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Israel Halts Attack in Parts of Gaza, but Strike Kills Girl Israel Moving to Wind Down Gaza Conflict by Itself
(about 1 hour later)
JERUSALEM — Minutes after Israel began a unilateral and partial cease-fire in Gaza on Monday, the air force struck a house in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, killing a girl, 8, and wounding at least 29 others. JERUSALEM — Pressured by its Western allies to stop killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza, worried about potential unrest in the West Bank and reluctant to hand Hamas any concessions, Israel is moving toward a unilateral conclusion of the conflict, which would not provide any decisive ending.
More than six hours later, there was still no official comment about the strike from the Israeli military, which continued to withdraw many of its ground forces from populated areas in Gaza, about why it struck the house. With its troops essentially finished destroying Hamas’s tunnels into Israel and having dealt Hamas’s military capacity a significant blow, senior Israeli officials said Monday that they were moving troops to defensive positions on both sides of the border. The army — and especially the air force — will respond to attacks and rocket fire by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but the hope, Israeli officials say, is that Gaza fighters will not match rhetoric with action, and that the conflict will slowly wind down and stop.
After sharp criticism from the United States and the United Nations of its strike outside a United Nations school on Sunday, which killed seven people in addition to its intended targets, three Islamic Jihad fighters on a motorcycle, Israel announced a unilateral cease-fire to last from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Israel said the cease-fire was intended to assist humanitarian relief efforts. The latest Israeli actions in the nearly month-old Gaza conflict, which Israel calls Operation Protective Edge, are unilateral. After the quick breakdown of last Friday’s cease-fire, negotiated with Hamas through Qatar, the Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they no longer believed that Hamas would implement agreements. Nor did they want to “reward” Hamas, they said, for its rocket and tunnel war.
But the cease-fire was to take place only in areas where Israel was not engaged in military activity. Israeli Army officials said that east Rafah, in southern Gaza, far from Gaza City itself, was the only urban area where troops and tanks were engaged in fighting on Monday, with most of the rest of the Israeli troops pulled back closer to the border with Israel and some redeployed in staging areas inside Israel itself. At the same time, the officials said, Israel was willing to see what the Egyptian government could achieve with Palestinian negotiators in Cairo. Israel is not opposed to a new arrangement with Hamas and the Palestinians, nor has it removed the possibility of renewing the negotiated cease-fire agreement that ended the brief, last conflict in Gaza, in November 2012. That agreement called for opening the crossings in Gaza, easing the movement of people and transfer of goods and extending fishing limits.
Gen. Motti Almoz, the chief military spokesman, told Army Radio that “redeployment lets us work on the tunnels, provides defense and lets the forces set up for further activity.” And Israeli officials said they were conscious of the need for the reconstruction of Gaza, which will require significant imports of building materials, but wanted it supervised by Egypt through Rafah, at the Gaza-Egypt border, or by Israel through its main crossing at Kerem Shalom.
“There is no ending here, perhaps an interim phase,” he said. Israel is in no hurry, the officials said, and for now the model they are adhering to is the unilateral cease-fire Israel announced at the end of the last major Gazan conflict, which lasted three weeks into January 2009. Then, Hamas slowly stopped rocket fire, a period of relative quiet that lasted nearly four years.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, the dominant faction in Gaza, said it would not observe the truce, which he disparaged as a media exercise, and he warned residents to exercise caution when they ventured outside. “The unilateral cease-fire announced by Israel is an attempt to divert attention from Israeli massacres,” he said. Earlier Monday, Israel bombed the house of an Islamic Jihad commander in northern Gaza, Danyal Mansour, killing him. But Israel is concerned about the possible spread of violence carried out by Palestinians enraged over the Gaza conflict. In an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem on Monday, a Palestinian drove a heavy construction vehicle over a pedestrian, killing him, and overturned a nearly empty bus, injuring three people, before the police shot the driver to death.
Ashraf al-Qedra, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Gaza, said that the strike on the house in Shati took place several minutes after the announced start of the cease-fire, but one Israeli official from the army agency that controls coordination with Gaza told Israel Radio that the strike took place just before the cease-fire began. Later, a gunman shot and wounded a soldier waiting at a bus stop near Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, escaping by motorcycle, in what the police said was a suspected terrorist attack.
The cease-fire, coupled with the redeployment, was another indication of Israel’s decision for now to reject further negotiations on a cease-fire with Hamas or with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, and instead to make unilateral decisions. After a string of broken cease-fires, the Israeli intention, officials explained, was not to reward Hamas and allies like Islamic Jihad through negotiated concessions, but to wait and see whether the armed groups in Gaza, badly damaged by this conflict, will stop attacking Israel. There were no immediate claims of responsibility. But Hamas said in a statement: “We praise the heroic and brave operations in Jerusalem, which come as a natural reaction to the crimes and massacres by the Occupation against our people in Gaza.”
The last major Israeli war in Gaza ended after three weeks with a unilateral Israeli cease-fire in January 2009, which took hold after a few days. A briefer conflict, in November 2012, ended with negotiations carried out by the Egyptian president at the time, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, who saw Hamas as an ally. But the deal arranged then to ease restrictions on Gaza in return for “quiet” did not last, and Israel does not trust Hamas to implement any negotiated arrangement. On Monday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, met with the southern command of the Israel Defense Forces, which is leading the war in Gaza, and said that the campaign there was continuing.
