Israel resumed air strikes in the Gaza Strip yesterday after agreeing to an Egyptian-proposed ceasefire deal that failed to get Hamas militants to halt rocket attacks.
The week-old conflict seemed to be at a turning point, with Hamas defying Arab and Western calls to cease fire and Israel threatening to step up an offensive that could include an invasion of the densely populated enclave of 1.8 million.
Under a blueprint announced by Egypt – Gaza’s neighbour and whose military-backed government has been at odds with Islamist Hamas – a mutual “de-escalation” was to have begun at 9am (0600 GMT), with hostilities ceasing within 12 hours.
First Israeli fatality in the fighting
Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, rejected the ceasefire deal, a proposal that addressed in only general terms some of its key demands, and said its battle with Israel would “increase in ferocity and intensity”.
But Moussa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas political official who was in Cairo, said the movement, which is seeking a deal that would ease the Egyptian and Israeli border restrictions throttling Gaza’s economy, had made no final decision on Cairo’s proposal.
The Israeli military said that since the ceasefire deal was to have gone into effect, Hamas had fired 123 rockets at Israel, one killing a civilian – the first Israeli fatality in the fighting. A Palestinian civilian was killed in an air strike in Khan Younis, raising the death toll in the Gaza Strip in eight days of fighting to 188, including at least 150 civilians, among them 31 children, according to Gaza medical officials.
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted 20 of the Hamas projectiles, including two over the Tel Aviv area, and the rest caused no damage or casualties.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in broadcast remarks late yesterday that Israel had no choice but to “expand and intensify” its campaign on Hamas, though he did not specifically mention the possibility of a ground incursion.
The Iron Dome has shot down most projectiles liable to hit Israeli towns and cities, but the rocket salvoes have made a rush to shelters a daily routine for hundreds of thousands of people across the country.
Speaking in Vienna, US Secretary of State John Kerry supported Israel: “I cannot condemn strongly enough the actions of Hamas in so brazenly firing rockets, in multiple numbers, in the face of a goodwill effort [to secure] a ceasefire.”
Netanyahu, whose security Cabinet voted 6-2 earlier yesterday to accept the truce, had cautioned that Israel would respond strongly if rockets continued to fly.
He said he expected the “full support from the responsible members of the international community” for any intensification of Israeli attacks in response to Hamas spurning a truce. Gaza’s economic hardship has deepened as a result of Egypt’s destruction of cross-border smuggling tunnels.