Hamas ends truce; rockets fly

Israel: Gaza houses hide shafts, traps

Palestinians who had fled their homes during Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire take advantage of a 12-hour cease-fire Saturday to stock up on supplies and salvage items from their damaged homes in the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City.
Palestinians who had fled their homes during Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire take advantage of a 12-hour cease-fire Saturday to stock up on supplies and salvage items from their damaged homes in the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City.

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip -- Hamas resumed rocket fire Saturday on Israel after rejecting Israel's offer to extend a humanitarian cease-fire, the latest setback in international efforts to negotiate an end to the Gaza fighting.

Despite the Hamas rejection, Israel's Cabinet decided to extend a truce for 24 hours, after a request from the United Nations for a humanitarian cease-fire. However, it warned that its military would respond to any fire from Gaza and would continue to demolish Hamas military tunnels during this period.

A lull Saturday saw Palestinians return to neighborhoods reduced to rubble and allowed medics to collect close to 150 bodies, Palestinian health official Ashraf al-Kidra said.

With the retrieval of the corpses, the number of Palestinians killed reached 1,047 in 19 days of fighting, while more than 6,000 were wounded, he said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and foreign ministers from Europe and the Middle East, meeting in Paris, had hoped to transform the cease-fire into a more sustainable truce. That effort was thrown into doubt with the Hamas' rejection of the extension.

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AP

Israeli left-wing activists in Tel Aviv light candles arranged into the Hebrew word for “sorry” and place portraits on the ground Saturday that depict Israelis and Palestinians who have been killed in the Gaza conflict.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said any truce must include a withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and that tens of thousands of displaced people must be allowed to return to their homes. Israel's current terms are "not acceptable," he said in a text message to journalists, and Palestinian factions in Gaza wouldn't abide by any extension.

Israel initially decided to extend Saturday's 12-hour truce by four hours. Hamas swiftly rejected the idea of an extension.

Shortly after the Hamas announcement, Gaza militants fired eight rockets and three mortar shells at Israel, the military said. Gaza militants said they fired 42 rockets, including two that were aimed at Tel Aviv, Israel's second largest city, where police dispersed a peace rally attended by several thousand people.

In the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, scores of homes had been pulverized, wreckage blocked roads and power cables dangled in the streets. Hardest-hit were areas close to the border with Israel, areas from where Gaza militants typically fire rockets.

Manal Kefarneh, 30, wept as she inspected her damaged home.

On an unfinished top floor, she and her husband had been raising chickens. The couple collected those dead and replenished water for the living in hopes they will survive the war.

"What did we do to deserve this?" she asked. "All of the Arab leaders watch what's going on here like it's a Bollywood film."

Akram Qassim, 53, stared in disbelief at a huge smoking crater strewn with rubble and twisted metal from an Israeli airstrike, all that remained of the three-story house he had shared with his two brothers and their families.

"I expected that maybe a shell had hit it and caused some damage," Qassim said. "But this is an earthquake."

Four houses clustered nearby had also been reduced to piles of rubble; power lines that had been blown from their poles snaked across streets; and the air smelled of a dead horse lying in an empty lot.

"Are all these houses tunnels?" Qassim asked. "Is that dead horse a tunnel?"

Israeli strikes have destroyed hundreds of homes, including close to 500 in targeted hits, and forced tens of thousands of people to flee, according to Palestinian rights groups.

Across Gaza, 147 bodies were pulled from the rubble Saturday, officials said. In southern Gaza, a tank shell killed 20 members of an extended family who sought refuge inside a building, al-Kidra said.

Israel says it is doing its utmost to prevent civilian casualties, including sending evacuation warnings to residents in targeted areas, and blames Hamas for putting civilians in harm's way.

Israel has lost 42 soldiers and two civilians, and a Thai worker also has been killed.

Booby traps, tunnels

Israeli legislator Ofer Shelah of the centrist Yesh Atid party said Israeli troops are "fighting with an enemy dug in within the civilian population, dug in underground or within the houses there." Referring to the widespread destruction, he said that "those are the consequences of such a fight."

