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JERUSALEM — Even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that he had ordered Israel’s military to “prepare for the possibility of widening, significantly,” its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, troops operated mainly near Gaza’s borders in what Israeli officials emphasized was a modest mission targeting tunnels into their territory.
JERUSALEM — As Israeli troops once again operated inside the Gaza Strip on Friday, the risks of a deep entanglement, a failure to curb the rocket fire, and the condemnation of civilian casualties were all too apparent.
Mr. Netanyahu, who acknowledged that “there is no guarantee of 100 percent success,” also offered condolences to the family of an Israeli soldier killed in the first hours of the ground offensive. And a Hamas-run radio station reported that three siblings had been killed in the artillery shelling of an apartment building in northern Gaza around noon Friday.
Twice before, Israel has battled Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that dominates Gaza, and twice before, Israel has halted under international pressure without eliminating the threat of rocket fire.
The recent fighting brought the Palestinian death toll to above 260, with more than 20 killed since the ground offensive began. Palestinian health officials have said that some 2,000 others have been injured. The Israeli military identified the soldier as Staff Sgt. Eitan Barak, 20, from Herzliya.
But this time, officials and analysts say, the landscape is different. Israel has publicly framed a clear agenda targeting tunnels it says militants built to store weapons or stage attacks on its territory. This time, a weakened Hamas cannot turn to Egypt for respite. This time, Western leaders appear more patient: President Obama expressed concern Friday about “the loss of more innocent life” but also said no nation should be subjected to a hail of rockets or underground incursions.
Sergeant Barak was the second Israeli casualty of the conflict that began on July 8; a 37-year-old civilian was killed by mortar shells from Gaza as he distributed food to soldiers massed near the border Tuesday night. Israeli news outlets reported that the soldier was shot near Beit Hanoun, in northeast Gaza, possibly from friendly fire, though a Twitter post from the Army said he was “fighting Hamas terrorists.” He was posthumously promoted to staff sergeant from sergeant.
The start of the ground campaign was a stark contrast to Israel’s 2009 invasion, when forces quickly bisected the tiny coastal enclave and blockaded Gaza City, where they engaged in gun battles with Hamas fighters. On Friday, the troops operated mainly in farmland within about a mile of Gaza’s northern, southern and eastern edges, and quickly announced they had uncovered more than 20 tunnel exit points.
Al Aksa radio station, which is run by Hamas, reported that three children of Ismail Abu Musalam — Walaa, 12, Mohammed, 13, and Ahmed, 14 — had been killed when a shell hit their bedroom in Al Nada housing block, close to the Erez crossing from Israel. Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said on his Facebook page that Mr. Netanyahu “is killing Gaza children but he will pay the price.”
Setting the bar relatively low helps hold back public expectations, provide the military with achievable goals, and build international legitimacy. It also reflects Israel’s reluctance to re-engage long-term in Gaza or rout Hamas only to find it replaced by even more radical groups. Though on Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military to “prepare for the possibility of widening, significantly,” its offensive.
The Israeli military said that it had uncovered more than 20 “tunnel access points” in Gaza during the ground campaign’s first hours, hit more than 150 sites in the coastal territory, and killed at least 17 militants.
But if the action on the ground has changed from past conflicts, so has the diplomatic horizon. Analysts said that political shifts among Palestinians and across the region had made the familiar paths to cease-fire agreements harder to find this time.
“We chose to go to this operation after we exhausted the other options and with the understanding that without this operation the price we pay will be much higher,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a nationally televised address shortly before noon from the military headquarters in Tel Aviv, where he had convened his top ministers. Mr. Netanyahu said he had talked to world leaders to create “the international space, something that should not be taken for granted, so we can act systematically and with power against a murderous terror organization and its partners.”
Hamas, financially desperate and politically isolated but rich in armaments, is desperate to score points with the public either by harming Israelis or curbing what it calls the siege that has plunged Gaza into economic and humanitarian disaster. Israel, under pressure internationally for expanding settlements in the West Bank and for the number of civilians killed, including some 65 children, in the 11-day assault on Gaza, wants mainly to disarm the militants.
