U.S. bans flights to Israel after rocket nears airport

Hamas flaunts soldier’s ID, says he’s captive

Smoke and fire from the explosion of an Israeli strike rise over Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, July 22, 2014, as Israeli airstrikes pummeled a wide range of locations along the coastal area and diplomatic efforts intensified to end the two-week war. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

Smoke and fire from the explosion of an Israeli strike rise over Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, July 22, 2014, as Israeli airstrikes pummeled a wide range of locations along the coastal area and diplomatic efforts intensified to end the two-week war. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

JERUSALEM -- A Hamas rocket exploded Tuesday near Israel's main airport, prompting a ban on flights from the U.S. and many from Europe and Canada. Israel declared that Ben-Gurion Airport was safe and said there was no reason to "hand terror a prize" by halting flights.

It was the latest blow to Israel on a day when it announced that an Israeli soldier is missing after a deadly battle in the Gaza Strip, where the Israelis are fighting Hamas militants in the third conflict in just over five years. The disappearance raised the possibility that the soldier was captured, a scenario that could complicate diplomatic efforts to end the two-week conflict.

Palestinian militants have fired more than 2,000 rockets toward Israel since fighting began July 8, but most -- including several heading toward Tel Aviv -- fell harmlessly into open areas or were shot out of the sky by the Iron Dome defense system, keeping Israeli casualties low.

Tuesday's rocket attack was the closest to the airport so far, said police spokesman Luba Samri. It landed in the nearby Tel Aviv suburb of Yehud, damaging a house and slightly injuring one Israeli.

Aviation authorities reacted swiftly. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration prohibited American airlines from flying to Tel Aviv for 24 hours "due to the potentially hazardous situation created by the armed conflict in Israel and Gaza." Later, the European Aviation Safety Agency issued an advisory to airlines saying it "strongly recommends" airlines avoid the airport.

Germany's Lufthansa, Air France, Air Canada, Alitalia, Dutch KLM, Britain's easyJet, Turkish Airlines and Greece's Aegean Airlines were among those carriers canceling flights to Tel Aviv over safety concerns amid the increasing violence.

Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz called on the FAA to reconsider, calling the flight ban "unnecessary" and saying Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system provided cover for civil aviation.

"Ben-Gurion Airport is safe and completely guarded, and there is no reason whatsoever that American companies would stop their flights and hand terror a prize," his office said in a statement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised the issue of the ban with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was in the Middle East on Tuesday, State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said.

"The FAA's notice was issued to protect American citizens and American carriers. The only consideration in issuing the notice was the safety and security of our citizens," Psaki said in a statement.

International airlines and passengers have grown more anxious about safety since last week, when a Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

While Hamas rockets aren't guided missiles, they still can cause serious damage to an aircraft. For instance, similar unguided mortar fire from a militia in Tripoli, Libya, destroyed an Airbus A330 on the ground at the city's international airport over the weekend.

The Tel Aviv airport is Israel's main gateway to the world, and Hamas militants have said they hoped to target it to disrupt life in Israel.

Another Hamas objective was to capture an Israeli soldier, and Israeli fears over such an occurrence were revisited Tuesday when the military announced a soldier was missing.

The military said Sgt. Oron Shaul was among seven soldiers in a vehicle that was hit by an anti-tank missile in a battle in Gaza over the weekend. The other six have been confirmed to be dead, but no remains have been identified as Shaul's.

Hamas claims to have captured him, and the group flaunted his name and military ID number to try to back that claim. Military officials said the soldier is almost certainly dead, but it still would be a troublesome scenario for the Jewish state if his remains were in the hands of Hamas.

Past abductions of Israeli soldiers have turned into painful drawn-out affairs, and Israel has paid a heavy price in lopsided prisoner swaps to have captured soldiers or remains returned. Gilad Schalit, a soldier captured by Hamas-allied militants in 2006, was held for more than five years before he was swapped for more than 1,000 Palestinians prisoners.

"We understand the terror organization is looking for some leverage, and as cynical as it sounds, one type of leverage is bargaining over parts of bodies," said Lior Lotan, a reserve Israeli colonel and former head of the country's prisoner of war department.

kerry making appeals

Israeli airstrikes continued to pummel Gaza tunnels, rocket launchers and militants on the 15th day of the war Tuesday as diplomatic efforts intensified to end fighting that has killed at least 630 Palestinians and 29 Israelis -- 27 soldiers and two civilians.

Israel says its troops have killed hundreds of Hamas gunmen, while Gaza officials say the vast majority of the Palestinian casualties have been civilians, many of them children.

Israel says it is trying hard to avoid civilian casualties and blames Hamas for using civilians as "human shields." But human rights activists have said past confrontations have shown that when Israeli carries out attacks in densely populated Palestinian areas, civilian deaths are inevitable.

The Israeli military said that after a firefight with Palestinian militants on Tuesday, troops saw some gunmen flee the scene in an ambulance.

The military said soldiers "did not target the ambulance in light of the possibility uninvolved civilians were in it."

Kerry and other diplomats have been trying to end the third major round of deadly violence between Israel's military and Gaza militants in five years.

