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No Support for Cease-Fire Seen Among Israel’s Leaders or Palestinian Militants Palestinians Flee Gaza’s North as Cease-Fire Seems Elusive
(about 7 hours later)
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, facing growing international support for a cease-fire in the latest conflict with Palestinian militants in Gaza, said once again on Sunday that the Israeli army was “prepared for any possibility.” GAZA CITY — Several thousand Palestinians, defying the urging of Hamas to remain in their homes, fled from areas in northern Gaza early Sunday after Israel warned them through fliers and phone calls of major attacks to come.
“I don’t know when the operation will end, it might take much more time,” Mr. Netanyahu said in broadcast remarks before his weekly cabinet meeting. Israel and Hamas seemed to signal little public interest in international appeals for a cease-fire as they continued their barrages. More than 100 rockets were fired out of Gaza into Israel on Sunday, with two intercepted over the Tel Aviv area, while the Palestinians expressed anger over the previous day’s Israeli bombings of a center for the disabled and a strike that killed 17 members of one extended family.
On the sixth day of Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza aimed at quelling Palestinian rocket fire, militant groups in that coastal enclave continued to launch rockets into Israel. Both sides appeared ready to continue and to escalate the conflict. For the Gazans fleeing the north, some traveled in vehicles, some by donkey cart and some on foot. With some waving white flags, residents of areas around Beit Lahiya ventured south to seek shelter in United Nations-run schools, cramming into classrooms and piling desks out on balconies.
Israeli troops are massed on the Gaza border and more than 30,000 reservists have been called up, ready for a possible ground invasion. Rafik Said al-Sultan, 44, came with his extended family, walking two hours to this school, carrying the youngest of his nine children, Omar, 17 months. “We left because of the terrifying bombing in the night and because of the fliers that warned that any moving body after noon will be struck,” he said.
An Israeli strike overnight aimed at Gen. Tayseer al-Batsh, commander of the Hamas police in Gaza, killed an estimated 21 Palestinians leaving a mosque. The general was wounded. An Israeli teenager was wounded by shrapnel from a rocket fired at the coastal city of Ashkelon, according to the Israeli ambulance service. The leaflets warned residents in the north to evacuate their homes before what Israel’s military spokesman described as a “short and temporary” campaign against rocket launchers there sometime after noon. Hamas asked residents to remain in their homes and ignore “Israeli propaganda,” but many fled anyway.
Also overnight, Israeli naval commandos raided a Gaza beach that the Israeli military said was a launching site for long-range rockets. Four soldiers were slightly wounded in an engagement with local gunmen. Mr. Sultan looked over at the young woman next to him, and said: “I don’t need another tragedy; this is the fiancée of my son.” Three days ago, his son, Odai, 21, was killed in an Israeli rocket strike on the taxi he was driving, after having picked up two fares. Mr. Sultan said that he had no idea why it was attacked, and that it must have been the wrong car.
Isra Abbas, the fiancée, 17, was to marry Mr. Sultan’s son in September. “The 1948 Nakba is now happening every four years,” she said angrily, referring to the Palestinian exodus during the Arab-Israeli war.
Thousands of residents of the northern Gaza Strip headed south, heeding warnings from the Israeli military to flee for their safety. “We pray to God there will be a truce, for our children and ourselves,” Mr. Sultan said, looking around the crowded classroom. “We can’t live here; there are no beds and few bathrooms, and men and women are here together.”
The military said in a statement that it was distributing leaflets telling Palestinian residents of Beit Lahiya to leave by noon because the military “intends to attack terrorists and terror infrastructures” in several specific locations including east of Al-Atatra. The statement said that rockets were being launched from those areas and that the military campaign there was to be “short and temporary.” Down the hall, his nephew, Muhammad al-Sultan, 26, had come with his wife and two young daughters on a donkey cart early in the morning after air attacks on his farmland. He conceded that many rockets were fired toward Israel from the area around Beit Lahiya. “Many rockets go from there,” he said. “But Israel lands more on us.”
A spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which assists the Palestinian refugees, said the organization had opened eight of its schools and that more than 4,000 people had taken refuge in its facilities. The assistant principal of the school arrived early Sunday morning, and the courtyard was already full of refugees, she said. “It was a shock,” she said, estimating that for the 31 classrooms she already had about 1,000 people. The principal, who argued briefly with a man whose family she said she had to turn away because the place was full, said she could not be quoted by name without United Nations permission.
The Interior Ministry in Gaza, which is dominated by Hamas, told people to return home, saying those who fled were helping the enemy, according to Israel Radio. On Sunday afternoon, a spokesman for UNRWA, the United Nations agency that deals with the refugees and operates the school, said that about 4,000 people were sheltering in eight schools, and that there was a capacity for 35,000 if necessary. Robert Turner, director of UNRWA operations, said “more are arriving by the minute,” mostly from areas around Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun.
