Israeli troops mass at Gaza border amid rocket fire

GAZA/JERUSALEM - Israeli troops massed at Gaza's border on Thursday and Palestinian militants pounded Israel with rockets in intense hostilities that have caused international concern and touched off clashes between Jews and Arabs in Israel.

Days of violence between Jewish Israelis and the country's Arab minority worsened overnight, with synagogues attacked and fighting breaking out on the streets of some communities.

With concern growing that the violence that flared on Monday could spiral out of control, the United States is sending an envoy, Hady Amr, to the region. But efforts to end the worst hostilities in years appear so far to have made no progress.

In renewed air strikes on Gaza, Israel struck a six-storey residential building in Gaza City that it said belonged to Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Palestinian enclave.

At least 83 people have been killed in Gaza since violence escalated on Monday, medics said, further straining hospitals already under heavy pressure during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We are facing Israel and Covid-19. We are in between two enemies," said Asad Karam, 20, a construction worker, standing beside a road damaged during the air strikes. An electricity pole had collapsed by the road, its wires severed.

In the latest Palestinian rocket attacks, one rocket crashed into a building near Israel's commercial capital of Tel Aviv, injuring five Israelis, police said. Sirens blared in cities across southern Israel, sending thousands running for shelters.

Seven people have been killed in Israel, its military said.

"All of Israel is under attack. It's a very scary situation to be in," said Margo Aronovic, a 26-year-old student, in Tel Aviv.

Israel has prepared combat troops along the Gaza border and was in "various stages of preparing ground operations", a military spokesman said, a move that would recall similar incursions during Israel-Gaza wars in 2014 and 2008-2009.

Health authorities in Gaza said they were investigating the deaths of several people overnight who they said may have inhaled poisonous gas. Samples were being examined and they had yet to draw any final conclusions, they said.

U.S. President Joe Biden said he hoped fighting "will be closing down sooner than later". A British minister urged Israel and Hamas to "take a step back" from the escalation.

'OPEN-ENDED' CONFRONTATION

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to "continue acting to strike at the military capabilities of Hamas" and other Gaza groups. Hamas is regarded as a terrorist group by the United States and Israel.

On Wednesday, Israeli forces killed a senior Hamas commander and bombed several buildings, including high-rises and a bank, which Israel said was linked to the faction's activities.

Hamas signalled defiance, with its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, saying: "The confrontation with the enemy is open-ended."

Israel launched its offensive after Hamas fired rockets at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in retaliation for Israeli police clashes with Palestinians near al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Turkey, whose hosting of Hamas leaders in Istanbul in recent years has contributed to a falling out with Israel, called on Muslim countries to show a united and clear stance over the Israel-Gaza violence.

In the fighting inside Israel, where some in the 21% Arab minority have mounted violent pro-Palestinian protests, attacks by Jews on Arabs passing by in ethnically mixed areas have worsened.

One person was in critical condition after being shot by Arabs in the Arab-Jewish town of Lod, where authorities imposed a curfew, police said.

Over 150 arrests were made overnight in Lod and Arab towns in northern Israel, police said.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin called for an end to "this madness".

"We are endangered by rockets that are being launched at our citizens and streets, and we are busying ourselves with a senseless civil war among ourselves," said the president, whose role is largely ceremonial.

FLIGHTS CANCELLED

A number of foreign carriers have cancelled flights to Israel because of the unrest.

The fatalities in Israel include a soldier killed while patrolling the Gaza border and six civilians, including two children and an Indian worker, medical authorities said.

Gaza's health ministry said 17 of the people killed in the enclave were children and seven were women. The Israeli military said some 400 of 1,600 rockets fired by Gaza factions had fallen short, potentially causing some Palestinian civilian casualties.

The conflict has led to the freezing of talks by Netanyahu's opponents on forming a governing coalition to unseat him after Israel's inconclusive March 23 election.

Although the latest problems in Jerusalem were the immediate trigger for hostilities, Palestinians are frustrated by setbacks to their aspirations for an independent state in recent years.

These include Washington's recognition of disputed Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a U.S. plan to end the conflict that they saw as favorable to Israel and settlement building.

-reuters

Palestinian decision-making body backs Hamas truce demands in Gaza

GAZA/JERUSALEM  -- The Palestinian decision-making body led by US-backed President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday endorsed demands by Hamas for halting Gaza hostilities with Israel, a closing of ranks that may help Egyptian-mediated truce efforts.

With Israeli and US encouragement, Egypt has tried to get both sides to hold fire and then negotiate terms for protracted calm in the Palestinian enclave where officials said 624 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in 15 days of fighting.

Hamas, the Gaza Strip's dominant Islamists, and other armed factions had baulked at Cairo's offer, saying they wanted assurances of relief from an Israeli-Egyptian blockade and other concessions. The dispute was further complicated by distrust between Egypt under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Hamas.

In a move that could effectively turn Abbas into the main interlocutor for a Gaza truce, his umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization on Wednesday formally supported core conditions set by the Hamas-led fighters.