Previous accords haven't resolved fundamental issues including Israel's blockade on Gaza. The embargo, along with Egypt's closing of its border with the territory, has battered Gaza's economy and confined 1.8 million Palestinians to a 140-square-mile patch of land.

Shortly before Kerry arrived in Cairo, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh said his group wouldn't back down without pledges that the Israeli blockade will be lifted. He also demanded that hundreds of Palestinians arrested in Israel's recent sweep of the West Bank be released.

The conflict in Gaza escalated after the breakdown of U.S.-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in April. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas responded to that by reaching an accord with Hamas for a unity government to end their seven-year rift, enraging Israel. The kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers, and the suspected revenge killing of a Palestinian youth, added to the tensions.

Israel launched an air campaign July 8 to stop relentless Hamas rocket fire into Israel, and expanded it to a ground war last week aimed at destroying tunnels the military says Hamas has constructed from Gaza into Israel for attacks against Israelis.

Israel has struck almost 3,000 sites in Gaza, killed more than 180 armed Palestinians and uncovered 66 access shafts of 23 tunnels, the military said.

Abbas said late Tuesday in a televised speech that Hamas and its patron Qatar agreed with Egypt on the cease-fire plan, although the group rejected the plan last week after Israel accepted it. He pledged to continue to work together with Hamas in running the joint government for Gaza and the West Bank and to hold Israel responsible for the hundreds of dead.

There was no immediate response from Hamas to the Palestinian Authority leader's remarks.

Earlier Tuesday, Kerry met with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and other senior officials in Cairo. He stopped short of advocating a new round of peace talks but left the door open for broad negotiations between Israel and Palestinian officials once a cease-fire is in place.

"Just reaching a cease-fire is clearly not enough," Kerry said. "It is imperative that there be a serious engagement, discussion, negotiation, regarding the underlying issues and addressing all the concerns that have brought us to where we are today."

El-Sissi said he raised with United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon the possibility of an international donor conference for Gaza reconstruction after a cease-fire is implemented.

Kerry said the U.S. was prepared to address the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip and the political demands of the Palestinians living there, but that a cease-fire first needed to be carried out.

The U.N. secretary-general, meanwhile, said it was his "hope and belief" that his mission would lead to an end to the fighting "in the very near future." Ban told the Security Council by videoconference from the West Bank city of Ramallah that he could not publicly reveal details "at this highly sensitive moment."

Ban earlier met with Netanyahu in Israel, where he urged a resumption of talks toward bringing about a two-state solution.

Netanyahu said Hamas does not want a two-state solution and said the international community needed to hold Hamas accountable for the latest round of violence, saying its refusal to agree to a cease-fire had prevented an earlier end to the fighting.

"What we're seeing here with Hamas is another instance of Islamist extremism, violent extremism," Netanyahu said at a press conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. "What grievance can we solve with Hamas? Their grievance is that we exist. They don't want a two-state solution, they don't want any state solution."

Anti-Semitism on rise

Elsewhere on Tuesday, the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Italy condemned the rise in anti-Israeli protests and violence over the conflict in Gaza, saying they will do everything possible to combat anti-Semitism in their countries.

"Anti-Semitic rhetoric and hostility against Jews, attacks on people of Jewish belief and synagogues have no place in our societies," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, France's Laurent Fabius and Italy's Federica Mogherini said in a joint statement issued in Brussels.

The three said that while they respect demonstrators' freedom of speech and right to assemble, they also will do everything possible to fight "acts and statements that cross the line to anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia."

Since the outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas, participants at anti-Israel demonstrations across Germany have frequently used anti-Semitic slogans and also called for Jews to be gassed -- a reference to the killing of Jews by the Nazis in the Holocaust.

In Berlin on Tuesday afternoon, about 500 pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched from the city's Potsdamer Platz to the landmark Brandenburg Gate, chanting slogans like "Israel is murder" and "Israel bombs, Germany finances."

The most direct route for the march would have taken the protesters directly to Berlin's Holocaust Memorial, but police in riot gear steered them around the monument to the 6 million Jews killed in Nazi Germany.

In France, pro-Palestinian youths have clashed repeatedly with police, and on Sunday they set fire to cars, pillaged stores and attacked two synagogues in the Paris suburbs. Italy has also seen nonviolent pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Jewish groups have expressed shock and disgust about the growing anti-Israeli sentiments in Germany and other European countries with strong Muslim communities.

"We have reached a new level of hatred and violence in all of Europe that cannot even be compared to the anti-Semitism seen during previous conflicts in Israel," said Stephan Kramer, director of the European office on anti-Semitism of the American Jewish Committee in Brussels.

French President Francois Hollande met Monday with Jewish and Muslim leaders in the Elysee Palace, where he told them that fighting anti-Semitism will be a "national cause."

Information for this article was contributed by Aron Heller, Ibrahim Barzak, Maggie Michael, Tia Goldenberg, Ian Deitch, Yousur Alhlou, Edith M. Lederer, Kirsten Grieshaber, David Rising and Angela Charlton of The Associated Press; by Michael R. Gordon of The New York Times; and by Saud Abu Ramadan, Sangwon Yoon, Jonathan Ferziger, Angela Greiling Keane, Mahmoud Habboush, Alisa Odenheimer, Calev Ben- David and David Wainer of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 07/23/2014