At the same time, Israeli officials argue, Egypt’s new president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the military man who ousted Mr. Morsi, sees the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas as a threat to Egypt, a position of antagonism to Hamas even sharper than Egypt’s position under Hosni Mubarak during his three decades in power. “What is about to conclude is the I.D.F. action to deal with the tunnels, but this operation will end only when quiet and security are restored to the citizens of Israel for a lengthy period,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “We struck a very severe blow at Hamas and the other terrorist organizations. We have no intention of attacking the residents of Gaza.”
Egypt now, having largely halted the tunnel trade in smuggled goods and arms that flourished under both Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Morsi, will make it much harder for Hamas and its allies to resupply themselves with weaponry and building materials for new tunnels. Tzipi Livni, an important member, along with Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, of Mr. Netanyahu’s kitchen cabinet, has made clear that Israel will take unilateral actions to defend its interests and no longer wants to negotiate a cease-fire with Hamas, but would be happy for Egypt and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority to try. She told Ynet, the Israeli news agency, that any agreement with the Hamas was not expected now. “You want to talk about lifting the siege?” she asked. “Not with us, and not now.”
At the same time, with its control of the Rafah crossing, Egypt has great leverage over Gaza, and one idea is to try to empower Mr. Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, which is still dominated by the Fatah faction, to take responsibility with Egypt over the crossing. Ms. Livni has been pushing for a unilateral cease-fire to be followed by multilateral diplomacy, with Israel seeking support for the reconstruction of Gaza in return for a gradual demilitarization through stricter controls over smuggling. She is said to favor an Egyptian effort to give Mr. Abbas and the Palestinian Authority control over the Rafah crossing on the Gaza side.
In Cairo, Palestinian factions were working on a joint position, demanding that for a cease-fire, Israel pull all its troops from Gaza, loosen its controls over goods and people entering and exiting Gaza, and open border crossings. Few believe that Hamas will voluntarily disarm or stop trying to resist Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. But Hamas’s effectiveness may be much weaker.
But for the moment, at least, Israel has decided not to negotiate, and even a senior American diplomat who went to Cairo for the talks has left the city. For Israel, the strategic situation has changed with the takeover in Egypt by the former military general, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who a year ago overthrew President Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is an ally of Hamas. Mr. Morsi did little to prevent smuggling through tunnels, which gave Hamas tax receipts and a mechanism to import cement, weapons and military advisers, Israeli officials insist, from Iran and Hezbollah.
In East Jerusalem, the police shot and killed a local Palestinian who drove a construction vehicle over a pedestrian, killing him, and then knocked over a bus, which happened to be nearly empty, slightly injuring three people. The incident took place in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, and the police said that they were regarding the attack as a response to Israel’s conflict in Gaza. Tensions have been high in Jerusalem and in the West Bank, with intermittently violent protests against Israeli policies and war conduct. “The big difference this time is that you have an Egyptian leader who understands that Hamas is not just a problem for Israel, but for Egypt, too,” one senior Israeli official said. “So the ability of Hamas to bring stuff in is much, much more limited. And because the Gaza tunnels are mostly shut down, the Egyptians have leverage with reopening Rafah. So it is possible to deal far more effectively with illicit transfers, which could make an end game more stable.”
Mr.Sisi’s antipathy toward Hamas is even stronger than that of Hosni Mubarak, the former president who saw the group as Israel’s problem and only intermittently suppressed the smuggling.
In Cairo, Palestinian factions were negotiating a joint position on a cease-fire, demanding that Israel withdraw all troops from Gaza, loosen controls over the movement of goods and people, open border crossings and release prisoners.
Hamas wants such results to point to from this war. But for the moment, at least, Israel has decided not to negotiate. A senior American diplomat who came to Cairo for the talks has now left.
Israel’s desired outcome could unravel if Hamas continues to attack Israel — at least 53 rockets were fired on Monday, while Israel had decreed a seven-hour unilateral and partial cease-fire. And Palestinians accused Israel of violating its own cease-fire when the air force struck a house in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, killing a girl, 8, and wounding at least 29.
Palestinians said the attack came minutes after the cease-fire, while one Israeli official, Yoav Poli Mordechai from Cogat, the army agency that controls coordination with Gaza, told Israel Radio that the attack was several minutes before. The Israeli military, for its part, said the strike, aimed at “a senior Hamas operative,” was at “approximately 10 a.m.,” when the cease-fire began.
Earlier Monday, Israel bombed the house of an Islamic Jihad commander in northern Gaza, Danyal Manzour, killing him.
After sharp criticism from the United States and the United Nations of its strike on three Islamic Jihad fighters on a motorcycle outside a United Nations school on Sunday, which killed seven other people nearby, Israel had announced the cease-fire to last from 10 a.m. local time until 5 p.m.
But the cease-fire was only to take place in areas where Israel was not engaged in military activity, which the army specified to be near Rafah, in southern Gaza, far from Gaza City itself. Israeli army officials said that east Rafah was the only urban area where troops and tanks were fighting.
A Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, said Hamas would not observe the truce, which he disparaged as a media exercise that Israel had announced “to divert attention from Israeli massacres.”