Israel ready to invade but ‘prefers diplomacy’
Mediator Egypt said a deal for a truce to end the fighting could be close. The leader of Hamas said it was up to Israel to end the new conflict it had started. Israel says its strikes are to halt Palestinian missile attacks.
Twelve Palestinian civilians and four fighters were killed in the air strikes, bringing the Gaza death toll since fighting began last Wednesday to 106, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said the Palestinian dead included 24 children and 10 women. According to the ministry, 850 people have been wounded in Gaza since the hostilities began. They included 260 children and 140 women.
After an overnight lull, militants in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip fired 45 rockets at southern Israel, causing no casualties, police said. One damaged a school, but it was closed at the time.
Among targets struck in Gaza yesterday, Israeli missiles blasted a tower block housing international media for the second straight day. One person was killed there, described by a source in militant groups Islamic Jihad as one of its fighters.
Khaled Meshaal, exiled leader of Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the coastal strip, said Israel had failed to achieve its objectives. A truce was possible, but Hamas would not accept Israeli demands. Israel must first halt its strikes and lift its blockade of the enclave, he said.
“The weapons of the resistance have caught the enemy off guard,” he told a news conference in Cairo.
“Whoever started the war must end it,” he said, adding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had asked for a truce, an assertion that a senior Israeli official dismissed as untrue.
Although 84% of Israelis supported the current Gaza assault, according to a Haaretz poll, only 30% wanted an invasion, while 19% wanted their government to work on securing a truce soon.
Thousands turned out on Gaza’s streets to mourn four children and five women, among 11 people killed in an Israeli strike that flattened a three-storey home the previous day.
The bodies were wrapped in Palestinian and Hamas flags. Echoes of explosions mixed with cries of grief and defiant chants of “God is greatest”.
The deaths of the 11 in an air strike drew more international calls for an end to hostilities and could test Western support for an offensive Israel billed as self- defence after years of cross- border rocket attacks.
Israel said it was investigating its air strike that brought the home crashing down on the al-Dalu family, where the dead spanned four generations. Some Israeli newspapers said the wrong house may have been mistakenly targeted.
Egypt, where newly- elected President Mohamed Mursi has his roots in the Muslim Brotherhood seen as mentors to Hamas, is acting as a mediator in the biggest test yet of Cairo’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel since the fall of Hosni Mubarak.
Egyptian negotiators could be close to achieving a deal between Israel and the Palestinians to stop the fighting, said Mursi’s Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, who visited Gaza on Friday in a show of support for its people.
“I think we are close, but the nature of this kind of negotiation, [means] it is very difficult to predict,” Kandil said.
“Israel is prepared and has taken steps, and is ready for a ground incursion which will deal severely with the Hamas military machine,” a senior official close to Netanyahu told Reuters.
“We would prefer to see a diplomatic solution that would guarantee the peace for Israel’s population in the south. If that is possible, then a ground operation would no longer be required. If diplomacy fails, we may well have no alternative but to send in ground forces,” he added.
That language echoed that of US President Barack Obama, who said on Sunday it would be “preferable” to avoid a move into Gaza, but that Israel had a right to self-defence and no country would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens.
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