President Obama said in comments from the White House that he spoke with Mr. Netanyahu on Friday and that he reaffirmed his “strong support for Israel’s right to defend itself” but also said he was “deeply concerned about the risks of further escalation and the loss of more innocent life.”
“There’s a certain contradiction here,” said Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli diplomat and university president. “That’s what you need mediators for — you find that magic formula, constructive ambiguity, that enables both parties to claim achievement.
“No nation should accept rockets being fired into its borders or terrorists tunneling into its territory,” Mr. Obama told reporters, noting that a siren signaling incoming rockets over Tel Aviv sounded during his phone conversation with Mr. Netanyahu on Friday.
“Right now, those actors are not there.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that the prime minister had told the president after the siren sounded that it was “the reality in which millions of Israeli citizens have been living during the past number of days.” The Israeli leader also told Mr. Obama that Hamas was “using the residents of Gaza as human shields” and was therefore “responsible for the casualties,” according to the statement.
Washington, which has helped broker previous cease-fires, is consumed with other crises, and has diminished credibility in the Middle East. Egypt, which during the brief presidency of Mohamed Morsi strongly supported Hamas, now treats the group as an enemy, and is loath to let its rivals Qatar and Turkey play a significant diplomatic role to aid residents of Gaza.
The United Nations Security Council scheduled an emergency session on Gaza for Friday afternoon in New York, at the request of Jordan. Turkey had also called for such a session, and its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Friday accused Israel of “committing genocide” and said it “has never been a supporter of peace, has tyrannized and continues to tyrannize.”
That leaves President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, an adversary of both Israel and Hamas, as the primary Palestinian interlocutor. Weak at home but increasingly active on the international stage, he shuttled from Cairo to Istanbul on Friday for what were described as cease-fire negotiations.
Israel had earlier ordered the families of its diplomats and some staff to leave Turkey after violent protests early Friday in front of Israel’s missions in Istanbul and Ankara. Windows of the consulate office in central Istanbul were broken and graffiti was scrawled on a nearby wall reading, “You should be left without descendants, murderer Jew.” Parliamentarians from the governing Justice and Development Party joined a similar demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy in Ankara.
“The fact that Abbas is involved this time, unlike all previous cases, could mean something,” said Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian pollster and analyst. “He does not have a lot of leverage here, but the little he has might allow for a three-way deal — Hamas, Abbas and the Israelis. That’s the way things might be smoother than to wait for the battlefield itself to determine the outcome, which could take a very, very long time, and a great deal of bloodshed.”
Electricity had been cut in most of Gaza because of downed cables that bring power from Israel, and street battles in Gaza City and in northern and southern towns were reported on social media.
The bloodshed continued Friday as an artillery shell killed three children of Ismail Abu Musalam in their bedroom near the northern entry to Gaza around noon — the third day in a row in which groups of youths were killed — and another shell killed eight members of the Abu Jarad family, four of them children, at night. The Palestinian death toll topped 280, plus 2,000 wounded, as airstrikes continued over the relatively contained ground operations.
Dozens of families fled intense Israeli bombings in northern Gaza on foot and on donkey carts packed with up to 10 people, including children and older adults. Explosions from airstrikes could be seen, as well as outgoing rockets or mortars. Little else moved in Gaza City, where streets were mostly deserted and shops were closed. An exception was Shifa Hospital, where casualties continued to arrive, including one body blown to pieces and a boy whose face was pockmarked by shrapnel. Many staff members at the hospital have worked nearly nonstop for 11 days. A funeral was held nearby for two people killed overnight.
The Israeli military said it uncovered 10 distinct tunnels, struck 240 targets, killed 17 militants and detained 21 others for questioning on the first day of the ground operation. A 20-year-old soldier, Eitan Barak, was shot and killed in the early hours — the second Israeli death of the war; seven soldiers were injured.
Residents of northern Gaza said that Israeli tanks were not pushing deep into the territory but had remained in position on a swath of sand, and that it was relatively calm at midday after a night of shelling and machine-gun fire. Some said that they had heard tank shells and that they thought Israel might be clearing the way for further incursions later.
