Gaza truce try in ashes

Israeli strikes restart; Hamas rockets kill 1

A Palestinian youth stands in the rubble of a building hit in an Israeli airstrike Tuesday in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. The Israeli military had warned residents to get out before the strike.

A Palestinian youth stands in the rubble of a building hit in an Israeli airstrike Tuesday in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. The Israeli military had warned residents to get out before the strike.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Israel resumed its heavy bombardment of Gaza on Tuesday and warned that Hamas "would pay the price" after the Islamic militant group rejected an Egyptian truce plan and instead unleashed more rocket barrages at the Jewish state.

Late Tuesday, the military urged tens of thousands of residents of northern and eastern Gaza to leave their homes by this morning, presumably a prelude to airstrikes there.

Rocket fire from Gaza killed an Israeli man Tuesday, the first Israeli fatality in eight days of fighting. In Gaza, 197 people have been killed and close to 1,500 wounded so far, Palestinian officials said, making it the deadliest Israel-Hamas confrontation in just over five years.

The Egyptian proposal, initially accepted by Israel, had been the first attempt to end the fighting. It unraveled in less than a day.

Hamas does not consider Egypt's current rulers -- who deposed a Hamas-friendly government in Cairo a year ago -- to be fair brokers.

Hamas believes it has little to lose by continuing to fight, while a truce on unfavorable terms could further weaken its grip on the Gaza Strip, a territory it seized in 2007. Gaza militants fired more than 120 rockets and mortar rounds at Israel on Tuesday, during what Egypt had hoped would be a period of de-escalation.

photo

AP

Israeli police and army officers carry a piece of a Hamas rocket Tuesday in the southern city of Ashkelon.

A particularly heavy barrage came around dusk, with more than 40 rockets hitting Israel in just a few minutes, including one that fell on an empty school. TV footage showed children cowering behind a wall in Tel Aviv's main square as sirens went off. An Israeli man in his 30s was killed near the Gaza border when he was delivering food to soldiers -- the first Israeli death.

In an evening address aired live on TV, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that after Hamas' rejection of the truce, Israel had "no choice" but to respond more forcefully.

"Hamas chose to continue fighting and will pay the price for that decision," he said. "When there is no cease-fire, our answer is fire."

After holding its fire for six hours, the Israeli air force resumed its heavy bombardment of Gaza, launching 33 strikes from midafternoon, the military said. In all, Israeli aircraft have struck close to 1,700 times since July 8, while Gaza militants fired more than 1,200 rockets at Israel.

In Gaza on Tuesday, hospital officials said they had admitted a man wounded in an Israeli airstrike after the cease-fire was supposed to have started. Lying on a stretcher at Shifa Hospital, the patient, Mahmoud Muhanna, 26, said he had been riding a motorbike to check on his family's residence when an explosion flung him to the pavement, cracking his head.

He was admitted around noon, doctors said, and he said the explosion took place sometime after 11 a.m., although the Israeli military said it resumed its attacks hours later; it was possible he was hit by an errant rocket fired from Gaza.

"I heard there was a cease-fire," he said, cringing as a doctor manipulated his leg. "I was fooled." Still, Muhanna, asked if he still wanted a cease-fire to take hold, said, "Of course."

Netanyahu said later Tuesday that Israel would have liked to see a diplomatic solution but would keep attacking until rocket fire stops and Hamas' military capabilities are diminished. The Israeli leader said he would "widen and increase" the campaign against Hamas, but it remains unclear if that will include a ground offensive.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said Israel has the right to defend itself, but that "no one wants to see a ground war."

"Our effort remains focused on seeing if we can return to a cease-fire," she said.

Israel has warned it might send troops into Gaza and has massed thousands of soldiers on the border. However, entering Gaza would likely drive up casualties on both sides. Israel has hesitated in the past to embark on ground operations for fear of getting entangled in the densely populated territory of 1.7 million.

Late Tuesday, the Israeli military told residents of the northern town of Beit Lahiya and the Gaza City neighborhoods of Shijaiyah and Zeitoun in automated phone calls to leave their homes by early today.

Sami Wadiya, a resident of one of the areas likely to be targeted, said he would not leave his home. "We know it's risky, but there are no secure places to go to," he said.

Plan rejected

The current round of fighting has been the deadliest since a major Israeli military offensive in the winter of 2008-09. Tensions had been rising since the June 12 abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank, which Israel blamed on Hamas, and the July 2 kidnapping and killing of a Palestinian 16-year-old in an apparent revenge attack by extremist Jews.

A previous outbreak of cross-border violence, in 2012, eventually ended with the help of Egypt, at the time seen as a trusted broker by Hamas.

Hamas officials Tuesday rejected the current Egyptian plan as is, noting they weren't consulted by Cairo. Some portrayed the truce offer as an ultimatum presented to Hamas by Israel and Egypt.

