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Fighting Continues as U.S. Seeks Truce in Gaza Cease-Fire Between Israel and Hamas Takes Effect
(about 11 hours later)
JERUSALEM — Efforts to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas were set to continue Wednesday but the struggle to achieve even a brief pause in the fighting emphasized the obstacles to finding any lasting solution. CAIRO — Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire on Wednesday, the eighth day of lethal fighting over the Gaza Strip, the United States and Egypt said after intensive negotiations in Cairo.
Overnight, as the conflict entered its eighth day, the Israeli military said in Twitter feeds that “more than 100 terror sites were targeted, of which approximately 50 were underground rocket launchers.” The targets included the Ministry of Internal Security in Gaza, described as “one of the Hamas’ main command and control centers.” The cease-fire, which took effect at 9 p.m. local time (2 p.m. E.S.T.), was formally announced by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr of Egypt at a news conference here. The agreement was aimed at quieting an escalating aerial battle between Palestinians and Israelis that had threatened to turn into an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.
The Israel Defense Forces also said they scored a direct hit early Wednesday on militants building rockets and intercepted two projectiles fired from Gaza toward “densely populated areas.” Whether the cease-fire could hold was uncertain at best, and even in the minutes leading up to the effective start time, both sides were firing at each other. But the sound of celebratory gunshots could be heard in Gaza after the agreement took effect, and Gazans ventured outside as the roar of Israeli warplanes and thud of bombs that had punctuated the past week was gone.
On Tuesday — the deadliest day of fighting in the conflict — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived hurriedly in Jerusalem and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to push for a truce. She was due in Cairo on Wednesday to consult with Egyptian officials in contact with Hamas, placing her and the Obama administration at the center of a fraught process with multiple parties, interests and demands. “This is a critical moment for the region,” Mrs. Clinton, who rushed to the Middle East late Tuesday in an intensified effort to halt the hostilities, told reporters in Cairo. She thanked Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, who played a pivotal role in the negotiations, for “assuming the leadership that has long made this country a cornerstone of regional stability and peace.”
Officials on all sides had raised expectations that a cease-fire would begin around midnight, followed by negotiations for a longer-term agreement. But by the end of Tuesday, officials with Hamas, the militant Islamist group that governs Gaza, said any announcement would not come at least until Wednesday. Mrs. Clinton also pledged to work “with our partners across the region to consolidate this progress, improve conditions for the people of Gaza, provide security for the people of Israel.”
The Israelis, who have amassed tens of thousands of troops on the Gaza border and have threatened to invade for a second time in four years to end the rocket fire, never publicly backed the idea of a short break in fighting. They said they were open to a diplomatic accord but were looking for something more enduring. Mr. Amr said Egypt’s role in reaching the agreement reflected its “historical commitment to the Palestinian cause” and Egypt’s efforts to “bring together the gap between the Palestinian factions.”
“If there is a possibility of achieving a long-term solution to this problem through diplomatic means, we prefer that,” Mr. Netanyahu said before meeting with Mrs. Clinton at his office. “But if not, I’m sure you understand that Israel will have to take whatever actions necessary to defend its people.” The negotiators reached an agreement after days of nearly nonstop Israeli aerial assaults on Gaza, the Mediterranean enclave run by Hamas, the militant Islamist group, and the firing of hundreds of rockets into Israel from an arsenal Hamas had been amassing in the aftermath of the three-week Israeli invasion four years ago.
Mrs. Clinton spoke of the need for “a durable outcome that promotes regional stability and advances the security and legitimate aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians alike.” It was unclear whether she was starting a complex task of shuttle diplomacy or whether she expected to achieve a pause in the hostilities and then head home. Under the terms distributed after the news conference, Israel agreed to stop all land, sea and air hostilities in Gaza, including the “targeting of individuals” — a reference to militants of Hamas and its affiliates who have been killed. The cease-fire also calls on the Palestinian factions in Gaza to stop all hostilities against Israel, including rocket attacks and attacks along the border.
The diplomatic moves came as the antagonists on both sides stepped up their attacks. Israeli aerial and naval forces assaulted several Gaza targets in multiple strikes, including a suspected rocket-launching site near Al Shifa Hospital. On Wednesday, the Israeli military said that “800 rockets fired from Gaza hit Israel in the past week — 162 during the last day alone.” The agreement came despite a bus bombing in Tel Aviv earlier in the day, which Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups had applauded. Also complicating the path to the cease-fire were Israeli strikes overnight on Gaza.
