Israel, Hamas renew attacks across border

Gaza conflict rages, despite bid to reach lull in fighting

Smoke rises after an Israeli strike Sunday in Gaza City.
Smoke rises after an Israeli strike Sunday in Gaza City.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Israel and Hamas launched new attacks Sunday in the raging Gaza conflict, despite going back and forth over proposals for a temporary halt to nearly three weeks of fighting ahead of a major Muslim holiday.

The failure to reach even a brief humanitarian lull in the fighting illustrated the difficulties in securing a more permanent truce as the sides remain far apart on their terms.

After initially rejecting an Israeli offer Saturday for a 24-hour truce, Hamas said Sunday that it had agreed to hold fire ahead of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. But as Israel's Cabinet met to discuss the offer and the ongoing fighting, rockets rained down on southern Israel and Israeli strikes could be heard in Gaza.

Each side blamed the other for scuttling the efforts.

Hamas said that "due to the lack of commitment" by Israel, it resumed its fire. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Hamas showed it could not be trusted after it violated other cease-fire efforts.

"Israel is not obliged and is not going to let a terrorist organization decide when it's convenient to fire at our cities, at our people, and when it's not," Netanyahu said in satellite interviews from Israel carried on U.S. network Sunday news programs.

In a phone call later Sunday, President Barack Obama told Netanyahu the United States is growing more concerned about the rising Palestinian death toll and the worsening humanitarian conditions in Gaza. The White House said Obama reiterated that Israel has a right to defend itself and condemned Hamas rocket attacks that have killed Israelis, but pushed for an immediate cease-fire.

But in making his case to an American audience, Netanyahu said Palestinians are trying to shape global opinion with images of piled-up, slain civilians.

"We're telling the civilians to leave, Hamas is telling them to stay," Netanyahu said in satellite interviews from Israel. "Why is it telling them to stay? Because it wants to pile up their own dead bodies."

He added, "They not only want to kill our people, they want to sacrifice their own people."

A Palestinian official countered that Israel's actions are unjustified.

"The Israeli aggression on Gaza does not bring peace to Israel," said Mohammad Shtayyeh, minister of the Palestinian Economic Council for Research and Development.

Speaking on CNN's State of the Union, Shtayyeh said the only answer is for Israel to accommodate Palestinian demands for ending occupation and for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

Netanyahu said his nation's efforts to secure itself will not yield despite growing concern about deaths at the hands of Israeli forces. He insisted Israel is not targeting civilians but showed little willingness to ease its military actions against the Islamic militant group Hamas.

"Hamas is a terror organization that is committed to our destruction," Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu spoke to Fox News Sunday, NBC's Meet the Press and CBS' Face the Nation.

U.N. urges break

International diplomats had hoped a temporary lull could be expanded into a more sustainable truce to end the bloodshed, and on Sunday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the sides to accept a 24-hour break in fighting.

However, both sides were holding out for bigger gains in the Gaza war.

Hamas wants to break the seven-year blockade of Gaza and believes the only way to force serious negotiations on ending the closure is to keep fighting. Israel, which launched the war July 8 to halt relentless Hamas rocket fire on its cities, wants more time to destroy Hamas' rocket arsenal and the military tunnels the Islamic militants use to infiltrate Israel and smuggle weapons.

"We aren't in a game where they fire on us and we don't fire back," Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said in an interview to Channel 2 television. "All options" are on the table "to pummel Hamas and attain long-term quiet," added Livni, who was Israel's chief negotiator in nine months of unsuccessful peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank.

Pending a comprehensive agreement, Israel has continued to search for and destroy the tunnels.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, repeated on Sunday that Israel would "continue to operate against the tunnels" and said that the 12-hour lull Saturday had proved that Hamas was able to control other groups in Gaza.

Atai Shelach, a former commander of the combat engineering unit in the Israeli military, told reporters in a telephone briefing that the only way to deal with the problem of the tunnels is to have soldiers in Gaza. He said Israel had discovered up to 40 tunnels and scores of access points and had destroyed several of them.

