisoners to Abbas.

"I will not release even one of the prisoners to Hamas," Olmert said. “But to Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas], I am ready to release many.”

Hamas, also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Its program, like that of the Brotherhood, calls for the establishment of an Islamic Republic in Palestine. In elections last January it ousted Fatah as the ruling party in the Palestinian Authority. Fatah, led by Yasser Arafat until his death in 2004, had been the ruling party in the Palestinian Authority since its founding in 1994.

In vetoing the Security Council resolution condemning the shelling of Beit Hanoun, U.S. ambassador John Bolton said it was "biased against Israel and politically motivated."

The original resolution called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and a UN observer force to enforce it, according to a Reuters report. In a compromise, diplomats from majority-Arab countries agreed to drop the call for a ceasefire and a UN observer force and instead call on Tel Aviv to immediately end its military operations in Palestinian areas and to pull its troops out of Gaza. It also called on the Palestinian Authority to "take immediate and sustained action to bring and end to violence, including the firing of rockets into Israel.”  
 
 
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