Sirens signaling rockets from Gaza sounded all day and night throughout southern and central Israel — one of several over Tel Aviv sounded during Mr. Obama’s telephone conversation with Mr. Netanyahu. The Israeli military counted 135 rockets in the first 24 hours of the ground operation, 40 of them blocked from hitting cities by the Iron Dome defense system. One damaged an empty kindergarten and a synagogue.
In the town of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, at least nine people were killed overnight, including four members of the Radwan family, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Residents of Al Qarara, a neighborhood in eastern Khan Younis, said bulldozers were leveling fields planted with crops near the border fence in eastern Gaza in what is known as the “buffer zone” — a strip where Israel prevented planting for years but lifted restrictions under a cease-fire agreement that ended the last Gaza battle in 2012.
Mr. Netanyahu — who had won plaudits from the waning Israeli left this week for embracing an Egyptian cease-fire proposal, agreeing to a United Nations request for a humanitarian pause, and not invading Gaza sooner — expressed regret Friday “for every mistaken strike on civilians.” But he also said he was engaged in “unending” diplomacy to create “the international space” so Israel could “act systematically and with power against a murderous terrorist organization and its partners.”
Israeli airstrikes have also continued, with an F-16 hitting a villa belonging to the Khoudary family near a building housing the local offices of Al Jazeera and The Associated Press. Apache helicopters had earlier targeted an apartment in Al Jawhara tower, which damaged the office of a Palestinian production company that serves foreign news outlets.
International reaction fell mainly along predictable allegiances to Israel and the Palestinians, but there was some movement on the margins. Analysts attributed that to the battle’s roots in last month’s abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers, to Hamas’s dwindling roster of friends, to Israel’s quick embrace of Egypt’s cease-fire proposals, and to the mission’s modest stated goals.
Along the road that runs parallel to Gaza’s eastern boundary and about a mile into Israeli territory, dozens of tanks topped with Israeli flags were parked in fields, with soldiers on standby. Clouds of dust covered the road in the wake of military vehicles on the move in what had become a huge staging ground. The Israeli military has begun calling up 18,000 more reservists, adding to the 50,000 already mobilized for the campaign.
Mr. Obama reaffirmed his “strong support for Israel’s right to defend itself,” suggesting it was based on his understanding that “the current military ground operations are designed to deal with the tunnels.” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey accused Israel of “committing genocide,” raising further questions about his ability to play any kind of constructive role.
Sirens signaling rocket attacks sounded all night and into the morning across Israel’s south; the army counted more than 50 rockets from the 10 p.m. start of its ground invasion on Thursday until 7 a.m. on Friday.
In Europe, concern over casualties was mixed with a commitment to Israel’s right to self-defense. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced he would travel to Israel on Saturday to express solidarity with people on both sides and try to mediate.
Khaled Meshal, the political leader of Hamas, the Islamist movement that dominates Gaza and has led the battle against Israel that began July 8, told Agence France-Presse from his base in Qatar on Friday that the ground operation was “bound to fail.”
“Israel has legitimate security concerns, and we condemn the indiscriminate rocket fire,” Jeffrey Feltman, the United Nations undersecretary general for political affairs, said at an emergency session of the Security Council. He added, however, “we are alarmed by Israel’s heavy response.”
“What the occupier Israel failed to achieve through its air and sea raids, it will not be able to achieve with a ground offensive,” Mr. Meshal was quoted as saying by the agency.
Einat Wilf, a former center-left member of Israel’s Parliament, said world leaders who had generally focused on Mr. Netanyahu’s “hawkish positions” had seen him be “very prudent” so far. “There’s one thing that’s really clear for me is that on the Israeli side there’s incredible reluctance to enter into anything large-scale,” Ms. Wilf said. “I think this is one of the reasons we’re getting substantial backing; there is a sense that there’s no trigger-happy person at the helm, quite the contrary.”