"The Gaza demands of stopping the aggression and lifting the blockade in all its forms are the demands of the entire Palestinian people and they represent the goal that the Palestinian leadership has dedicated all its power to achieve," senior PLO official Yasser Abed Rabbo said in Ramallah, the hub city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank where Abbas is based.

"We are confident Gaza will not be broken as long as our people are standing beside it to support it through all possible means until the invaders understand that our great people inside the homeland and outside will not leave Gaza alone."

Signaling that Abbas, too, sought a staggered cessation of hostilities, the Palestinian leader's Fatah faction on Tuesday proposed a truce followed by five days of negotiations on terms.

There was no immediate response to the PLO statement from Hamas or Israel, which pressed the Gaza offensive it began on July 8 after a surge of cross-border rocket salvoes.

Mounting toll

Israel has lost 29 soldiers in the Gaza clashes, including a tank officer who the army said on Wednesday had been killed by a Palestinian sniper overnight. Two Israeli civilians have been killed by shelling by Palestinian fighters that has reached deep into the Jewish state, spreading panic despite the success of its Iron Dome rocket interceptor and civilian shelters.

Three Palestinians died in Israeli strikes on Wednesday, Gaza officials said. Rocket launches set off air-raid sirens in southern Israel, but there was no word of casualties.

There was also violence in the West Bank, where a Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli troops near Bethlehem. The army said soldiers fired a rubber bullet at him during a confrontation with dozens of Palestinians hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails.

Egyptian sources, speaking on Tuesday as US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Cairo to advance truce efforts, said a unified Palestinian position could help achieve a deal.

Unlike Hamas, which refuses permanent coexistence with the Jewish state, the PLO has pursued peacemaking for two decades.

Those efforts were set back in April when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called off US-sponsored peace negotiations over Abbas's surprise power-share deal with Hamas.

Yet Netanyahu stopped short of cutting ties with Abbas, whose forces help secure the West Bank, and foreign mediators continue to see the Palestinian leader as someone the Israelis can negotiate with.

Having unilaterally accepted an Egyptian-proposed truce last week that was rejected by Hamas, the Israelis made clear on Tuesday they would not stand down before their forces destroyed Hamas's military infrastructure, including rocket sites and a network of tunnels used for cross-border Palestinian raids.

"A ceasefire is not near," said Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, the most dovish member of Netanyahu's security cabinet.

Yet Israel faced mounting international alarm at the toll on Palestinian civilians, as well as economic pressure from lost tourism that soared on Tuesday when the US Federal Aviation Administration took the rare step of banning flights to Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion International Airport for at least 24 hours after a rocket from Gaza struck nearby, wounding two people.

European airlines also canceled flights to Israel, whose own carriers continued to operate.

An Israeli official said Netanyahu asked Kerry to help restore the US flights. A US official said the Obama administration would not "overrule the FAA" on a security precaution but noted the ban would be reviewed after 24 hours.

Focus on Hamas

Following meetings in Egypt, which has some leverage over Hamas through its control of its border with Gaza, Kerry said on Tuesday there was still "work to do" to resolve the conflict and urged the Palestinian Islamists to pursue negotiations.

Because Washington, like Israel and the European Union, deems Hamas a terrorist group, they have no direct contact and Washington must rely on proxies such as Egypt, Qatar and Turkey.

In a sign of the intensity of the US diplomacy, Kerry spoke to Netanyahu and to Qatari and Turkish foreign ministers after meeting Sisi for two hours, a senior US official said.

"The Egyptians have provided a framework and a forum for them to be able to come to the table to have a serious discussion together with other factions of the Palestinians," Kerry said. "Hamas has a fundamental choice to make and it is a choice that will have a profound impact for the people of Gaza."

Angered by an Israeli crackdown on its supporters in the West Bank and by Gaza's hardship under blockade, Hamas has said it is willing to continue fighting. In addition to freeing up Gaza's borders, Hamas wants a prisoner release by Israel.

The Egyptian plan does not specify a timeline for easing the blockade, saying "crossings shall be opened and the passage of persons and goods through border crossings shall be facilitated once the security situation becomes stable on the ground".

US officials view Qatar, a tiny, gas-rich Gulf state that has supported Hamas financially and hosts some of the militant group's senior leaders, as important to the diplomacy.

In contrast, the Egyptian government is deeply suspicious of Hamas as it is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood movement toppled from power in Cairo by then-army chief Sisi last year.

Israel is openly opposed to giving Qatar or Turkey leading roles in mediation, given its troubled ties with both countries.

The upcoming Eid al-Fitr festival -- Islam's biggest annual celebration that follows the end of the fasting month of Ramadan this weekend -- could provide all sides with a convenient moment to agree to a cease-fire.

Asked about Eid, a senior Obama administration official said: "It's a potential opportunity. We want there to be a cease-fire as soon as possible basically, and insofar as that’s a marker that can compel Hamas to the table that would be a good thing, but the bottom line is they’re going to have to stop firing rockets."

source: interaksyon.com