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 A truce between the Jewish state and Hamas Palestinian fighters
remained elusive despite intensive mediation bids.
Palestinians said residents of two southern villages were trapped by
days of tank shelling, with medics unable to evacuate wounded, and
U.N. agencies said more than 140,000 people had been displaced.
Hamas fired rockets at Tel Aviv and said its gunmen carried out a
lethal ambush on Israeli soldiers in north Gaza.
With Washington's encouragement, Egypt has been trying to mediate a
limited humanitarian ceasefire. Turkey and Hamas ally Qatar are also
involved in diplomatic efforts.
One Cairo official said on Wednesday it could take effect by the
weekend, in time for the Eid al-Fitr festival next Monday or
Tuesday, Islam's biggest annual celebration at the end of the
fasting month of Ramadan.
But a U.S. official described any truce by the weekend as unlikely,
as did an Israeli security cabinet minister who said the army would
need one to two weeks to complete its main mission of razing tunnels
used by Hamas for cross-border raids.
"If the talk is of a humanitarian hiatus for - this is not pleasant
to say - removing bodies, all kinds of things that are connected to
the civilian population in the short-term, this might be weighed,"
the minister, Gilad Erdan, told Israel Radio.
"But I will oppose any ceasefire until it is clear both that the
tunnels will be destroyed and what will happen in the post-ceasefire
period - how we will guarantee that quiet for the residents of
Israel will really be preserved in the long-term."
The death toll in Gaza reached 723 on Thursday as Israeli tank fire
and pre-dawn assaults killed 31 people in the Hamas-dominated
coastal enclave, including an 18-month-old baby and six members of
the same family, Palestinian officials said.
In southern Khuzaa and Abassan villages, they said, Israeli shelling
left dead and wounded under rubble, while medical crews could not
risk approaching. Elsewhere in Gaza, a U.N. aid agency said three of
its teachers were killed in Israeli air strikes.
Israel has lost at least 32 soldiers in clashes inside Gaza and with
Hamas raiders who have slipped across the fortified frontier in
tunnels. The military confirmed there had been a new clash on
Thursday but did not immediately publish casualties.
FLIGHTS RESUMING
Palestinian rockets and mortar bombs have killed three civilians in
Israel. Such shelling surged last month as Israel cracked down on
Hamas in the occupied West Bank, triggering the July 8 air and sea
barrage on the Gaza Strip that escalated into an invasion a week
ago.
Though Israel's Iron Dome rocket interceptor has shot down most of
the rockets fired from Gaza, one that came close to Tel Aviv's Ben
Gurion Airport on Tuesday prompted the U.S. Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) to bar American flights there.
An ensuing wave of cancellations by foreign airlines emptied
Israel's usually bustling international gateway and hurt its hi-tech
economy at the height of summer tourist season. It was hailed as a
victory by Hamas, and prompted an appeal by Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu for the Obama administration to intervene.
The FAA canceled the ban late on Wednesday after reviewing the
security situation. US Airways, a unit of American Airlines Group
Inc, said on Thursday it was resuming its non-stop Tel Aviv to
Philadelphia service.
Israel predicted other U.S. airlines would follow suit within hours,
though European carriers may take longer. Germany's Lufthansa and
Air Berlin said their suspension of flights to Tel Aviv would
continue to Friday.
"The Europeans did not really deliberate over this, but acted more
as a follow-up to the American decision," said Gadi Regev, chief of
staff for Israel's Civil Aviation Authority.
Some European flights have been diverted to Cyprus's Larnaca
airport, where passengers took Israeli carriers to Ben Gurion.
In what appeared to be an attempt to trigger a fresh FAA ban, Hamas
said it launched at least two rockets at Ben Gurion on Thursday. But
no sirens were heard at the airport as the rockets flew wide and
were shot down by Iron Dome over Tel Aviv, to the west, and Petah
Tikva, to the north.
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Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said his fighters had made gains against
Israel and voiced support for a humanitarian truce, but only if
Israel eased restrictions on Gaza's 1.8 million people. Hamas wants
next-door Egypt to open up its border with Gaza too. "Let's agree
first on the demands and on implementing them, and then we can agree
on the zero hour for a ceasefire," Meshaal said on Wednesday in
Qatar. "We will not accept any proposal that does not lift the
blockade ... We do not desire war and we do not want it to continue,
but we will not be broken by it."
U.N. "TRAVESTY"
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said there was
"a strong possibility" that Israel was committing war crimes in
Gaza, where medical officials say most of those killed were
civilians.
Pillay also condemned indiscriminate Islamist rocket fire out of
Gaza, and the U.N. Human Rights Council said it would launch an
international inquiry into alleged violations.
A furious Netanyahu denounced the inquiry as a "travesty".
"The HRC should be launching an investigation into Hamas's decision
to turn hospitals into military command centers, use schools as
weapons depots and place missile batteries next to playgrounds,
private homes and mosques," he said.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has also been on a
truce-seeking mission, lashed out at Gaza militants, expressing
"outrage and regret" that rockets had been found inside a U.N.
school for refugees for the second time during the conflict.
Ban said storing rockets there "turned schools into potentially
military targets, endangering the lives of innocent children", along
with U.N. employees and the tens of thousands of sheltering
Palestinians. He urged an investigation.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry returned to Egypt on Wednesday
after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied
West Bank as well as Ban and Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
"We have certainly made some steps forward. There is still work to
be done," said Kerry, on one of his busiest regional visits since
Netanyahu called off U.S.-sponsored peace talks over Abbas's
power-share deal with Hamas in April.
Gaza has been rocked by regular bouts of violence since Israel
unilaterally pulled out of the territory in 2005.
Hamas, which rejects Israel's right to exist, balked at Egypt's
proposal for an unconditional truce, saying its conditions had to be
met in full before any end to the conflict. Israel briefly held fire
last week at Cairo's behest. The war is exacting a heavy toll on
impoverished Gaza. Officials say at least 475 houses have been
destroyed by Israeli fire and 2,644 damaged. Some 46 schools, 56
mosques and seven hospitals have also suffered varying degrees of
damage.
Israel says one of its soldiers is missing in Gaza, and the military
believes he might be dead. Hamas says it has captured him but has
not released a picture of him in their hands.
(Additional reporting by Noah Browning in Gaza, Arshad Mohammed and
Yasmine Saleh in Cairo, Amena Bakr in Doha, Stephanie Nebehay in
Geneva, and Thomas Seythal in Berlin; Writing by Dan Williams;
Editing by Nick Macfie and Paul Taylor)
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