Jets strike back as truce shatters

Israelis abandon peace talks

A Palestinian medic carries a wounded girl into the Shifa hospital in Gaza City after Hamas and Israel resumed cross-border attacks Friday after a three-day truce.
A Palestinian medic carries a wounded girl into the Shifa hospital in Gaza City after Hamas and Israel resumed cross-border attacks Friday after a three-day truce.

JERUSALEM -- A three-day truce collapsed Friday after Gaza militants resumed rocket attacks on Israel, drawing a wave of retaliatory airstrikes that killed at least five Palestinians, including three children.

The fighting shattered a brief calm in the month-long war and dealt a blow to Egyptian-led efforts to secure a long-term cease-fire between the enemies.

A delegation of Palestinian negotiators remained in Cairo on Friday in hopes of salvaging the talks, but participants said the negotiations were not going well, and Israel said it would not negotiate under fire. The Palestinian delegation met again late Friday with Egyptian mediators.

Azzam al-Ahmad, head of the Palestinian delegation, said the delegation would not leave Egypt until it reaches an agreement that "ensures" the rights of the Palestinian people.

"We told Egyptians we are staying," he said.

The Israeli delegation to the Cairo talks left Egypt on Friday morning, and it was not clear whether it would return.

"There will not be negotiations under fire," Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said.

A senior Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate diplomacy, said the Cairo talks "were based on a premise of no violence. We only went to Cairo based on an unconditional cease-fire, and then to talk about the broader issues. They have taken away the premise," he said of the militants who resumed rocket attacks.

photo

AP

An Israeli man looks at the damage to his roof after a rocket fired from Gaza hit in his neighborhood Friday in the southern city of Sderot.

Islamic Jihad, a militant Palestinian faction that has taken part in the Gaza fighting alongside the larger militant group Hamas, took responsibility for firing the rockets.

The indirect talks are meant to end the deadliest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas since the Islamic militant group seized control of Gaza in 2007.

In four weeks of violence, more than 1,900 Gazans have been killed, roughly three-quarters of them civilians, according to Palestinian and United Nations officials. Three civilians were among the 67 people killed on the Israeli side, officials said.

The Palestinians are seeking an end to an Israel-Egyptian blockade imposed on Gaza after the Hamas takeover. Militants had warned they would resume fighting after the 72-hour cease-fire expired unless there was a deal to ease the restrictions.

The blockade, which Israel says is needed to prevent arms smuggling, has constrained movement in and out of the territory of 1.8 million people and brought Gaza's economy to a standstill. Israel has said any long-term agreement must include guarantees that Hamas, an armed group sworn to Israel's destruction, will give up its weapons.

In Cairo, Palestinian participants in the talks were pessimistic about the chances of a deal. They said Israel was opposing every Palestinian proposal for lifting the blockade.

For instance, the Palestinians are seeking greater movement of goods through Israeli-controlled cargo crossings, while Israel wants restrictions on "dual-use" items that could potentially be used for military purposes, they said.

Israel also was resisting demands to allow movement between Gaza and the West Bank -- Palestinian territories that are located on opposite sides of Israel, they said.

"Israel in these talks wants to repackage the same old blockade. Our demands are ending the blockade and having free access for people and goods. This is what ending the blockade means. But Israel is not accepting that," said Bassam Salhi, a Palestinian negotiator.

In Cairo, Khaled al-Batch, a leader of Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group in Gaza, said that without a deal on easing the blockade, an informal truce might be the best that could be achieved.

"When there is no cease-fire, that does not mean there is escalation," he said. "Our priority now is to focus on stopping the Israeli aggression against our people and achieving our demands."

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the negotiations so far had yielded agreement on "the great majority of topics of interest to the Palestinians" and said that differences remained only around a "few, limited points."

The statement called for the parties to "immediately return to the cease-fire commitment and to use the current opportunity available to resume negotiations on the very limited points still pending in the fastest possible time."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed "deep disappointment" at the failure to extend the cease-fire and urged the parties to swiftly find a way back to the negotiating table, U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said.

"The extension of the cease-fire is absolutely essential for talks to progress and to address the underlying issues of the crisis as soon as possible," Ban said in a statement.

The three-day truce expired at 8 a.m. Gaza time Friday, but Gaza militants began firing rockets before then. By late Friday, nearly 60 rockets had been fired. Two Israelis were hurt, and one of the rockets damaged a home.

Israel responded with a series of airstrikes. Palestinian officials said at least five people were killed in three separate strikes, two of them near mosques. Among the dead were three boys, a 10-year-old and two cousins, aged 12. At least five boys were wounded.

The deaths raised the overall Palestinian toll since July 8 to 1,902, Palestinian health official Ashraf al-Kidra said.

"Israel will continue to act by all means to defend its citizens, while making an effort not to harm civilians in Gaza," an Israeli government statement said. "Hamas, which violated the cease-fire, is responsible for the harm to Gaza's citizens."

Hamas entered the Cairo talks from a position of military weakness after a month of fighting in which Israel pounded Gaza with close to 5,000 strikes. Israel has said Hamas lost hundreds of fighters, two-thirds of its rocket arsenal and all of its tunnels under the border with Israel. Egypt also has destroyed a network of smuggling tunnels that was once Hamas' economic and military lifeline.

Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said that if Hamas wanted to end the blockade, it could have halted its attacks on Israel.

"Hamas doesn't really want the blockade on Gaza lifted," she told Channel 2 TV. "What Hamas wants is to gain legitimacy as a terror group that governs territory, and Israel will not accept that."

The war grew out of the killing of three Israeli teens in the West Bank in June. Israel blamed the killings on Hamas and launched an arrest campaign in the West Bank, as Hamas and other militants unleashed rocket fire from Gaza. The rocket fire escalated after the slaying of a Palestinian teen in what was seen as a revenge killing.

Israel launched an air campaign on the coastal territory July 8 and sent in ground troops nine days later to target rocket launchers and cross-border tunnels built by Hamas for attacks inside Israel.

As the temporary truce drew to an end Friday morning, people were out in the streets of Gaza City and some stores were open, much as during the previous three days of cease-fire. Children roamed outside, men sat on sidewalks, and a line of a few dozen waited to buy bread at the Khouli bakery.

Farther north, in Jabaliya, where thousands of people have been sheltering in U.N. schools, the streets were teeming with people. An elderly man was walking with seven camels. Children balanced cartons of supplies on their heads, taking them from the market to the shelters.

In areas closer to the border with Israel, like Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, the streets were almost deserted. In Beit Lahiya, half of the two dozen tall apartment buildings of the Al Nada complex had been destroyed by nearly a month of Israeli airstrikes, artillery and tank fire.

In Beit Hanoun, now a ghost town of toppled homes and rubble-strewn streets, Anas Kaferna, 25, and his brother and sister were tying mattresses to the top of a silver sedan and heading south.

"I don't want to be the last one in town," Kaferna said.

Since their home was destroyed at the start of the ground invasion, the siblings had been sleeping at a maternity hospital where Kaferna worked as a security guard. But with the news that the cease-fire was over, they headed to Gaza City, although they did not know where.

"Now it seems the situation will get harder," he said. "Maybe yes and maybe no. I don't understand politics."

Information for this article was contributed by Josef Federman, Mohammed Daraghmeh, Ibrahim Barzak, Daniel Estrin, Yousur Alhlou, Edith Lederer and Maggie Michael of The Associated Press and by Isabel Kershner, Jodi Rudoren, Fares Akram, Merna Thomas and Kareem Fahim of The New York Times

A Section on 08/09/2014

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