More than 30 people were killed on Tuesday, bringing the total number of fatalities in Gaza to more than 130 — roughly half of them civilians, the Gaza Health Ministry said. It was unclear how the agreement would be enforced, but the terms stated that “each party shall commit itself not to perform any acts that would breach this understanding.”
A delegation visiting from the Arab League canceled a news conference at the hospital because of the Israeli aerial assaults as wailing ambulances brought victims in, some of them decapitated. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who had been threatening to start another ground invasion if the Gaza rockets did not stop, said in a statement that he was satisfied, for the moment, with the outcome. But he left open the possibility of more military action.
The Israeli assaults continued early Wednesday, with multiple blasts punctuating the otherwise darkened Gaza skies. The statement issued by his office said Mr. Netanyahu had spoken with President Obama and “responded positively to his recommendation to give a chance to the Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire and to allow an opportunity to stabilize the situation and to calm it down before there is a need to use much greater force.”
Militants in Gaza fired a barrage of at least 200 rockets into Israel, killing an Israeli soldier — the first military casualty on the Israeli side since the hostilities broke out. The Israeli military said the soldier, identified as Yosef Fartuk, 18, had died from a rocket strike that hit an area near Gaza. Israeli officials said a civilian military contractor working near the Gaza border had also been killed, bringing the number of fatalities in Israel from the week of rocket mayhem to five. An agreement had been on the verge of completion on Tuesday, but was delayed over a number of issues, including Hamas’s demands for unfettered access to Gaza via the Rafah crossing into Egypt and other steps that would ease Israel’s economic and border control over other aspects of life for the more than one million Palestinian residents of Gaza, which Israel vacated in 2005 after 38 years of occupation.
Other Palestinian rockets hit the southern Israeli cities of Beersheba and Ashdod, and longer-range rockets were fired at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Neither main city was struck, and no casualties were reported. One Gaza rocket hit a building in Rishon LeZion, just south of Tel Aviv, wounding one person and wrecking the top three floors. The Hamas Health Ministry in Gaza said the Palestinian death toll after a week of fighting stood at 140 at noon. At least a third of those killed are believed to have been militants. On the Israeli side, five Israelis have been killed, including one soldier.
Senior Egyptian officials in Cairo said Israel and Hamas were “very close” to a cease-fire agreement. “We have not received final approval, but I hope to receive it any moment,” said Essam el-Haddad, President Mohamed Morsi’s top foreign affairs adviser. Around noon on Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas government media office, a bomb hit the house of Issam Da’alis, an adviser to Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister. The house had been evacuated. Earlier, a predawn airstrike near a mosque in the Jabaliya refugee camp killed a 30-year-old militant, a spokesman said, and F-16 bombs destroyed two houses in the central Gaza Strip.
Foreign diplomats who were briefed on the outlines of a tentative agreement said it had been structured in stages — first, an announcement of a cease-fire, followed by its implementation for 48 hours. That would allow time for Mrs. Clinton to involve herself in the process here and create a window for negotiators to agree on conditions for a longer-term cessation of hostilities. There were 23 punishing strikes against the southern tunnels that are used to bring weapons as well as construction material, cars and other commercial goods into Gaza from the Sinai Peninsula.
But it seemed that each side had steep demands of a longer-term deal that the other side would reject. Within Gaza City, Abu Khadra, the largest government office complex, was obliterated overnight. Businesses were also damaged, including two banks and a tourism office, and electricity cables fell on the ground and were covered in dust.
Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader, said in Cairo that Israel needed to end its blockade of Gaza. Israel says the blockade keeps arms from entering the coastal strip. Separately, a bomb dropped from an F-16 created a 20-foot-wide crater in an open area in a stretch of hotels occupied by foreign journalists. Several of the hotels had windows blown out by the strike around 2 a.m., but no one was reported injured. By morning, the hole in the ground had filled with sludgy water, apparently from a burst pipe, appearing almost like a forgotten swimming hole with walls made of sand and cracked cinder block.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu, said Israel saw no point in an arrangement that offered Hamas what he called “a timeout to regroup” without long-term guarantees involving the United States and Egypt. Some Israeli officials have spoken of a bigger buffer zone along the Gaza border. Surveying damage near a government complex, Raji Sourani of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said Gaza civilians were “in the eye of the storm,” and accused Israel of “inflicting pain and terror” on them. Israeli officials accuse Hamas of locating military sites in or close to civilian areas.
American officials said Washington was betting on the pragmatism of Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s new president. He is a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement with which Hamas is affiliated. Overnight, as the conflict entered its eighth day, the Israeli military said in Twitter posts that “more than 100 terror sites were targeted, of which approximately 50 were underground rocket launchers.” The targets included the Ministry of Internal Security in Gaza, described as “one of Hamas’s main command and control centers.”
