The shadowy commander of Iran’s Quds Force has a roster of his top Palestinian fighters. Their divisions, and their connections, are key to understanding Gaza.
Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force who is known as the point man for Iran’s military and covert operations outside its borders, publicly pledged support for Palestinian fighters on July 30.
Palestinians sit outside their house that witnesses said was heavily shelled by Israel during the offensive, in the Shejaia neighbourhood, east of Gaza City August 31, 2014.
(Reuters) – A week after the guns fell silent in the Gaza war, Israel and the Palestinians seem to have little appetite or incentive for a return to U.S.-sponsored peace and statehood talks that collapsed five months ago.
With conflicts raging in Ukraine, Iraq and Syria – and the future of the Gaza Strip largely uncharted by a broadbrush Egyptian-mediated ceasefire deal – world powers also are not rushing headlong into the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate.
The parties themselves, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bickering governing coalition and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, are on a collision course over threatened Palestinian unilateral moves toward statehood and exploration of war crimes prosecution against Israel in the absence of direct talks.
Israel drew Palestinian and international criticism on Sunday by announcing a major appropriation of occupied land in the West Bank, the most significant such move in 30 years.
As head of a governing coalition divided over trading territory for peace, Netanyahu is now speaking, in amorphous terms, of an alternative route towards ending decades of conflict – a “new horizon” – or possible regional alliance with moderate Arab countries alarmed, like Israel, by radical Islam.
Closer to home and with the Gaza situation still in flux, there is nothing on the immediate horizon as far as peacemaking with Abbas is concerned, Israeli government sources said.
Under the Egyptian-brokered truce agreement, Israel and the Palestinians agreed to address complex issues such as Hamas’s demands for a Gaza seaport and the release of Palestinian prisoners via indirect talks starting within a month.
With the start of those negotiations still up in the air, Netanyahu wants to see whether Abbas takes over responsibility from Hamas for administering Gaza’s borders and that measures are taken to prevent the group from smuggling in weaponry.
Netanyahu, who appears to be weathering an approval rating plunge after the Gaza war ended without a clear victor, took a swipe at Abbas last week, summing up a conflict which the Palestinian leader persistently tried to bring to an end.
“Abu Mazen has to choose which side he is on,” Netanyahu told a news conference, using Abbas’s nickname.
The comment harked back to Israel’s decision in April to cut off peace talks with Abbas after he clinched a unity deal with Hamas, a bitter rival that had seized the Gaza Strip from his Fatah forces in 2007.
Those negotiations, on creating a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, were already going nowhere, with Palestinians pointing to expanding Israeli settlement on land they claim as their own and balking at Israel’s demand to recognize it as the Jewish homeland.
REGIONAL PEACE
In an editorial laden with scepticism, Israel’s liberal Haaretz newspaper questioned whether “as in the past” Netanyahu’s remarks on casting a regional peace net, “are only empty slogans”.
Some of his cabinet ministers are also pressing Netanyahu to get moving on a wider track.
“We cannot and will not allow a situation whereby this ceasefire is the beginning of the countdown to the next round of fire. If we don’t take the diplomatic initiative, this is exactly what will happen,” Finance Minister Yair Lapid said.
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Israel’s chief negotiator in now-dormant talks with the Palestinians, said: “(Netanyahu) has to be put to the test on this.”
Livni, speaking on Israel Radio, said Israel should “create a front with Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia – those countries threatened by all of those beheaders running around the region”.
But, she said, “they can cooperate with us only if there is a basic minimum of a peace process – dialogue with the moderate elements in the Palestinian Authority”.
In the past, Netanyahu has expressed little interest in embracing a regional peace plan, such as the 2002 Arab initiative that offered normalized ties with Israel if it withdrew fully from territory captured in a 1967 war.
But last year, he signaled in a speech to parliament a readiness to consider the proposal, raised at an Arab League summit 12 years ago, as long as it did not contain “edicts”.