International players appear increasingly alarmed by the rising death toll from the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, which has reached at least 140, and the prospect of a ground invasion, as well as the persistent Palestinian rocket fire aimed at civilian population centers across a huge swathe of Israel, which is keeping millions of Israelis on alert for sirens and running for shelter. For Israel, poised between international appeals for a cease-fire and a decision on whether to send ground forces into Gaza, the goal now is to ensure a lengthy period of quiet from Gazan rockets, which badly wounded a 16-year-old in Ashkelon on Sunday. That can be achieved only by seriously degrading Hamas’s fighting capabilities, whether by military means or through diplomacy, Israeli officials say, and part of the strategy, they say, is causing substantial “pain” to Hamas and its leaders, whose houses, only some of which have weapons stores, Israel is bombing here.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who appeared on American talk shows on Sunday, emphasized that the Israeli Army was “prepared for any possibility” and that Israel wanted “sustainable quiet.” In remarks before the weekly cabinet meeting, he said, “I don’t know when the operation will end; it might take much more time.”
Hamas has a number of conditions for a cease-fire, experts said, including the release once again by Israel of dozens of Hamas prisoners who were first released in 2011 as part of an exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was held captive by Hamas in Gaza for five years. However, the former prisoners were rearrested last month during Israel’s clampdown in the West Bank following the kidnap and killing of three Israeli teenagers there. Israel blames Hamas for the episode, and Israel’s internal security agency said Hamas prisoners had returned to terrorist activity. There is little appetite for a return to the cease-fire of November 2012, which lasted little over a year and a half. Yuval Steinitz, the minister for strategic affairs, told Israel Radio that the immediate goal is “quiet,” but “the strategic goal is demilitarization.” He added, “We have to finally not be satisfied with a temporary filling, but do a root canal.”
Hamas also needs money to pay its 40,000 employees in Gaza and is seeking the reopening of the Rafah crossing on Gaza’s border with Egypt. But as the bombing and rocketing continued, there was growing international pressure on Israel to settle for a cease-fire, called for by France, Britain and a nonbinding resolution of the United Nations. Those calls were intensified by the bombing of a center for the disabled early Saturday, killing some of the residents, and the mass funeral on Sunday of 17 members of one extended family, killed in a bombing late Saturday as Israel tried to kill Gen. Tayseer al-Batsh, the Hamas police chief. General Batsh, who was seriously wounded, was visiting his aunt’s house after attending prayers in a mosque. Two bombs reduced the three-story house to rubble, neighbors said, and sent body parts at least 100 yards.
Israel, according to experts, wants the Palestinians to quell the rocket fire and to ensure that any renewed cease-fire deal will last much longer than the last one, which was reached after fighting in late 2012. Local officials and relatives searched Sunday for more bodies before burying the family and a neighbor in a row of 18 graves dug in the same compound. Mahmoud al-Batsh, 48, a relative, said it was considered too dangerous now to bury them in the cemetery, which is near the border with Israel in northeast Gaza. “The Jews don’t differentiate between the police commander and ordinary citizens,” he said. Some argued in the heat whether the row of graves, dug Sunday morning and lined with cement blocks, was sufficiently aligned with Mecca.
Israeli ministers are calling for Hamas and the other militant groups in Gaza to be stripped of their weapons. In addition to members of the extended family, including seven children, a neighbor also was killed. Scores were wounded by shattered glass and explosive compression. There was no advance warning, residents said; Israeli officials have said they do not warn prime targets who they are trying to kill.
Yuval Steinitz, the country’s minister for strategic affairs, told Israel Radio that the immediate goal of the offensive, known as Operation Protective Edge “is quiet.” Munzer al-Batsh, the police commander’s brother and a gardener, said at the scene: “The Jews eliminated an entire family: grandfather, father, mother, even the children, who were sleeping in the homes. They were civilians.” He said he heard the bombs but could not see for the smoke and dust. When it cleared, he said: “There was a three-story house wiped out. I couldn’t remember at first that there was a house there.”
“ The strategic goal,” Mr. Steinitz said, “is demilitarization. We have to finally not be satisfied with a temporary filling but do a root canal.” The death toll among Palestinians is 158, at least half of them noncombatants, and more than 1,100 people have been hurt, the health ministry said.
“With all the difficulty entailed,” he said, “I think we have no way out other than a ground operation to take over Gaza in order to dismantle with our own hands the terror army, the missiles, the weapons industry in the Gaza Strip. It is complicated but maybe there is no alternative.” Abdallah al-Frangi, the Fatah official appointed governor of Gaza last month under a unity government with Fatah and Hamas, was there, too. He condemned the conflict, which he said Israel had started, and asked the United States to intervene. “The Americans are the people who can do it if they want,” he said. “Netanyahu doesn’t want to negotiate with the Palestinians and doesn’t want a Palestinian state next door.” Asked why he could not convince Hamas to stop firing rockets, Mr. Frangi said: “We cannot ask Hamas while Israel is continuing this aggression. If Israel will stop, I’m sure Hamas will stop.”
