By ISABEL KERSHNER and FARES AKRAM
July 31, 2014
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Thursday that he would not agree to any cease-fire proposal that does not allow the Israeli military to complete its mission of destroying Hamas’s tunnel network in Gaza.
“So far we have neutralized tens of terror tunnels,” Mr. Netanyahu said in televised remarks at the start of a government meeting at military headquarters in Tel Aviv. “We are determined to continue to complete this mission with or without a cease-fire,” he added.
Maj. Gen. Sami Turgeman, the chief of the Israeli military’s southern command, said on Wednesday that it would take “a few more days” to destroy the tunnels that Israel had already located, many of which run beneath the border into Israeli territory.
As the Israeli operation extended into its 24th day, and in the absence of any quick progress in international efforts to forge a cease-fire deal, the Israeli military said it had called up an additional 16,000 reserve soldiers, bringing the total number of those called up to 86,000. A military official said the move was meant “to maintain the army’s preparedness and flexibility” and to allow other reservists to take a break. He said it did not signify plans for any immediate broadening of the ground invasion.
Graphic | The Toll in Gaza and Israel, Day by Day The daily tally of rocket attacks, airstrikes and deaths in the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Hamas’s military wing in Gaza has so far indicated that it would reject any cease-fire that allows Israel’s forces to continue operating inside the Gaza Strip. Israeli analysts say that if no deal is reached by the time Israel has completed its work on the tunnels, the government will have to decide between unilaterally withdrawing the ground forces or expanding the goals of the operation and going deeper into Gaza.
At least nine Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes and shelling early Thursday, according to health officials in Gaza, bringing the Palestinian death toll to 1,370, with many civilians among the dead. Israel began its aerial offensive on July 8 and sent in ground forces on July 17, with the stated goals of quelling heavy rocket fire from Gaza into Israel and severely damaging Hamas’s fortified tunnel network in the Palestinian coastal enclave.
On the Israeli side 56 soldiers have been killed in the ground war and two Israeli civilians and a Thai agricultural worker have been killed by rocket and mortar fire. Rocket fire into southern Israel continued on Thursday.
The Israeli military also said its forces spotted a militant emerging from a tunnel shaft in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday morning and killed him, and that another force spotted a squad of five militants who were then targeted in an airstrike.
The Israeli security cabinet agreed on Wednesday “to continue the operation against Hamas,” especially focusing on its tunnel network, an Israeli government official said, describing the destruction of the tunnels as “crucial” for Israel because they threaten Israeli civilian communities along the border with Gaza.
The official, who was speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, also said that Israel would continue, in coordination with the United Nations, to allow temporary humanitarian pauses in the fighting.
But one such four-hour lull declared by Israel on Wednesday created confusion and ended with multiple casualties. At least 17 Palestinians were reported killed and as many as 200 were wounded when multiple shells hit an area in the Shejaiya neighborhood of east Gaza City, which residents thought was temporarily safe but the Israelis considered part of a combat zone.
Israel had said that the lull did not apply in areas where it was operating in Gaza and where hostilities were continuing. Hamas had immediately rejected the pause, saying it was worthless because it did not allow for the removal of injured from those areas.
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem and Fares Akram from Gaza.
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(via NY Times)