"We are in the middle of the operation," he said, adding, "We won't find all of them, and once we go out, they will start digging again."

The 20-day war has killed more than 1,030 Palestinians, mainly civilians, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The ministry said that at least 10 people were killed by Israeli fire Sunday and that three more died from wounds they had sustained.

Around the time that Israel called off its truce in the morning, two Palestinians believed to be militants were killed in a strike as they rode on motorbikes east of Khan Younis.

Another Israeli airstrike killed one person in Gaza when it hit a vehicle carrying municipal workers on their way to fix water pipes, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

An Israeli reserve soldier was killed overnight by mortar fire from Gaza as he waited in a staging area along Israel's border with Gaza, according to the Israeli military. Israel has lost 43 soldiers, as well as two Israeli civilians and a Thai worker killed by rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza, the military said.

Police said Israeli tanks fired shells on densely populated areas south of Gaza City. One shell hit an apartment building and several shells struck another building. Navy boats also resumed firing on Gaza's coast, police said. The Israeli military said it hit some 40 sites throughout Sunday.

In southern Israel, one person was injured and a house was damaged by a rocket launched from Gaza, Israeli police said. The Israeli military said more than 50 rockets were fired Sunday.

Civilian Casualties

Ahead of the three-day Eid al-Fitr holiday, which begins today, families in Gaza ordinarily would be busy with preparations, with children getting new clothes, shoes and haircuts, and families visiting each other.

But business was slow in the outdoor market of the Jebaliya refugee camp, where vendors set up stands with clothes and shoes. Hamed Abul Atta, 22, a shoe salesman, said he hadn't made a single sale in the first three hours after opening.

Abul Atta said he and his family were staying with relatives after fleeing the Shijaiyah district of Gaza City, which has seen heavy fighting. He said a cousin and three other relatives were among dozens of people killed there last week.

"We can't feel any joy right now," he said when asked if he would mark the holiday.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military acknowledged firing a mortar shell that hit the courtyard of a U.N. school in Gaza last week, but said the yard was empty at the time and that the shell could not have killed anyone.

Palestinian officials have said three Israeli tank shells hit the school in the town of Beit Hanoun on Thursday, killing 16 people and wounding scores. The school served as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the Gaza fighting. At the time of the attack, witnesses said they were being urged to evacuate because of nearby clashes.

Israel's Lerner said Sunday that a military probe shows that "a single errant mortar landed," but that it is "extremely unlikely that anybody was killed as a result of this mortar." He suggested the reported victims may have been killed in crossfire between Israel and Palestinian militants and moved into the yard.

Despite the high death toll, the Israeli military says it is doing its utmost to prevent civilian casualties, including by sending evacuation warnings to residents in targeted areas, and blames Hamas for putting civilians in harm's way.

More than 160,000 displaced Palestinians have sought shelter at dozens of U.N. schools, an eightfold increase since the start of Israel's ground operation more than a week ago, the U.N. said.

Hamas and other militants in Gaza have fired more than 2,400 rockets at Israel since hostilities began nearly three weeks ago, many deep into the Israeli heartland and toward most of the country's major cities.

Israeli airstrikes have destroyed hundreds of homes, including close to 500 in direct hits, according to Palestinian rights groups. Entire Gaza neighborhoods near the border have been reduced to rubble.

A 12-hour lull Saturday -- agreed to by both sides following intense U.S. and U.N. mediation efforts -- saw Palestinians return to neighborhoods reduced to rubble and allowed medics to collect close to 120 bodies, Palestinian health official Ashraf al-Kidra said.

Information for this article was contributed by Ibrahim Barzak, Tia Goldenberg, Aron Heller, Yousur Alhlou and Karin Laub of The Associated Press; by Saud Abu Ramadan, Caroline Alexander and David Lerman of Bloomberg News; and by Isabel Kershner, Ben Hubbard and Fares Akram of The New York Times.

A Section on 07/28/2014

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