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To no one's surprise, Gaza fighting is back in business
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By Ibrahim Barzak and Ian Deitch, AP
AP
Wednesday, Aug 20, 2014
Palestinian militants launched dozens of rockets and Israel responded
with airstrikes on Wednesday after Egyptian efforts to mediate a lasting
truce in the monthlong Gaza war collapsed in a hail of fire a day
earlier.
One of the Israeli airstrikes appeared to have targeted
the home of Mohammed Deif, the Islamic militant group's elusive military
chief, who has escaped numerous Israeli assassination attempts in the
past. It was not immediately clear whether he was there at the time of
the attack.
The fighting resumed Tuesday when Gaza militants
fired rockets at Israeli cities just hours before a temporary cease-fire
was set to expire, prompting Israel to withdraw its delegation from
Cairo and launch retaliatory airstrikes. Since then at least 16
Palestinians have been killed and 68 wounded, Gaza Health Ministry
official Ashraf al-Kidra said.
The Israeli military said it
carried out some 60 airstrikes on Gaza targets, and that Palestinians
had fired at least 80 rockets at Israel since the temporary truce
collapsed. About 2,000 reserve soldiers who had been sent home two weeks
ago when fighting seemed to have simmered down were called up for duty
again Wednesday, the military said.
The breakdown in talks and
the resumption of violence marked a bitter ending to nearly a week of
Egyptian-led diplomacy meant to end the war, which has reduced entire
Gaza neighborhoods to rubble and claimed more than 2,000 lives, mainly
Palestinians.
Israel's military said it targeted two Palestinian
militants after they fired rockets at Israel in the early afternoon. The
Palestinian Red Crescent said they were killed.
Soon afterward a rocket fired from Gaza hit a house in southern Israel, causing damage to the home but no injuries.
The
violence left the Egyptian mediation efforts in tatters and raised the
likelihood of a new escalation. Palestinian negotiators said the talks
were finished.
Three people - two women and a two-year-old girl -
were killed in an airstrike on a house in Gaza City, al-Kidra said. In
Cairo, Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas leader, said the dead included
the wife and a child of Deif. There was no immediate confirmation from
Hamas leaders in Gaza.
Israel has not formally commented on the strike but local media quoted an anonymous official as saying it was meant to hit Deif.
Yaakov
Peri from the centrist Yesh Atid party, a former director of Israel's
internal security service, said he doesn't have any details about Deif
but that his house would have only been hit for a reason.
"If
there was intelligence information that Mohammed Deif was not at home
then the house would not have been blown up," he told Army Radio.
"With
the assumption that Israel was behind this, it shows its intelligence
capabilities...and it is an important indication that no head of the
Hamas military wing is immune to a targeted killing," he said.
He said a security cabinet meeting would be held Wednesday afternoon to discuss developments.
Twenty-one
people were wounded in a separate airstrike that hit a building that
houses offices of Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV station, said al-Kidra, of the Hamas
run Gaza Health Ministry.
Air raid sirens wailed in southern Israeli cities Wednesday morning warning of incoming rockets from Gaza.
There
were no reports of injuries, though a piece of a rocket that was
intercepted near Tel Aviv fell on a busy road Tuesday night.
Israel's
civil defense authority meanwhile ordered the reopening of public bomb
shelters within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of Gaza.
More than 2,000
Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the war
began on July 8, according to Palestinian and U.N. officials, and tens
of thousands of people have been left homeless.
Israel says the
number of militants killed was much higher, and it blames Hamas for
causing civilian casualties by staging attacks from residential areas.
Sixty-four Israeli soldiers, two Israeli civilians and a guest worker
from Thailand have also been killed.
Hamas is seeking an end to a
crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade tightened when it seized power in
Gaza in 2007, while Israel wants guarantees that the Islamic militant
group will disarm.
In nearly a week of indirect talks, Egypt
appears to have made little headway in resolving the differences. Late
Monday, it secured a 24-hour cease-fire extension to allow for a
last-ditch attempt to reach a deal.
On Wednesday the Egyptian
Foreign Ministry expressed "deep regret" over the breaking of the
cease-fire. It said in a statement that it "continues bilateral
contacts" with both sides aimed at restoring calm and securing a lasting
truce that "serves the interest of the Palestinian people, especially
in relation to the opening of the crossings and reconstruction."
An
Egyptian compromise proposal calls for easing the blockade, but not
lifting it altogether or opening the territory's air and seaports, as
Hamas has demanded.
While the plan does not require Hamas to give
up its weapons, it would give Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas,
whose forces were ousted by Hamas in 2007, a foothold back in Gaza
running border crossings and overseeing internationally-backed
reconstruction.
The disagreements have focused around the lifting
of the blockade, with Hamas pushing for far more dramatic concessions
than Israel is willing to offer.
The Gaza blockade has greatly
limited the movement of Palestinians in and out of the territory of 1.8
million people, restricted the flow of goods into Gaza and blocked
virtually all exports.
Israel says the blockade is needed to
prevent Hamas and other militant groups from getting weapons, but
critics say the measures have amounted to collective punishment.
The
latest round of Gaza fighting was precipitated by Israel's arrest of
hundreds of Hamas members in the West Bank in the aftermath of the
abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers in June. Their deaths
were followed by the slaying of a Palestinian youth in Jerusalem in what
was a likely revenge attack.
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