Any land-for-peace moves would elicit even more dissent from right-wingers in his government who have been vocal over Netanyahu’s reluctance to heed their calls during the Gaza war for a full-scale invasion to crush Hamas.
For now, he appears to be in little danger of seeing his political partnerships unravel.
About a month into the war, 77 percent of Israelis surveyed in a Haaretz-Dialog poll described Netanyahu’s performance during the conflict as either good or excellent. That figure dropped to around 50 percent after the ceasefire was announced.
But the snap poll taken a day after the truce went into effect showed that despite his flagging popularity, he continued to top, by a wide margin, the list of politicians whom Israelis believed were most suited to lead them as prime minister.
Foreign Ministry official confirms that Israel has decided to pursue talks with ICC over its preliminary probe into last summer’s Gaza conflict • Decision a reversal of policy, as Israel has so far refused to cooperate with the ICC.
Israel has decided to pursue an open dialogue with the International Criminal Court in The Hague over its preliminary investigation into Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip last summer.
Thursday’s decision represents a reversal for Israel, as it has so far refused to cooperate with the ICC, a report in Haaretz newspaper said.
The report quoted an unnamed official as saying Israel will not cooperate with the ICC, but will relay its position that the court has no authority over the matter.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the report, but declined to elaborate on the steps Israel plans to take in the matter.
In May, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda urged Israel’s cooperation on the probe, saying she may be forced to decide whether to launch a full-scale investigation based on Palestinian allegations of war crimes.
The Palestinian Authority submitted evidenceof alleged Israeli war crimes to the ICC in late June, in an attempt to fast-track the international panel’s inquiry into last year’s Gaza conflict.
The ICC is currently conducting a preliminary investigation to determine whether to open a full-fledged war crimes probe. U.N. data suggest over 2,000 Palestinians, including more than 1,400 civilians, were killed in the conflict.
Two Israeli citizens are being held in Gaza, at least one probably by the militant Hamas movement, Israel says.
Avraham Mangisto, of Ethiopian origin, went into the Palestinian territory of his own accord last September and has been missing since then, officials say.
An Israeli Arab is also being held in Gaza, the defence ministry says. Hamas has not commented on either case.
An Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, was captured and held by Hamas in Gaza for five years before being freed in 2011.
Israeli defence officials say they have appealed to international and regional bodies to help clarify Mr Mangisto’s situation and are demanding his immediate release.
“According to credible intelligence, Mangisto is being held against his will by Hamas,” a defence ministry statement said.
“Israel will continue to pursue the release and return of the citizen to Israel,” it added.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said it was a “painful situation” and that he was in contact with Mr Mangisto’s family.
“This is a humanitarian issue, and we expect those holding him to behave accordingly and return him in good health,” he said.
The Associated Press quoted an unnamed official as saying it was unclear why the 28-year-old went into Gaza but that he was believed to be mentally unstable.
Israeli media said Mr Mangisto, from Ashkelon, had breached the heavily-guarded security fence between Israel and Gaza.
Local media said the Israeli Arab being held in Gaza was a Bedouin from Israel’s southern Negev desert. His name has not been released.
The defence ministry said he had crossed into Gaza several times before.
The two cases were cleared for publication on Thursday after a court lifted a gagging order.
In 2006, Sgt Shalit was captured in a cross-border raid by Hamas, triggering a crisis which was only resolved years later in a controversial exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Avi Dichter returns to Likud after brief hiatus, says he supports peace deal – but also that Israel should defang Gaza.
Former Minister and Israel Security Agency (ISA or Shin Bet) leader Avi Dichter will be returning to politics, Walla! News reports Monday – this time, running in the Likud primaries, to be held on Wednesday.
Dichter returns to politics after leaving Kadima in 2012 to join Likud, and after briefly serving until March 2013 as Home Front Command Minister at Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s request during the 19th Knesset.