While President Obama publicly emphasized Israel’s right to self-defense because of domestic political concerns, officials said the administration had also decided to take an understanding approach to Mr. Morsi’s need to denounce Israel in order to appeal to his domestic audience. While there was no immediate or formal claim of responsibility for the bus bombing in Tel Aviv, a message on a Twitter account in the name of Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip, declared: “We told you IDF that our blessed hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are, ‘You opened the Gates of hell on Yourselves.’ ” The letters I.D.F. refer to the Israel Defense Forces.
“We know that the Egyptians have their domestic politics as well,” one American official said, and each president understood the other’s political context. “But they both agree that this nonsense can’t go on.” On several occasions since the latest conflagration seized Gaza last week, militants have aimed rockets at Tel Aviv, but they have either fallen short, landed in the sea or been intercepted. Hundreds of rockets fired by militants in Gaza have struck other targets.
Officials of Mr. Morsi’s government acknowledged that the Gaza battle had put them in a bind. As Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mr. Morsi must respond to a public deeply angry at Israel and eager to rally behind the Palestinians. “But if he responds fully to public opinion, he risks what we have been trying to do for peace and stability in the region,” a senior official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. But the bombing seemed to be the first time in the fighting that violence had spread directly onto the streets of Tel Aviv.
Indeed, despite the Egyptian government’s caustic statements about Israel and noisy solidarity with Hamas, several American officials said Mr. Morsi and the new Islamist government needed no encouragement in their efforts to push for an end not only to the Israeli bombing but also to Hamas’s missile fire. On Tuesday — the deadliest day of fighting in the conflict — Mrs. Clinton arrived hurriedly in Jerusalem and met with Mr. Netanyahu to push for a truce.
But Israel wants guarantees that Egypt will actively stop the flow of arms into Gaza from Sinai, and that seems a tall order. Egypt has been unable to control Sinai and would not want to be seen in the role of Israeli enforcer. Egypt is hoping Hamas will restrain itself on missile imports, but it is far from clear that Hamas wants to or can, given the range of forces in Gaza vying for power, including the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad. Her visit to Cairo on Wednesday to consult with Egyptian officials in contact with Hamas placed her and the Obama administration at the center of a fraught process with multiple parties, interests and demands.
Within Hamas itself, there are divisions and fractured views on the truce negotiations. In Gaza on Tuesday, Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said that “we hold absolutely no hope of Hillary Clinton” helping to resolve the conflict. Before leaving for Cairo, Mrs. Clinton visited the West Bank to meet Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, which is estranged from the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip and has increasingly strained ties with Israel over a contentious effort to upgrade the Palestinian status at the United Nations to that of a nonmember state. Mr. Abbas’s faction is favored by the United States, but it is not directly involved in either the fighting in Gaza or the effort in Cairo to end it. Like Israel and much of the West, the United States regards Hamas as a terrorist organization.
“We hold no hope in Obama or Hillary Clinton to do anything, just to save the occupation in their crisis,” Mr. Barhoum said in an interview outside Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. “Just support the occupation so it can do more and more massacres.” The Israelis, who had amassed tens of thousands of troops on the Gaza border, had threatened to invade for a second time in four years to end the rocket fire.
Mr. Obama, who was in Asia, had found himself repeatedly on the phone with Middle Eastern leaders in recent days and decided that Mrs. Clinton, who also spoke to a dozen of her counterparts here, could make the difference in establishing a cease-fire and asked her to make the trip.

David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo, Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram from Gaza, Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem, Alan Cowell from London, Andrea Bruce from Rafah and Christine Hauser from New York.

Mr. Netanyahu’s calculations are numerous. He has an election looming in January, and agreeing to stop his operation in Gaza could be risky if rocket fire resumed. But sending troops into Gaza poses perhaps even more risks.
“The Israeli government will face its voters without any tangible achievement in hand to show,” Nahum Barnea, a columnist for the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, wrote Tuesday. He said that he did not believe Mr. Netanyahu had begun this operation with electoral considerations in mind, but that “the deliberations about ending it are deeply affected by political calculations.”
Mr. Netanyahu is also contending with a radically altered Middle East, and while he says that protecting his people is not dependent on who is in power in Egypt or Turkey, a reduced military operation and fewer civilian casualties in Gaza would make relations with both countries less difficult.

Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo. Reporting was contributed by Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram from Gaza; Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem; Alan Cowell from London; Peter Baker from Phnom Penh, Cambodia; David E. Sanger and Mark Landler from Washington; and Rick Gladstone from New York.