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 As international pressure mounted to end a 21-day conflict in
which more than 1,000 people have been killed, an Israeli military
official said the army would only respond to attacks for an
indefinite period."The situation now is an unlimited truce,"
Israel's chief military spokesman, Brigadier General Motti Almoz,
told Israel Radio. "The IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) is free to
attack after any fire if there is any." The Islamist Hamas movement
which controls the Gaza Strip said on Sunday it wanted a 24-hour
truce to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which started on
Monday. In the hours after its announcement, Gaza gradually fell
quiet.
However, the lull appeared fragile amid diplomatic tension between
Israel and its main sponsor, the United States. Sirens warning of
incoming rockets from Gaza sounded in some Israeli communities near
the border.
Israeli troops meanwhile continued to hunt and destroy cross-border
militant tunnels inside Gaza, and it was not clear if Hamas was
ready to agree to a prolonged pause.
A single rocket was fired out of the battered coastal territory at
the Israeli city of Ashkelon in the first nine hours of Monday,
according to the Israeli military, which said it struck two rocket
launchers and a weapon manufacturing site in the northern and
central Gaza strip.
 Gaza's Health Ministry said a seven-year-old boy was killed in one
of the attacks.
Hamas's armed wing said it killed two Israeli soldiers in the
northern Gaza Strip. An Israeli military spokeswoman said a soldier
was wounded there but she knew of no fatalities.
Some residents in Gaza reported they had received a recorded
telephone message on Monday which said in Arabic: "Listen Hamas, if
you are still alive, you should know that if you continue, we will
respond, we will respond violently."
Israeli leaflets dropped over Gaza listed dozens of names of gunmen
from Hamas and its ally, Islamic Jihad, that the military says it
has killed since the start of the offensive.
"This list is part of the names of those who thought they could face
the might of the Israeli Defense Forces," read the leaflet, which
included a map to a graveyard where the militants were allegedly
buried.
OBAMA APPEAL
U.S. President Barack Obama urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
on Sunday to hold fire unconditionally, while the U.N. Security
Council called on both sides to implement a humanitarian truce that
stretched beyond Eid.
Netanyahu's security cabinet met into the early hours of Monday to
debate ceasefire proposals and also a possible escalation of the
Gaza offensive, which Israel says was needed to halt Hamas rocket
fire and destroy its tunnel network. Israeli air, sea and ground
attacks have killed some 1,036 Palestinians, mainly civilians and
including many children, Gaza officials say. Israel says 43 of its
soldiers have died, along with three civilians killed by rocket and
mortar fire from Gaza.
Tension between Netanyahu's government and Washington has flared
over U.S. mediation efforts, adding yet another chapter to the
prickly relations between the Israeli leader and Obama.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited the region last week to
try to stem the bloodshed, his contacts with Hamas - which
Washington formally shuns - facilitated by Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and
Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Israel wants
Egypt, which also borders the Gaza Strip and views Hamas as a
security threat, to take the lead in curbing the Palestinian
Islamists. It worries about Doha and Ankara championing Hamas
demands to lift the blockade on the territory. A U.S. official,
speaking on condition of anonymity, challenged a flurry of media
leaks by unnamed Israeli officials damning a draft agreement
attributed to Kerry as too accommodating of Hamas. The official told
reporters U.S. efforts had been mischaracterized.
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Obama appeared to link Israel's core demand for Hamas to be stripped
of cross-border rockets and infiltration tunnels, to a peace accord
with the Palestinians that is nowhere on the diplomatic horizon.
Repeated U.S.-led negotiations over 20 years have failed to broker a
permanent deal. The most recent round collapsed in April, with
Palestinians livid over Jewish settlement building in the occupied
West Bank and Israelis furious that Abbas had signed a unity pact
with old foe Hamas. "The President stressed the U.S. view that,
ultimately, any lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
must ensure the disarmament of terrorist groups and the
demilitarization of Gaza," the White House said. Qatari Foreign
Minister, Khaled Al-Atteya, told Al-Jazeera TV that Israel had not
respected a ceasefire agreement that ended the last Gaza war in 2012
and it was time the blockade of Gaza was lifted.
"The demands of Palestinian brothers are fair and they are the
minimum demands for a dignified life," he said.
"We have worked with the U.S secretary of state and we were about to
achieve substantial results, and the brothers in Hamas acted
positively, but the one who rejected the Kerry proposal was Israel,"
he added.
Speaking on Sunday, Netanyahu sounded open to easing conditions for
the Gaza Strip's 1.8 million Palestinians but said this must be
"intertwined" with disarming Hamas.
"I think you can't get social and economic relief for the people of
Gaza without having an assured demilitarization," he told CNN.
Israel says the Palestinians have lost around half of their rockets
during the fighting - an account disputed by Hamas - and that army
engineers have located and destroyed many of the tunnels from the
territory. Those excavations will continue under any short-term
truce, Israel says.
A poll broadcast by Israel's Channel 10 television on Sunday said
some 87 percent of respondents wanted Israel to continue the
operation until Hamas was toppled.
Another survey, published in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, found
that 86.5 percent of Israel's majority Jews oppose a truce while
rocket fire continues and cross-border tunnels remain.
A 2008-2009 three week Israel-Gaza war, in which 1,400 Palestinians
and 13 Israelis were killed, ended with a unilateral ceasefire by
Israel, which Hamas eventually accepted.
The main U.N. agency in Gaza, UNRWA, said more than 167,000
displaced Palestinians had taken shelter in its schools and
buildings, following repeated calls by Israel for civilians to
evacuate whole neighbourhoods ahead of military operations.
(Additional reporting by Amena Bakr in Doha; Writing by Maayan
Lubell and Dan Williams; Editing by Toby Chopra and Paul Taylor)
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