Netanyahu orders Gaza ground offensive
A Palestinian woman reacts next to debris in her house, which police said was targeted in an Israeli air strike, in Gaza City July 17, 2014. Israeli shelling killed four Palestinian boys on a Gaza beach on Wednesday, an incident the military called tragic, and Israel and Hamas said they would cease attacks for five hours on Thursday for a humanitarian truce requested by the United Nations. Palestinian militants fired more than 130 rockets into Israel on the ninth day of a war in which Israeli attacks have killed 216 Palestinians, including six in two air strikes on Wednesday. Most of the casualties were civilians, health officials in Gaza said. In Israel, a civilian has been killed by one of more than 1,000 Palestinian rockets fired and more than half a dozen people have been wounded. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST CONFLICT)©Reuters
A woman looks at debris in her house, which police said was targeted in an Israeli air strike, in Gaza City
Israel said on Thursday evening that it had launched a ground operation in the Gaza Strip, escalating its 10-day-old war with Hamas into a new phase that it said it might expand even further if need be.
The Israeli military bombarded the northern Gaza Strip in attacks that lit up the night sky as naval vessels fired at the Palestinian territory from the sea.
The escalation came after a brief five-hour humanitarian pause in fighting on Thursday, which was followed by a return to heavy Israeli shelling that health officials said killed five children and pushed the death toll from Operation Protective Edge above 235.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and its decision to move troops into the territory for the first time since 2009 came after intense domestic pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch a ground war to stop rocket fire into Israel from Hamas and other militant Palestinian factions. On Thursday evening, Gaza militants fired more rockets into Israel, sending sirens sounding in Tel Aviv and other cities in Israel’s coastal heartland and south.
Israeli military experts say that a ground operation would be necessary to root out the militants’ extensive tunnel and bunker systems. On Thursday morning, the Israel Defence Forces said it had foiled an attempt by 13 Hamas fighters to enter a border area near a kibbutz via a tunnel burrowed under the buffer zone.
“We started a ground operation against the tunnels – the sort of tunnel we saw this morning,” a senior Israeli official said. “The army is ready if need be to expand the ground operation.”
Five more Palestinian children were killed on Thursday as a result of Israel’s military operations, health officials there said, as the two sides intensified their hostilities.
Gaza health officials said that three children were killed in an Israeli air strike in south Gaza City. Al-Aqsa television broadcast footage of the children’s bodies on display alongside weeping relatives.
A four-year-old girl was also reported killed by a second air strike in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, and a fifth child died from injuries sustained earlier this week, officials said. According to Unicef, the UN children’s agency, at least 48 children have now died during the Israeli operation, dubbed Protective Edge, aimed at weakening the militant group Hamas.
The deaths came a day after four boys were killed in Gaza City’s port in a beachfront air strike witnessed by several journalists that produced gruesome images broadcasted around the world. The boys’ deaths intensified international calls for a ceasefire.
Both Israel and Hamas agreed to hold fire during Thursday’s “humanitarian window”, but Israel’s military said that Gaza militants fired mortars into the southern border region during the pause, and later barraged southern and central Israel with rockets that caused sirens to sound in several cities.
After 3pm Israeli drones returned to the skies over Gaza as its military resumed heavy bombardment.
During the 10am-3pm pause in fighting, the UN and other aid agencies set to work repairing Gaza’s damaged water and power facilities, while Palestinians emerged from houses or makeshift shelters to shop or withdraw money from automatic teller machines.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said that during the pause it had fixed a water pipeline, serving 150,000 people, that had been contaminated by sewage.
Several municipal workers in Gaza have been killed in Israeli strikes during Operation Protective Edge over the past week, the UN and ICRC said, causing others to stay home from work and the territory’s water utility to suspend activities.
Gaza’s public services were in serious crisis before the war began; over the past week, humanitarian organisations warned that without repairs to its water system, some taps in Gaza would run dry.
The UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, said that it found 20 rockets stashed by militants during an inspection of one of its empty schools in Gaza.
The agency employs tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and is a frequent target of criticism by rightwing Israeli politicians. It said it “strongly condemned” the incident. Israel has accused Hamas and other militant groups of using civilian buildings to conceal military operations, while Israel has been accused of targeting civilians.
Israel and Hamas both denied reports of progress in talks to agree a ceasefire that would end the violence, which is their third conflict since 2008.
“The diplomatic effort continues, and we’re not there yet,” said an Israeli official. Israel wants to see a diplomatic solution that would involve Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah movement formed a unity government with Hamas last month, as a partner.
Mr Abbas held talks in Cairo with representatives of Hamas and fellow militant group Islamic Jihad. “There has been talk about details of a ceasefire or the aftermath of a ceasefire, but so far nothing has materialised,” a Palestinian official said, adding that Mr Abbas would visit Turkey and the Gulf in his diplomatic push.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad have set a series of conditions for a ceasefire, including the release of Hamas detainees rounded up after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed. They also want Israel to lift controls on the import of goods into Gaza, and to put the Rafah border crossing with Egypt under international supervision.