The officials said the Egyptian plan offered no tangible achievements, particularly on easing the border blockade that has been enforced by Israel and Egypt to varying degrees since 2007. Egypt tightened the closure in the past year by shutting down smuggling tunnels that were crucial for Gaza's economy, pushing Hamas into a severe financial crisis.

"The siege on Gaza must be broken, and the people of Gaza should live freely like other people of the world," Moussa Abu Marzouk, a top Hamas official, told the Lebanese TV channel Al-Mayadeen. "There should be a new equation so that we will not have a war on Gaza every two years."

Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas leader in Gaza, said the movement wants additional mediators and international guarantees of any deal.

"Mediation to end this aggression needs to come from different countries, and the guarantees should be given by different countries in order to commit the occupation [Israel] to what any future agreement might say," al-Masri said, without naming preferred brokers.

A Twitter post, in Hebrew, by Hamas' military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, took responsibility for the rockets that were fired at Israeli cities Tuesday, adding, "We will continue to bombard until our conditions are met."

Qatar and Turkey, seen as more sympathetic to Hamas, have been involved behind the scenes, but it's not clear to what extent. The emir of Qatar visited Turkey for talks Tuesday with Turkish leaders.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas' main political rival, was to meet today in Cairo with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and then fly to Turkey for high-level talks.

Before the latest fighting, Abbas had reached a tentative unity deal with Hamas that would have given him a new foothold in Gaza. However, a significant easing of the Gaza blockade in a truce deal would revitalize Hamas, make it less dependent on Abbas and possibly scuttle the unity agreement.

Abbas and his Western-backed Palestinian Authority have largely been sidelined in the past week, unable to change the course of events.

Hamas' popularity tends to rise when it fights Israel, usually at the expense of Abbas, who continues to advocate negotiating a deal with Israel on Palestinian statehood.

The Palestinian Authority's health minister, Jawad Awwad, who had traveled to Gaza to deliver medicine to the territory's largest hospital, was chased off by stone throwers. Hamas officials later apologized to him.

In Israel, there was also domestic political fallout.

Netanyahu is under a lot of pressure from hawks in his Cabinet and the ruling Likud Party to launch a ground offensive to put an end to the rocket fire. He faced criticism from the right over initially agreeing to the Egyptian truce plan.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called a news conference in which he said Israel should not hesitate and "go all the way." He said the operation should conclude with the Israeli military controlling all of the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, fired Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon, one of his fiercest critics who didn't tone down his rhetoric during the offensive. Netanyahu said that by attacking the government at a time of war, Danon played into the hands of Hamas.

Israeli President Shimon Peres said Tuesday that the killing of Palestinian civilians by air raids on Gaza presents a moral dilemma, but argued there is scant alternative as long as the Islamic militants who rule the strip refuse to stop sustained rocket fire against Israel.

"There is a moral problem, but I don't have a moral answer to it," the 1994 Nobel Peace laureate said. "If they are shooting at us, and don't let our mothers and their children ... have a full night's sleep, what can we do?"

Peres, 90, predicted Hamas will eventually accept a cease-fire because of Palestinians' suffering and their own isolation in the region.

"I don't see it already finished," Peres said of the proposed truce. "I think there is a division among [Hamas]. The situation in Gaza is demanding, terrible, tragic. And they cannot leave it hanging in the air. ... Nobody will feed them for just shooting rockets. ... It's not an economy."

Peres also praised Abbas, who has had a rocky relationship with Netanyahu. Nine months of U.S.-sponsored peace talks between the two broke down two months ago, dampening hopes for Palestinian independence and setting in motion a spiral of violence that led to the current conflagration.

Abbas is a "real and serious leader who is ready for peace -- and I do believe we can make peace with him," Peres said, noting that he differs with Netanyahu, who "does not believe that [Abbas] is a proper partner."

The presidency is mostly ceremonial in Israel, where ultimate executive power lies with the more conservative premier.

Peres noted that he also disagreed with Netanyahu's recent suggestion that Israel must retain security control all the way to the Jordan River to protect the West Bank from takeover by extremists wreaking havoc in the region and prevent such a menace from reaching Israel's cities.

"I am in my [position] not supposed to criticize the government, but I don't hide my views," the Polish-born Peres said.

"And instead of saying the government is making a mistake, I am saying there are alternatives. ... I'm saying it in the most polite way."

Information for this article was contributed by Karin Laub, Aron Heller, Ian Deitch, Ibrahim Barzak, Mohammed Daraghmeh, Matthew Lee and Dan Perry of The Associated Press and by Jodi Rudoren, Anne Barnard, Fares Akram, Michael R. Gordon, Rina Castelnuovo and Kareem Fahim of The New York Times.

A Section on 07/16/2014