Despite Netanyahu’s support, Dichter did not manage to get enough votes from party members to formally join the Likud party during the last elections, falling short by 380 votes for the threshold.
Now, he says, he is taking stock of past experiences in his cautious return to the political scene. He explained that while last time, he launched a six-week campaign to woo members’ support for his Likud candidacy, he has been systematically building support throughout several “headquarters” throughout the country ahead of the 2015 elections.
Dichter explained that he identifies with the Right, but not the “extreme Right,” as he puts it, and believes that Likud must remain “Center-Right” in order to remain the ruling party and to build a coalition for the 20th Knesset.
When asked what “Center-Right” entails, he dodged the question slightly, but did note that, in his view, it includes acceptance of the idea of “Two States for Two Peoples.”
“Any intelligent person realizes that a one-state solution with the six million Jews and seven million non-Jews – mostly Muslims – is irresponsible,” Dichter stated to Walla!. “It is to set for ourselves a reality which is clearly unreasonable.” Dichter added that Netanyahu takes this view as well.
Following the theme of a grand plan for the Middle East, the former Shin Bet leader added that Gaza must be demilitarized – and that if the international community does not step in to do so, Israel must do so itself.
“Gaza is a terrorist entity controlled by Hamas, a terrorist organization, no matter what the European Union says,” he explained. “They have no idea what Hamas is.”
“We will have to disarm Gaza,” he continued. “Destruction of the terrorist infrastructure is something that will have to happen. Either the Egyptians and the Palestinian Authority will do this, or the time will come for Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield in Gaza. This is something you need to plan – it’s not something you do in response to rocket fire. We cannot leave it like it is.”
Dichter added that in his view, the Nation-State or Jewish State Law – the law blamed with bringing down the 19th Knesset – will eventually pass. The former Minister was the first to introduce his own version of the law, with Netanyahu’s blessing, as a Kadima MK during the 18th Knesset.
Italy (Reuters) – Pope Francis said on Saturday the spate of conflicts around the globe today were effectively a “piecemeal” Third World War, condemning the arms trade and “plotters of terrorism” sowing death and destruction.
“Humanity needs to weep and this is the time to weep,” Francis said in the homily of a Mass during a visit to Italy’s largest war memorial, a large, Fascist-era monument where more than 100,000 soldiers who died in World War One are buried.
The pope began his brief visit to northern Italy by first praying in a nearby, separate cemetery for some 15,000 soldiers from five nations of the Austro-Hungarian empire which were on the losing side of the Great War that broke out 100 years ago.
“War is madness,” he said in his homily before the massive, sloping granite memorial, made of 22 steps on the side of hill with three crosses at the top.
“Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction,” he said.
In the past few months, Francis has made repeated appeals for an end to conflicts in Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Gaza and parts of Africa.
“War is irrational; its only plan is to bring destruction: it seeks to grow by destroying,” he said. “Greed, intolerance, the lust for power. These motives underlie the decision to go to war and they are too often justified by an ideology …,” he said.
Last month the pope, who has often condemned the concept of war in God’s name, said it would be legitimate for the international community to use force to stop “unjust aggression” by Islamic State militants who have killed or displaced thousands of people in Iraq and Syria, many of them Christians.
In his homily, read at a somber service to thousands of people braving the rain and which included the hauntingly funereal sound of a solitary bugle, Francis condemned “plotters of terrorism” but did not elaborate.
Orthodox Jewish pro-Palestinian demonstrators march through central London to call for an end to Israeli military action in Gaza
A Jewish man has been hounded out of his home in an Orthodox community by a campaign of hate after condemning violence by Israel in Gaza.
An angry mob of up to 30 people is understood to have massed outside his home in a Jewish part of Salford, Broughton Park, during three nights of rage in Manchester.
The victim was reportedly targeted after he spoke out against the violence by Israel at a public event, reported the Manchester Evening News.