The military took some Israeli journalists into the Gaza border areas where troops were operating. Footage broadcast on Israeli television station Channel 10 showed homes booby-trapped with explosives, as well as grenades, mines and rockets stored there. Tunnels opened up inside houses.

Soldiers said some buildings blew up after being hit by gunfire from all the explosives inside. Col. Ofer Vinter, head of the Givati infantry brigade, said almost every house was booby-trapped with explosives and that Gaza fighters "emerge from the ground all the time."

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said that during the cease-fire, Israeli troops were remaining in place across the Gaza Strip and continuing to search for underground tunnels.

The military said in a statement Saturday night that it had uncovered four new tunnel shafts during the initial 12-hour respite from fighting, one in southern Gaza and three in the center.

Standing over a tunnel concealed in a house, Vinter said: "We cannot leave here before we finish dealing with all the tunnels."

Israel launched its major air campaign in Gaza on July 8 and later sent ground troops into the Hamas-ruled territory in an operation it said was aimed at halting Palestinian rocket fire and destroying cross-border tunnels it views as a threat.

Shelah, the legislator, said about 50 tunnels have been discovered so far.

Envoys huddle in Paris

In Paris, Kerry repeated his argument that any temporary truce needed to be followed by an enduring solution that would address the Palestinians' desire to break free of the economic embargo of Gaza, as well as Israel's security needs. Chief among those needs are a halt to rocket fire by Palestinian militants on Israeli cities and towns and the destruction of an extensive tunnel network built by Hamas to sneak fighters into Israel.

"I understand that Israel can't have a cease-fire" in which "the tunnels are never going to be dealt with," Kerry said. "The tunnels have to be dealt with. We understand that. We are working at that.

"By the same token, the Palestinians can't have a cease-fire in which they think the status quo is going to stay," he said. "Palestinians need to live with dignity, with some freedom, with goods that can come in and out, and they need a life that is free from the current restraints."

Kerry met with diplomats from Turkey, Qatar, Germany, Britain, and Italy, along with a representative of the European Union.

He later met separately with Khalid bin Mohamed al-Attiyah, the Qatari foreign minister, and Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister. Qatar and Turkey support Hamas and have served as intermediaries with Khaled Meshal, the group's political head, who lives in Qatar.

After the meetings in Paris, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said, "We want to achieve a durable, negotiated cease-fire which addresses Israel's needs for security and Palestinian needs for social and economic development and access for the territory of Gaza."

"We are convinced of the need to involve the Palestinian Authority in achieving these objectives," Fabius said.

Israel had rejected Friday a Kerry proposal for a week-long truce because it had no provisions for the Israeli military continuing to demolish tunnels, Israeli media reported at the time.

Under the Kerry proposal, talks would begin during the temporary truce on easing the border blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza.

Hamas has said it would not halt fire until it wins guarantees that the border blockade, enforced by Israel and Egypt, would be lifted.

Any new border arrangements for Gaza would likely give a role to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the main political rival of Hamas. Hamas had seized Gaza from Abbas in 2007, triggering the Gaza blockade by Israel and Egypt.

However, Abbas, who heads the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, reached a power-sharing deal earlier this year with Hamas. Under the deal, a government of technocrats headed by Abbas was to prepare for new elections in the West Bank and Gaza.

Egypt wants forces loyal to Abbas to be posted on the Gaza side of the mutual border before considering open the Rafah crossing there, Gaza's main gate to the world. Hamas officials have said they do not oppose such an arrangement, but would not surrender control over its thousands-strong security forces, meaning Hamas would remain the de facto power in Gaza.

Meanwhile, anger over Israel's Gaza operation has sparked a series of protests in the West Bank. Since Thursday, nine Palestinians have been killed in clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians protesters.

Among those were two Palestinians killed by army fire Saturday, including a 23-year-old in the town of Jenin and a 16-year-old near the town of Bethlehem, hospital officials said.

Information for this article was contributed by Karin Laub, Ian Deitch, Yousur Alhlou and Ibrahim Barzak of The Associated Press; by Ben Hubbard, Jodi Rudoren and Michael R. Gordon of The New York Times and by David Wainer and Sangwon Yoon of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 07/27/2014

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