President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, whose meetings in Cairo on Wednesday and Thursday failed to produce a cease-fire agreement, told reporters there that the ground operation would “lead to more bloodshed and complicate efforts to end the aggression,” according to WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency. Mr. Abbas was scheduled to travel to Turkey and perhaps Qatar on Friday to continue cease-fire discussions.
Yaakov Amidror, Mr. Netanyahu’s former national security adviser, said the prime minister’s approach had “cost him with his own constituency — the majority of it do not like cease-fires in such occasions” — but that for now the government seemed to be ignoring calls for retaking Gaza.
The Israeli Home Front Command banned gatherings of more than 1,000 people as far north as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and in the communities close to Gaza, summer camps were canceled and groups of more than 300 were not allowed.
“This operation is very limited geographically,” Mr. Amidror said. “Most of the operation will not take place in crowded areas with a lot of population, but areas used for agriculture. The land operation, it’s very easy to see where it will be finished. If nothing bad will happen, we will identify the locations of the tunnels, we will blow them up, and we will retreat.”
Men under 50 were barred from Al Aksa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem for Friday prayers, which are a major event, especially during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and which often bring clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces even during otherwise calm times.
But he added, “How to finish the whole operation in terms of stopping the rockets and the missiles, this is much more complicated.”
In the West Bank city of Hebron, the families of the three men that the Israeli authorities have said are the prime suspects in the June 12 abduction and subsequent murder of three Israeli teenagers — a crime that Israel blamed on Hamas and that began the escalation that led to the conflict in Gaza — received notices that their homes would be demolished Friday. Israeli forces damaged the homes weeks ago.
On Thursday, three ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews, a 29-year-old with a history of psychiatric problems and two of his teenage relatives, were indicted on charges of kidnapping and killing a 16-year-old Palestinian boy in Jerusalem on July 2 in an apparent revenge attack the morning after the three Israeli teenagers’ funerals.
Secretary of State John Kerry of the United States spoke to Mr. Netanyahu after the ground forces moved into Gaza. Mr. Kerry urged a “precise” operation focused on the tunnels, as Mr. Netanyahu’s office and other senior Israeli leaders had indicated as the operation was announced.
“The secretary emphasized the need to avoid further escalation” and urged a cease-fire based on a proposal presented by Egypt earlier this week, according to a State Department statement. “The secretary also reiterated our concern about the safety and security of civilians on both sides and the importance of doing everything possible to prevent civilian casualties.”
The United Nations estimates that three-quarters of the Palestinians killed in the operation were not militants and that the victims include more than 50 children. Palestinian health officials have counted at least 20 minors killed in recent days: four were killed in an airstrike as they played on a Gaza City rooftop at around 6 p.m. on Thursday, and four others — cousins — were bombed as they kicked a ball on the beach at around 4 p.m. on Wednesday.
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said overnight that he regretted the ground offensive and urged Israel to “do more” to prevent civilian casualties, news agencies reported, while the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, called on Israel to show “utmost restraint.”
Mr. Netanyahu said on Friday that Israel’s is “a moral army like no other,” and “does not aspire to hurt even one innocent person, not even one.” He blamed Hamas and other militant groups for using “their citizens as human shields,” and said he was “sorry for every mistaken strike on civilians.”
Chris Gunness of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said on Friday that many in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis had been displaced by the violence. The agency, which serves the more than half of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents classified as Palestinian refugees, is sheltering about 22,000 Gazans in 23 spots in Gaza City and in the north of the strip, Mr. Gunness said.
In Canada, a staunch ally of Israel, Foreign Minister John Baird said the ground incursion “could have been avoided” if Hamas had accepted Egypt’s cease-fire proposal, as Israel initially did, and said the Gaza group therefore “bears responsibility for the further tragic loss of life.”
The Israeli military released footage of a captain giving his soldiers a last-minute briefing before heading into Gaza.
“I don’t think I need to explain to you why we are doing what we are doing,” he said, according to a translation posted on the Times of Israel news site. “I am confident in what we are doing, because it is our right to be free in our land. It’s not a slogan, it’s the truth.”