According to neighbours in Curzon Road, the attacks were a case of Jew-on-Jew violence. One woman said: “I have never known a situation where the Jewish community turned on each other.”
Police received three reports of incidents at the man’s home near the end of July – when Israel and Gaza were at war in the Middle East.
His home was pelted with eggs and his car vandalised with spray paint during three nights of victimisation.
On another occasion, the man was beaten up by an unknown attacker apparently motivated by his critical stance on military action by Israel.
The intimidation got so serious that police deployed a special video to record the scene outside the property for days.
Local media said the property now had a ‘to let’ sign outside.
Greater Manchester Police said: “Inquiries are ongoing and no arrests have been made.”
Bronze shoes stolen from the riverside Holocaust memorial ‘Shoes on the Danube’ in Budapest.
A number of bronze shoes were stolen from the riverside Holocaust memorial ‘Shoes on the Danube’ in Budapest, Hungary, The Budapest Beaconreported on Tuesday.
It is not known whether the incident was racially motivated or simple theft, the report said.
The memorial by Gyula Pauer and Can Togay, which was erected on the left bank of the Danube near Parliament in 2005, commemorates the victims of the Arrow Cross militiamen in Budapest during World War II.
The victims were told to take off their shoes before being shot and flung into the freezing Danube.
Local police said they are not investigating the case because no crime had been reported, according to The Budapest Beacon.
An earlier act of vandalism of the shoe memorial occurred five years ago, when pig trotters were placed in the shoes in a willful act of desecration. The ensuing police investigation turned up no suspects.
If the incident is indeed of an anti-Semitic background, it would not be the first in Hungary, where anti-Semitism has been on the rise in recent years.
Most of the anti-Semitism has been perpetrated by the openly anti-Semitic Jobbik party. In November of 2012, one of Jobbik’s members released a statement saying that a list should be compiled of all of the Jewish members of government.
Last month, a town mayor linked to Jobbik was filmed ordering the hanging of effigies of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and former president Shimon Peres in protest against the Gaza conflict.
US official describes as “counterproductive” Israeli announcement to appropriate land, said to be largest in 30 years.
The United States has urged Israel to reverse its decision to seize nearly 400 hectares of land in the occupied West Bank, a move anti-settlement activists termed the largest land grab in 30 years.
Israel announced the massive land appropriation on Sunday in the Etzion settlement bloc near Bethlehem just days after Gaza ceasefire.
A Palestinian official said the latest land grab by Israel would cause only more friction after the Gaza war that left more than 2,000 Palestinians dead and over 10,000 injured.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, called on Israel to cancel the appropriation. “This decision will lead to more instability. This will only inflame the situation after the war in Gaza,” presidential spokesman Abu Rdainah said.
A US State Department official called the announcement as “counterproductive to Israel’s stated goal of a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians”.
“We urge the government of Israel to reverse this decision,” the official said in Washington.
Peace Now group, which opposes Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank, territory the Palestinians seek for a state, said the appropriation was meant to turn a site where 10 families now live adjacent to a Jewish seminary into a permanent settlement.
International criticism
Construction of a major settlement at the location, known as “Gevaot”, has been mooted by Israel since 2000. Last year, the government invited bids for the building of 1,000 housing units at the site.
Peace Now said the land seizure was the largest announced by Israel in the West Bank since the 1980s and that anyone with ownership claims had 45 days to appeal. A local Palestinian mayor said Palestinians owned the tracts and harvested olive trees on them.
Israel has come under international criticism over its settlement activities, which most countries regard as illegal under international law and a major obstacle to the creation of a viable Palestinian state in any future peace deal.
Israel has said construction at Gevaot would not constitute the establishment of a new settlement because the site is officially designated a neighbourhood of an existing one, Alon Shvut, several kilometres down the road.
