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MIDDLE EAST | NYT NOW
Rising Death Toll: More Than 500 Gazans and
27 Israelis
By JODI RUDOREN JULY 21, 2014
JERUSALEM Four Israeli soldiers and 10 Palestinian militants were
killed inside Israeli territory Monday morning, Israeli military officials
said, after gunmen from the Gaza Strip managed to infiltrate through two
more of the tunnels that Israel says its ground operation is targeting.
As diplomatic pressure for a cease-fire mounted on the conflicts 14th
day, the Palestinian death toll topped 500 and the number of Israeli
soldiers killed hit 25, more than twice as many as in Israels last Gaza
ground operation in 2009. Two Israeli civilians have also died from rocket
and mortar fire.
The military provided few details about the incursions into Israel,
outside Gazas northeast corner, saying only that two terror squads were
detected. An airstrike targeted one group of militants, the statement said,
and soldiers who were called to the scene engaged the other.
The military released video footage showing several masked gunmen
in bushes that it said were about a half-mile from the Israeli border town
of Sderot, and an explosion that targeted them as they retreated back into
the tunnel. Three other Israeli soldiers were killed in battles inside Gaza on
Monday.
Ismail Haniya, until recently the Hamas prime minister, said in a
speech broadcast from Gaza that the fighting would continue unless an
agreement met the movements demands: opening crossings; lifting
restrictions on fishing, farming, import and export; and releasing
prisoners who were freed in a 2011 exchange for an abducted Israeli
soldier and recently rearrested.
Well never go back to the period before the aggression, well never go
back to the slow death, Mr. Haniya said in an address laden with Quranic
verses. Gaza will be the graveyard for the invaders, as it always was in the
history.
In Gaza, the United Nations reported nearly 100,000 people in 67
shelters, as an airlift of 45,000 mattresses and 10,000 blankets was en
route from Dubai.
As the Palestinian death toll has climbed over two weeks, thousands of
people streamed toward Gaza City from the north on foot, in donkey carts
and packed into cars. The Israelis seemed to be stepping up artillery
shelling in the central Gaza refugee camps of El Bureij and El Mughazi,
where they had earlier urged people to evacuate.
Hamas radio reported that four people were killed in a strike on Al
Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in El Bureij.
Knots of 10 to 12 people were hurrying with plastic bags of belongings
across the main road, Salahadin Street, where a shell hit next to a car full
of international journalists, spraying shrapnel on the roof. Hazem Abu
Ghaben, who lives in El Mughazi, said he had gone to a relatives house
over the weekend, returned home because he thought things had calmed
down, then regretted it and was fleeing anew.
The situation had gotten a million times worse, Mr. Abu Ghaben
said.
At the Abu Jamei familys home near the southern town of Khan
Younis, people searching beneath the rubble left by an overnight attack on
Monday counted 26 bodies, by far the most victims of a single strike in this
offensive. In the southern border town of Rafah, artillery shelling of homes
belonging to the Siam family killed 11 people, witnesses said, including
three children.
Rocket fire from Gaza slowed somewhat from earlier days, but more
than a dozen sirens sounded around midday. One rocket hit a home in
Sderot, near Gaza, while the occupants cowered in a safe room, and
another landed in an open field near Tel Aviv.
Across Israel, funerals were scheduled for at least five soldiers from
the decorated Golani Brigade who were killed in Shejaiya on Sunday. The
military said it had still not determined whether a soldier had indeed been
captured alive, as Hamas claimed in a statement on Sunday night. The
Israeli military announced that two of the dead were among the hundreds
of Americans in the Israeli Army: Max Steinberg, 24, from Southern
California and Nissim Sean Carmeli, who grew up in Texas but finished
high school in Israel.
The new underground incursions highlighted a dilemma for Israels
leadership, which has tried to build international support for its ground
operation by saying it was a limited one focused on the tunnel threat, and
by embracing cease-fire proposals from Egypt. Now, with President
Obama dispatching Secretary of State John Kerry to Cairo to seek an
immediate halt to hostilities, Israel may be pressured to leave the tunnel
mission unfinished in order to restore quiet.
Its a very difficult question, a senior Israeli military official said
Sunday night, speaking on the condition of anonymity under military
protocol.
We have a mission, and we are going to fulfill it Israel is not going
to leave the threats of tunnels beneath the border between Gaza Strip and
Israel, he said. Still, he added, after 13 days of fighting, and so many
casualties, I believe that its the right time for all sides to stop.
