|
 Accusing Israel of opening a "gateway to hell", Hamas fired
rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The attacks caused no casualties
but demonstrated the Islamist movement could still bring the Gaza
war to Israel's heartland despite heavy Israeli bombardments in the
five-week-old conflict.
Israel's military said it had carried out 60 air strikes on the Gaza
Strip since hostilities resumed on Tuesday, and that Palestinians
launched more than 80 rocket salvoes, some intercepted by the
Israeli anti-missile Iron Dome system.
The violence shattered a 10-day period of calm, the longest break
from fighting since Israel launched its Gaza offensive on July 8
with the declared aim of ending Palestinian rocket fire into its
territory.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says 2,029 people, most of them
civilians, have been killed in the Gaza Strip. Israel says it has
killed hundreds of Palestinian militants in fighting that the United
Nations says has displaced about 425,000 people in the territory of
1.8 million.
Sixty-four Israeli soldiers and three civilians in Israel have also
been killed in the most deadly and destructive war Hamas and Israel
have fought since Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in 2005,
before Hamas seized the territory in 2007.
Hamas said an Israeli bombing of a house in Gaza City late on
Tuesday was an attempt to assassinate Deif, widely believed to be
masterminding the Islamist group's military campaign from
underground bunkers.
There was no official confirmation from Israel, which has targeted
Deif in air strikes at least four times since the mid-1990s, holding
him responsible for the deaths of dozens of its citizens in suicide
bombings.
"I am convinced that if there was intelligence that Mohammed Deif
was not inside the home, then we would not have bombed it," Yaakov
Perry, Israel's science minister and former security chief, told
Army Radio. A Hamas official said that Deif does not use the house.
Three bodies were pulled from the rubble. Hospital officials
identified them as Deif's wife, his seven-month-old son and a
20-year-old man.
TALKS END
Accusing Hamas of breaking the truce with rocket fire eight hours
before it was to have expired, Israel recalled its negotiators from
truce talks in Cairo on Tuesday, leaving the fate of the
Egyptian-brokered efforts hanging in the balance.
Palestinian negotiators walked out of the talks later, blaming
Israel for their failure. "Israel thwarted the contacts that could
have brought peace," chief Palestinian negotiator Azzam al-Ahmed
said.
Rejecting the charge, Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, said Gaza rocket fire "made continuation of
talks impossible".
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"The Cairo process was built on a total and complete cessation of
all hostilities and so when rockets were fired from Gaza, not only
was it a clear violation of the ceasefire but it also destroyed the
premise upon which the talks were based," Regev told Reuters.
Israel instructed its civilians to open bomb shelters as far as 80
km (50 miles) from Gaza, or beyond the Tel Aviv area, and the
military called up 2,000 reservists.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the breach of
the ceasefire, saying in a statement he was "gravely disappointed by
the return to hostilities" and urging the sides not to allow matters
to escalate.
Egyptian mediators have been struggling to end the Gaza conflict and
seal a deal that would open the way for reconstruction aid to flow
into the territory of 1.8 million people, where thousands of homes
have been destroyed.
The Palestinians want Egypt and Israel to lift their blockades of
the economically crippled Gaza Strip that predated the Israeli
offensive.
Israel, like Egypt, views Hamas as a security threat and wants
guarantees that any removal of border restrictions will not result
in militant groups obtaining weapons.
A senior Palestinian official in Gaza said sticking points to an
agreement have been Hamas's demands to build a seaport and an
airport, which Israel wants to discuss only at a later stage.
Israel has called for the disarming of militant groups in the
enclave. Hamas has said that laying down its weapons is not an
option, saying it will pursue its armed struggle until Israel's
occupation of Palestinian lands ends.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in 1967. It
unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The Palestinians want Gaza
and the West Bank for an independent state with its capital in East
Jerusalem.
(Additional reporting by Stephen Kalin in Cairo; Writing by Maayan
Lubell and Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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