About 500,000 Israelis live among 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territory that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Palestinian leader said to warn that if borders of Palestinian state aren’t outlined soon, he’ll end security coordination, dismantle PA
Shin Bet security service chief Yoram Cohen met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last month to update him on the foiled Hamas plot to overthrow the West Bank Fatah leadership, Israel Radio reported Monday, citing Lebanese media.
In addition, Abbas threatened to end Palestinian security coordination with Israel in the West Bank, and dismantle the PA if future borders of a Palestinian state are not outlined in the near future.
While Abbas initially told this to Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal during ceasefire negotiations in Qatar, he also conveyed the message to the Shin Bet chief, the report said.
The report was said to have been confirmed by Palestinian sources.
It was the second covert meeting between Palestinian and Israeli leaders reported recently, as last week unconfirmed reports indicated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abbas met secretly in Amman,
Jordan, ahead of an agreed ceasefire to halt the fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
On August 18, the Shin Bet said it had thwarted a Hamas plan to topple Abbas and start a third intifada.
The national security agency said it arrested more than 90 Hamas operatives in May and June, confiscated dozens of weapons that had been smuggled into the West Bank, and seized more than $170,000 aimed at funding attacks.
It produced photos of the confiscated weapons and cash and a flowchart of the Hamas operatives who had been questioned, and said they planned a series of massive attacks on Israeli targets, including the Temple Mount, in order to start a widespread conflagration. Indictments are expected to be filed against at least 70 of the suspects.
The Shin Bet said terror cells were set up in dozens of Palestinian West Bank towns and villages — including in and around Jenin, Nablus, East Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Hebron.
Abbas ordered a probe into the coup plot shortly after the revelation, and said it represents “a grave threat to the unity of the Palestinian people and its future,” the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
With regard to the reported threats of ending PA cooperation with Israel, Abbas has repeatedly called for Israel to restart peace negotiations based on the 1967 borders.
On Sunday, Abbas told a Fatah conference in Ramallah that if Israel did not agree to negotiate over a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, he would join international bodies, including the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, without having come to an agreement with Israel.
“Is the Palestinian nation so trivial in our eyes?” he asked.
Abbas also repeated his criticism of Hamas for refusing to accept a ceasefire in Gaza, causing the deaths of thousands of Palestinians.
On Friday, the International Criminal Court prosecutor said that Palestine was now eligible to join the Rome Statute and file war crimes charges against Israel.
Abbas has made various statements in the past week about new initiatives and the consequences if they fail. During an interview with Egyptian television, Abbas said he would soon propose an unconventional diplomatic resolution to the Palestinian conflict, one that is likely to make the US unhappy.
He said the plan would be presented to US Secretary of State John Kerry during an upcoming visit to the region, and added that Kerry was unlikely to accept it, according to a Haaretz translation.
Palestinian sources close to Abbas told Haaretz that the plan would involve handing over responsibility for a resolution to the conflict to international forces.
During another interview with Palestinian TV, Abbas said he intends to demand that Israel and the US outline specific borders for a Palestinian state. If Israel does not respond, “we have what to do,” he said in an apparent veiled threat to take Palestinian demands to the international community.
Netanyahu rejected negotiations on the basis of the pre-1967 lines when Kerry launched his unsuccessful effort at peace talks last year. In recent weeks, the prime minister has said the conflict with Hamas underlines his concern with the need to maintain security control of the West Bank to ensure that the area not turn into another Gaza.
An Israeli air strike hit a house in central Gaza before dawn on Saturday killing five family members, including two women and two children, Palestinian medics said.
Emergency services initially said three people were killed and five wounded, but later announced that two people had died of their injuries after the raid in Al-Zawayda near the Nusseirat refugee camp.
The air raid hit a family home, witnesses and medics said.
Doctors at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah said the five dead all came from the same family — a 28-year-old father, his 26-year-old wife and their two boys aged three and four.
The father’s 45-year-old aunt was also killed, they said.
The Israeli military said it had carried out around 20 air strikes over the Gaza Strip early on Saturday and that three rockets or mortar rounds had hit southern Israel near the border with Gaza.