Though Israel had a task force studying the tunnels for a year, its
forces have discovered since entering Gaza on Thursday that the network is
much bigger and more sophisticated than they had anticipated. There are
multiple exit and entry points for each tunnel, making them difficult to
track and demolish. Our goal now is to finish the job by really destroying
as much tunnels as we can, if not all of them, the Israeli official said. Its
very difficult for me to say all of them because theres always a chance we
dont know all the tunnels, and what you dont know you simply dont
know.
The ground invasion began Thursday night after the Israeli military
thwarted a tunnel attack early that morning by what it said were 13
militants. On Saturday morning, some eight men from Gaza disguised in
Israeli military uniforms attacked two army jeeps a few hundred yards into
Israeli territory, killing a 45-year-old reserve officer and a soldier. There
were two other incursions Saturday, one in which the militants were
carrying handcuffs and tranquilizers, which the Israeli military said
indicated they were planning an abduction.
Dan Shapiro, the United States ambassador to Israel, said Monday
that Mr. Kerry would be working with Egyptians, Israelis and leaders of
the Palestinian Authority to bring back the quiet that followed a 2012
agreement ending eight days of cross-border violence. In an interview on
Israel Radio, Mr. Shapiro said Washington supported Israels right to
protect itself and understood the need to destroy tunnels, but was also
worried about the number of dead and injured.
Start with a cease-fire, he said, and only after hold discussions on
the problems at the base of the crisis.
But Gilad Erdan, a right-wing member of Israels so-called security
cabinet, which makes strategic decisions, said Israel must not agree to
any proposal for a cease-fire until the tunnels are eliminated, according to
the Israeli news site Ynet. Speaking after he visited wounded soldiers at
Barzilai hospital, Mr. Erdan raised the specter of a reoccupation of Gaza,
saying that a green light has been given to expanding the action, and we
should consider leaving forces in the northern part of the Gaza Strip to
deal with the tunnels at the end of the operation.
Tzipi Livni, Israels justice minister and representative to the
American-sponsored peace negotiations with the Palestinians that
collapsed in April, said demilitarization of Gaza was essential but was
something we will discuss with the international community the day
after.
Now we are focused on the need to stop these terrorists, to act against
these tunnels, and to stop these rockets against Israel, Ms. Livni said in a
conference call with international journalists that was interrupted by
sirens signaling incoming rockets from Gaza overhead. The whole idea of
the proposal is to cease the fire, stop the fire. This is the main goal right
now.
Noting that Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations,
was headed to Cairo as well as Mr. Kerry, she added, These days are, I
believe, crucial days.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner of the Israeli military said in an early-morning
briefing that intense fighting had continued overnight in the eastern Gaza
City neighborhood of Shejaiya, where more than 60 Palestinians and 13
Israeli soldiers died in the clashes Sunday. Colonel Lerner said that 10
Hamas fighters were killed Monday in Shejaiya, and that six underground
tunnels had been completely demolished across Gaza in the past 24
hours. A total of 16 tunnels with 43 entry points had been uncovered since
the start of the ground invasion Thursday night, he said.
The latest tunnel incursion unfolded Sunday morning near kibbutz
Nir Am, a community of 400 people established before the state of Israel.
Micha Ben-Hillel, who has lived on the kibbutz for half a century, said he
heard heavy gunfire throughout the night but had no idea what it was
about. Kibbutz security officials informed him about 8 a.m. that militants
had exited a tunnel about 500 yards from the communitys center.
When our kids were younger we used to have picnics there theres a
nice forest there, we have pine trees, and thats actually where the battle
took place, said Mr. Ben-Hillel, 68, who teaches English. Its quite
shocking how different the situation is today than it used to be.
Mr. Ben-Hillel said that about three-quarters of the kibbutz residents
had left in recent days to stay in hotels or with relatives elsewhere in Israel,
but that his family had stayed, in part because his wife, who was born on
Nir Am, is in charge of caring for its elderly residents. One is her own
father, Nissan Tsuri, 99, who Mr. Ben-Hillel said was commander of the
kibbutz in 1948.
He doesnt run away from these rockets, doesnt go to the safe room,
the son-in-law said. He says it was worse during the War of
Independence.
Tyler Hicks and Fares Akram contributed reporting from Gaza.
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