Home Tags Posts tagged with "truce"
truce
Israel announces it has expanded its ground offensive in Gaza, with residents reporting the heaviest shelling since the conflict began 13 days ago.
In a statement, Israel’s military said “additional forces” had joined “the effort to combat terror” in Gaza.
Four Palestinians died, including two children and the son of a senior Hamas official, in new airstrikes on Sunday, July 19.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is due to arrive in Qatar later to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Ban Ki-moon’s visit is part of a regional tour aimed at helping Israelis and Palestinians “end the violence and find a way forward”, the UN said.
The death toll continued to rise at the weekend, with the number of Palestinians killed now at more than 350 – the vast majority of them civilians.
Israel has expanded its ground offensive in Gaza
Five Israeli soldiers and two Israeli civilians have died since PM Benjamin Netanyahu launched the military offensive on July 8.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sent ground troops into Gaza on Thursday after 10 days of heavy air and naval barrages failed to stop rocket fire from Gaza.
Israel says the ground operation is necessary to target a Hamas tunnel network, which it says it could not do only from the air.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed on Saturday during a gunfight with Palestinian militants who had used tunnels to cross into Israel to launch an attack, the IDF said.
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, an IDF spokesman, said the ground offensive was being expanded “to restore security and stability to Israel’s residents and citizens”.
Residents in Gaza reported hearing explosions throughout the night on Saturday.
An airstrike in the suburb of Shejaiya targeted the house of Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya, killing four people including his son and daughter-in-law, Palestinian doctors said.
Meanwhile, the UN warned that it was running out of supplies to help more than 50,000 Palestinians who have sought shelter at its schools in Gaza.
A UN official said the number of people fleeing was much higher than expected, with both the Israeli and Egyptian borders closed to Gazans.
Diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire involving, among others, Egypt, Qatar, France and the UN, have failed to make any progress.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius met Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, but said that attempts to agree a ceasefire had failed.
“Sadly I can say that the call for a ceasefire has not been heard, and on the contrary, there’s a risk of more civilian casualties that worries us,” he told press.
Qatar is expected to host a meeting between President Abbas and Ban Ki-moon on Sunday before the UN chief continues on to Kuwait, Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Jordan.
Mahmoud Abbas is also due to meet Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in a bid to convince the Islamist group to agree to Egyptian efforts to end the fighting.
Hamas rejected an Egypt-brokered ceasefire last week, saying any deal with Israel must include an end to a blockade of Gaza.
[youtube wxsy5uxAskw 650]
Israel has restarted air strikes on Hamas-controlled Gaza, after its brief truce was met with continuing rocket fire.
Israel had earlier accepted an Egyptian ceasefire proposal and halted operations on Tuesday morning.
But the armed wing of Hamas rejected the initiative as a “surrender”.
Palestinian officials say at least 192 people have been killed by Israeli air strikes launched eight days ago to stop militants firing rockets into Israel.
At least four Israelis have been seriously injured since the violence flared, but none have been killed.
The Israel Defense Forces said militants had fired 76 rockets into Israel on Tuesday.
Israel has restarted air strikes on Hamas-controlled Gaza, after its brief truce was met with continuing rocket fire (photo AP)
It said that after resuming its air strikes, 30 targets had been attacked in Gaza, including 20 concealed rocket launchers, tunnels, a weapon storage facility and operational infrastructure used by a senior militant.
Under the terms of the Egyptian initiative, the ceasefire should have been followed by a series of meetings in Cairo with high-level delegations from the two sides.
There has been no definitive response to the initiative from Hamas.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said he could not “condemn strongly enough” Hamas’ actions in continuing to fire rockets.
Israel’s security cabinet, convened by PM Benjamin Netanyahu, had approved the truce on Tuesday morning, minutes before the proposed time for it to come into effect – at 09:00.
“We agreed to the Egyptian proposal in order to give an opportunity for the demilitarization of the [Gaza] Strip – from missiles, from rockets and from tunnels – through diplomatic means,” Benjamin Netanyahu had said.
But he had then added: “If Hamas does not accept the ceasefire proposal, as would now seem to be the case, Israel would have all international legitimacy to broaden the military operation to achieve the required quiet.”
[youtube t3IQPd5ii5s 650]
Egypt launched an initiative on Monday to halt Israel-Palestinian conflict.
On Tuesday, Israel has accepted the truce proposal for the conflict with Gaza.
Hamas, which controls Gaza, has not formally responded. But its armed wing has rejected the plan as a “surrender”.
Under the terms, the ceasefire should begin immediately, followed by a series of meetings in Cairo with high-level delegations from both sides.
Palestinian officials say at least 192 people have been killed by Israeli air strikes launched eight days ago to stop militants firing rockets into Israel.
There have been no Israeli air strikes into Gaza since the 09:00 truce, but at least one rocket has been fired from Gaza into Israel.
Egypt launched an initiative to halt Israel-Palestinian conflict
Israel’s security cabinet, convened by PM Benjamin Netanyahu, voted to approve the truce on Tuesday morning, minutes before the proposed time for it to come into effect.
Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the IDF, Israel’s military, said: “In accordance with the government directives, the IDF now holds fire. We remain alert and preserve high preparedness levels, both defensive and offensive. If the Hamas terror organization will fire at Israel, we shall respond.”
For now, Hamas sources are saying its attacks will “increase in ferocity and intensity” unless Israel releases prisoners and co-operates with Egypt to lift economic restrictions on Gaza.
That is not encouraging but does not mean that a deal will not ultimately be done – just that it will not be easy, our correspondent says.
Meanwhile the casualty figures continue to mount.
Three people were killed in Khan Younis, south of Gaza, on Tuesday morning, shortly before Israel accepted the proposed truce.
Of the 192 now reported dead by the Palestinian health authority, the UN estimates that over three-quarters were civilians.
An estimated 1,400 Palestinians have been injured.
Israel disputes the Palestinian casualty figures, saying they were based on Hamas sources and were not objective.
At least four Israelis have been seriously injured since the violence flared, but no-one has been killed.
Israeli sources said at least three rockets landed in and around the southern Israeli city of Eilat overnight.
Reports suggest they may have been fired from the Sinai peninsula in Egypt rather than from Gaza.
[youtube bbDcUp2oFTs 650]
Israel has launched an air strike on the Gaza Strip for the first time since an eight-day war ended in a truce in November 2012.
According to Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza, aircraft bombed fields near the border and no-one was injured.
Israel has launched an air strike on the Gaza Strip for the first time since an eight-day war ended in a truce in November 2012
The Israeli move comes after a Palestinian rocket attack on Israel on Tuesday which also caused no injuries.
Israel and Hamas have been observing an Egyptian-mediated truce after last November’s fighting.
The Israeli military confirmed the air strikes, saying it had targeted “terror sites” and was “in response to rocket fire”.
According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the air strike was near the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya and came after militants in Gaza fired two mortar shells into the western Negev desert.
Since the truce came into effect, Israel has eased restrictions on allowing building materials into the Gaza Strip, imposed when Hamas came to power there in 2007.
[youtube DgWZeTI21XU]