Hostilities in the six-week war between Israel and Gaza’s Islamist de facto rulers Hamas resumed on Tuesday as Egyptian-brokered truce talks collapsed.
Emergency services say 81 people have died in the Palestinian enclave since then. On Friday, an Israeli child was killed and seven other people wounded, one of them critically, by mortar and rocket fire from Gaza.
At least 2,097 Palestinians have been killed since July 8, 70 percent of them civilians, according to the United Nations.
There have also been 68 people killed on the Israeli side, all but four of them soldiers.
Hamas gunmen ride motorcycles as they drag the body of a man who was killed as a suspected collaborator with Israel in 2012. (AP)
One day after Israel killed three top Hamas commanders, the radical group executed 18 Palestinian men it had suspected of collaborating with Israel. From the Associated Press report:
A witness and Hamas media say that masked gunmen have killed seven suspected informants for Israel near a Gaza City mosque as worshippers were ending midday prayers.”
According to Hamas, another 11 men were shot to death at the police headquarters in Gaza City after being sentenced to death in Gaza courts. As Globe and Mail reported:
The Hamas-run website Al Rai said 11 people were killed by firing squad and warned that “the same punishment will be imposed soon on others.”
The often-public deaths of informants or so-called collaborators are a routine part of life in Gaza, although instances greatly increase during times of heavy conflict.
Back in 2012, following the last conflagration with Israel in Gaza, Hamas executed a number of Palestinians it had accused of giving up valuable intel to the Israelis. As with today’s killings, the men are executed publicly as a warning not to cooperate with Israeli intelligence efforts.
Writing about six Palestinian men who suffered a similar fate in 2012, the AP described the disturbing scene:
Some in the crowd stomped and spit on the bodies. A sixth corpse was tied to a motorcycle and dragged through the streets as people screamed, “Spy! Spy!”
The Hamas military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam, claimed responsibility in a large handwritten note attached to a nearby electricity pole. Hamas said the six were killed because they gave Israel information about fighters and rocket launching sites.”
As with Friday’s executions, the 2012 shootings happened in the midst of an ongoing battle between Israel and Hamas. In Fridays’s fighting, Israel has reportedly killed four Palestinians in airstrikes on Gaza as Hamas and other groups continue to fire rockets into Israel, including the targeting of Israel’s largest city, Tel Aviv.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — An Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed three senior commanders of the Hamas military wing Thursday, delivering a likely blow to the organization’s morale and highlighting the long reach of Israel’s intelligence services.
The pre-dawn strike leveled a four-story house in a densely populated neighborhood of the southern town of Rafah, killing six people, including the three senior Hamas commanders.
The trio had played a key role in expanding Hamas’ military capabilities in recent years, including digging attack tunnels leading to Israel, training of fighters and smuggling of weapons to Gaza, Israel said.
(L-R) Raed al-Attar, Mohammed Abu Shammala and Osama Abu Atah from Hamas, stand before a Palestinian Authority court in Gaza in this February 27, 1999 file photo.
It was not immediately clear if their assassination would prompt a change in Hamas strategy in the current round of fighting with Israel or diminish the group’s ability to fire rockets at Israel. The military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, is a secretive organization.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said in a statement that Israel “will not succeed in breaking the will of our people or weaken the resistance,” and that Israel “will pay the price.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the “superior intelligence” of the domestic Shin Bet security service and the “precise execution” of the attack by the military.
The targeted killing of the three top Hamas commanders will likely buy Netanyahu some time as the Israeli public is getting increasingly impatient with the government’s inability to halt the rocket fire from Gaza.
Israel and Hamas identified the three as Mohammed Abu Shamaleh, Raed Attar and Mohammed Barhoum.
Thursday’s airstrike was carried out shortly before 3 a.m. in the Tel Sultan neighborhood of Rafah. Gaza police and witnesses said several missiles hit the four-story building.