In an official statement on Saturday, Israel suggested that no firm cease-fire deal was on the table, but it left the door open for a ground operation or for diplomacy. But Israeli military officials want to hit Hamas hard to ensure a longer lull before another round. “This operation has the potential for bringing a longer period of quiet by causing critical damage to the infrastructure,” a senior military official told reporters on Sunday.
“We are not relating to this or that proposal,” the statement said. “The goal of Operation Protective Edge was, and remains, to restore quiet to Israel for an extended period while dealing a significant blow to Hamas and the other terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip. This goal will be achieved, whether militarily or diplomatically, and the IDF is prepared to broaden its activities as necessary.” Some Israeli security experts argue that Israel’s goals cannot be achieved without a ground invasion. If the objective is “to clean the territory,” said Gabi Siboni of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, “the way to do it is to activate all your forces.” Hamas has a huge arsenal of weapons of all types, including anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles, besides its thousands of remaining rockets, according to military officials. Many of the rockets and launchers are buried deep underground, they say, making it hard to destroy them from the air.
Tony Blair, the special envoy of the so-called Quartet of Middle East peacemakers, consisting of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, met with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt in Cairo over the weekend. But Hamas is not an easy enemy to fight on the ground in a crowded urban setting. Hamas has built a network of tunnels and booby traps, and has long threatened to capture Israeli soldiers as bargaining chips for the release of prisoners. But it is also hard to eliminate rocket launchers from the air. Most rockets are loaded underground and launched through narrow slits in the areas between crowded houses, and those who launch them enter and exit the tunnels from other houses.
A spokesman for Mr. Sisi said in a statement Saturday that the Egyptian leader was “in close contact with both the Israelis and the Palestinians to halt the violence and military operations that stem from stubbornness and intransigence and that result in the loss of innocent civilian life.” Hamas has its own motivations, said Mkhaimar Abusada of Al-Azhar University here. “Hamas has been politically isolated” since the military coup in Egypt closed down the tunnels and the Rafah crossing, he said. And Israel has tightened controls over Gaza since the November 2012 agreement after it discovered a Hamas tunnel into Israel six months ago, he said. At the same time, “the unity government with Fatah has done nothing for Gaza or Hamas,” which can no longer pay full salaries to its 40,000 employees.
By Sunday, though, a senior Hamas official said he had seen no “serious moves” from Egypt to push for a cease-fire. “So far there have been some unofficial calls, and some solutions suggested, but an official contact has not been made,” he said. “Egypt needs to officially adopt the Palestinian demands and push Israel to a cease-fire. The Israeli side feels no pressure.” “So Hamas’s main goal from this conflict is to end the siege,” Mr. Abusada said. “It can no longer survive this way, feeling suffocated by Israeli and blockaded by Egypt and ignored by Abu Mazen,” the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. For now, Mr. Abusada said, with Hamas political figures in hiding, the military wing is calling the shots. Any cease-fire deal, he said, will have to be done with the Hamas political chief, Khaled Meshal, who lives in Qatar.
Egypt’s relations with Hamas have turned bitter since Mr. Sisi took over last year. For one thing, Egypt has closed most of the tunnels running beneath its border with Gaza that were both an economic lifeline for the coastal enclave and a major channel for weapons smuggling. As for a ground operation to destroy Hamas’s rocket capability, “Israel would have to go deep into Gaza, and that would be very costly to civilians, and I don’t think the United States and the West are willing to absorb that much bloodshed,” Mr. Abusada said.
In the end, Israeli officials and analysts say that Egypt, despite some reluctance, is likely to play a role in brokering any cease-fire. There is also talk of involvement by Qatar, and the Obama administration has offered to help facilitate cease-fire efforts.
Michael Herzog, a retired Israeli general and a former negotiator for the government, said for now there was a lack of a credible mechanism leading the effort for a cease-fire.
“As long as we don’t have that, we unfortunately might see ongoing confrontation between the parties,” he said.
Mr. Herzog, an Israel-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he did not think Israel would, or should free Hamas prisoners, saying that to do so “would be a reward for violence.”
Referring to a largely symbolic statement issued on Saturday by the United Nations Security Council calling on both sides to return to a 2012 cease-fire, Hanna Amira, a West Bank-based Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member, told Palestinian Radio on Sunday: “This announcement deals with the oppressor and the victim in the same way, it is a general call to end the fighting, without setting any mechanism to end the fighting. What is needed is an end to the aggression against the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
The P.L.O. recently signed a reconciliation pact with Hamas intended to end a seven-year schism between the West Bank and Gaza, but it has been strained from the start, with the P.L.O.-dominated Palestinian Authority refusing, among other things, to pay Hamas’s 40,000 employees.