Hamza Khalifa, an area resident said the house was struck without warning. “We only heard multiple F-16 (warplane) missiles, one after the other, six or seven missiles,” he said.
Several hours later, a large earth mover was still clearing large mounds of debris and wreckage as dozens of area residents watched.
Mohammed Abu Shamala (L) with Hamas official Ismail Haniya in February
The Rafah attack came a day after an apparent Israeli attempt to kill the top Hamas military leader, Mohammed Deif, in an airstrike on a house in Gaza City.
Deif’s wife and an infant son were killed in that strike, but the Hamas military wing said Deif was not in the targeted home at the time.
The back-to-back targeting of top Hamas military leaders came after indirect Israel-Hamas negotiations in Cairo on a sustainable truce broke down. As talks ran aground on Tuesday, Gaza militants resumed rocket fire on Israel, even before the formal end of a six-day truce at midnight that day.
Since then, Hamas and other groups have fired dozens more rockets, and Israeli aircraft have struck dozens of targets in Gaza, a sign that prospects for a resumption of the Cairo talks are slim.
Despite the crisis, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was holding talks in Qatar on Thursday with the top political leader of Hamas in exile, Khaled Mashaal, and the emir of Qatar. Before the collapse of the truce talks, Abbas had planned to use the meetings in Qatar to urge Mashaal and his Qatari backers to support an Egyptian cease-fire plan.
Hamas has rejected the Egyptian proposal, saying it contained no commitments by Israel to ease the border blockade of Gaza. The blockade was imposed by Israel and Egypt after the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007.
Hamas leaders said they could not accept a deal they feared would restore the closure regime that was in place before the start of the latest round of fighting on July 8. The border restrictions prevent most Gazans from traveling outside the crowded coastal strip and bar most exports.
Over the past six weeks of the Gaza war, more than 2,000 Palestinians have been killed in the strip and about 100,000 left homeless, according to figures by the U.N. and Palestinian officials. Israel lost 67 people, all but three of them soldiers.
It was not clear if the killing of the three Hamas leaders will diminish the group’s ability to fire rockets. Israel estimated that Hamas had 10,000 rockets before the war and that it lost about two-thirds of its arsenal.
In a joint statement, the Israeli military and Shin Bet security service emphasized the importance of Abu Shamaleh, Attar and Barhoum to the Hamas military operation.
Abu Shamaleh had been the top Hamas commander in southern Gaza, it said. Attar was in charge of weapons smuggling into Gaza, the construction of attack tunnels and had played a role in the capture of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Schalit, in 2006. Barhoum was a senior Hamas operative in Rafah, the statement said.
Abu Shamaleh was a confederate of Deif’s who was involved in planning and carrying out at least four major attacks on Israeli soldiers since the 1990s, including one in 2004 that killed four and wounded 10, the statement said.
Attar, it said, was responsible for orchestrating a series of complex attacks on Israeli targets, including through the Sinai Peninsula in neighboring Egypt.
“This morning’s strike sends a clear message to those responsible for planning attacks, we will strike those that have terrorized our communities, towns and cities, we will pursue the perpetrators of abduction of our soldiers and teenagers, and we will succeed in restoring security to the State of Israel,” said an Israeli military spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner.
In addition to the Hamas operatives, three others were killed in the Rafah strike, including a resident of the house and two neighbors, according to Palestinian health official Ashraf al-Kidra.
The neighbors were identified as Hassan and Amal Younis, the parents of Issam Younis, the director of Al Mezan, a leading human rights organization in Gaza.
Elsewhere in Gaza, at least six people, including four children and a 27-year-old man, were killed in three other airstrikes, according to al-Kidra.
Israel also hit at smuggling tunnels along the Gaza border with Egypt and at agricultural lands west of Rafah in Thursday’s airstrikes.
The military said 18 rockets and mortars were fired from Gaza since midnight Wednesday, compared to more than 210 over the previous 30 hours.
An Israeli was seriously wounded when a mortar hit south of the southern city of Ashkelon on Thursday, it said.
In a nationally televised address Wednesday, Netanyahu showed little willingness to return to the negotiating table after six weeks of war with Hamas.
“We are determined to continue the campaign with all means and as is needed,” he said, his defense minister by his side. “We will not stop until we guarantee full security and quiet for the residents of the south and all citizens of Israel.”
Israel had warned that its forces were prepared to retaliate if Gaza militants resumed rocket fire
Israel’s military says it has carried out air strikes in the Gaza Strip in response to fresh rocket fire, hours before a ceasefire was set to expire.
“Terror targets” were hit in Gaza after rockets were fired towards the towns of Beersheba and Netivot, officials said.
The violence came with seven hours remaining of the ceasefire extension agreed to allow both sides to negotiate a deal to end weeks of fighting.
UN officials say nearly 17.000 housing units in the Gaza Strip were destroyed in the recent fighting
More than 2,080 people, most of them Palestinians, have died since 8 July.
‘No progress’
Israeli officials said the first three rockets landed in open fields near Beersheba, causing no injuries. Two were later intercepted over Netivot.
“This rocket attack was a grave and direct violation of the ceasefire,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Witnesses in Gaza reported several Israeli air strikes, from Beit Lahiya in the north to Rafah in the south. Hospital officials told the Reuters news agency that two children were wounded.
Members of Hamas’ military wing showed journalists a tunnel underneath Gaza on Monday
There was no immediate claim of responsibility from any of the Palestinian factions in Gaza, which is dominated by Hamas.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the Islamist movement, told the BBC that it “had no idea or information about the firing of any rockets”.
However, another Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, had earlier warned: “If [Prime Minister Benjamin]Netanyahu doesn’t understand… the language of politics in Cairo, we know how to make him understand.”
Thousand of civilians in Gaza have reportedly begun seeking refuge from the latest violence
The Israeli delegation has reportedly been instructed to leave the indirect talks and return home.
“The Cairo process was based on the premise of a total ceasefire,” one Israeli official said.
Analysis: Sally Nabil, BBC News, Cairo
The negotiations in Cairo have reached deadlock and the Israelis have pulled out after the 24-hour truce was breached.
The picture was bleak even before the fighting resumed, and there was not much optimism among the members of the Palestinian delegation.
The gaps between the two parties were too wide to bridge.
The Egyptian mediators had tried to work on getting the blockade of Gaza eased without asking Hamas to lay down its weapons, a key Israeli demand.
They were keen to delay discussing the more thorny issues, like the construction of a seaport and airport in Gaza. But even that plan did not bear fruit.
Before the latest violence, a senior member of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement, Azzam al-Ahmad, told Reuters that there had been “no progress on any point” in the negotiations, with big gaps remaining between the two sides.
Palestinian representatives said Israel was seeking guarantees that Hamas and other factions in Gaza would be disarmed, while the Palestinians were demanding an end to the Israeli and Egyptian blockades of Gaza, and the establishment of a seaport and airport.
Hamas insists it will not give up its weapons, while Israel wants to maintain some control over Gaza’s crossings to prevent arms smuggling.
Rachel Craven has been treating wounded people in Gaza’s Al-Shefa Hospital for the last two weeks
The BBC’s Kevin Connolly in Jerusalem says much now depends on whether this latest exchange of violence is an isolated breach of the ceasefire, or a signal that it is over.
Israel launched an offensive on Gaza, “Operation Protective Edge”, on 8 July with the aim of ending rocket fire. It also sought to destroy tunnels dug under the frontier with Israel used by militants to launch attacks.
The Palestinian health ministry says that 2,016 Palestinians have been killed since the offensive began, including 541 children and 250 women.
The Israeli authorities say 64 Israeli soldiers have been killed, along with two Israeli civilians and a Thai national.
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