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A Blast, a Fire and an Israeli Soldier Goes Missing A Blast, a Fire and an Israeli Soldier Goes Missing
(35 minutes later)
JERUSALEM — Israeli officials said on Tuesday that it was still not clear whether an Israeli soldier missing in Gaza had been captured or had died in combat. JERUSALEM — It was around 1 a.m. when the decades-old Israeli armored personnel carrier rumbled into the Gaza Strip Sunday and headed for Shejaiya, a Hamas stronghold on the eastern edge of Gaza City. Seven soldiers were crammed inside, including Sgt. Oron Shaul, 21, from the Golani infantry brigade, according to Israeli military officials.
The Israeli military said it had recovered the remains of six other soldiers who were killed in the same incident, but had not found or identified those of Sgt. Oron Shaul, 21, a soldier with the Golani brigade who is from Poria, in northern Israel. The personnel carrier halted, perhaps because of a malfunction, a roadblock or an ambush — like many things that night, the cause was not immediately clear. Some of the soldiers got out to try to resolve the problem, a senior military official said on Tuesday. Soon after, an antitank missile hit the vehicle and it was consumed by fire.
The military wing of Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, said on Sunday that it had captured Sergeant Shaul. Sergeant Shaul was missing, but that is all the Israelis say they can conclude for certain. The remains of six soldiers killed in the attack have since been recovered and identified, but Hamas said it had captured Sergeant Saul, though it had not proved it.
A senior Israeli military official said on Tuesday that Sergeant Shaul was definitely among the seven soldiers in an armored personnel carrier that entered Gaza around 1 a.m. Sunday. The vehicle, an M-113 that the official said was 40 or 50 years old, encountered some problem — possibly a mechanical breakdown, or a roadblock or an ambush — and some of the soldiers got out to resolve it, he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity under military rules. The vehicle was then hit by an antitank missile and caught fire, he said, and it was not yet known whether Sergeant Shaul was inside the carrier when it was hit. “I’ll be very frank. Currently we don’t know where he is,” an Israeli military official said speaking on the condition of anonymity under military protocol. “Unless we see hard evidence that he is alive, or hard evidence that he is dead, or hard evidence that he is in the hands of Hamas, we simply say that he is missing.”
The official said it took the Israeli military between 7 and 10 hours to get the vehicle and the remains of six of the soldiers out of Gaza. Capturing an Israeli soldier — or even withholding a soldier’s remains — can have a powerful impact on Israeli society, more in some ways than the death itself. Israel in the past has traded the freedom of hundreds of prisoners in exchange not just for the living — like Gilad Shalit, who was held from 2006 to 2011 before Israel negotiated a trade for his release — but also for the corpses of soldiers who died in battle.
“I’ll be very frank: Currently, we don’t know where he is,” the official said of Sergeant Shaul. “We don’t know if he is alive or dead, we simply don’t know.” He added, “Unless we see hard evidence that he’s alive, or hard evidence that he’s dead, or hard evidence that he is in the hands of Hamas, we simply say that he is missing.” Hamas has recognized the pull such incidents have over the Israeli psyche and clearly has moved to grab hostages. When militants were killed infiltrating Israel through tunnels recently, one group was found carrying plastic handcuffs and a tranquilizer, according to the Israeli military.
The destruction of the vehicle, during a battle between Israeli ground forces and Hamas militants in Shejaiya, an eastern neighborhood of Gaza City, was one of the deadliest encounters for Israeli forces since they advanced into Gaza late Thursday. The fight in Shejaiya was the deadliest engagement for Israeli forces since their ground incursion into Gaza began July 17, after 10 days of aerial bombardment in a campaign Israel says is aimed at quelling rocket fire from Gaza and destroying Hamas’s tunnel network. Afterward, Hamas’s military wing said it had captured Sergeant Shaul, and it gave his serial number. Celebrations immediately broke out in Gaza and the West Bank.
The military said in a statement on Tuesday that the families of the seven soldiers “who were involved in the incident were briefed on the circumstances of the attack.” Motti Almoz, the military’s chief spokesman, told Israel Radio that the military was “clarifying the circumstances surrounding this incident.” In Israel, the initial belief was that the Sergeant Shaul was killed in the attack, but there was some confusion about the casualties. It took the military about nine hours to confirm publicly that 13 soldiers were killed in the battle in Shejaiya, and even longer to release their names. In all at least 27 soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the ground invasion.
The stated purposes of the Israeli incursion into Gaza include finding and destroying tunnels used by militants to cross secretly into and out of Israel. The military said on Tuesday that it had uncovered about 23 tunnels so far, with 66 access points, many of them in Shejaiya, which lies close to the border with Israel. Fighting continued in Shejaiya overnight, where the Israeli military said it had struck weapons stores, command posts and other installations used by Hamas. On Tuesday morning, the military for the first time acknowledged that it had not found or identified the sergeant’s remains.
The Israeli military official said more tunnels had been uncovered in Shejaiya than expected, and added, “I think we are in the middle of the way somewhere” with the job of destroying the militant tunnels in Gaza. He said he doubted that every tunnel would be found, but “you don’t have to achieve 100 percent of the targets,” and added, “you have to decide whether to go for the last 5 percent of the tunnels based on what you can pay for it.” It took between seven and 10 hours to get the vehicle and the remains of the dead out of Gaza, according to the senior military official, who described the damage to the burned personnel carrier and the soldiers inside as “devastating.”
There have been several deadly clashes between militants emerging from tunnels on the Israeli side of the border and Israeli soldiers. Israeli officials say the tunnels were also designed for attacks on Israeli civilian communities. “Maybe the ammunition inside or the fuel tank or something else just exploded,” the Israeli official added, speaking on the condition of anonymity under military protocol. But he said it is unclear whether Sergeant Shaul was actually inside the vehicle when it was hit.
Rocket fire from Gaza into Israel continued on Tuesday, with one rocket striking the town of Yehud, near Tel Aviv, causing damage to houses but no serious injury. After rockets were reported to have struck in and around the Tel Aviv airport, several American airlines announced that they were suspending flights to Israel. He noted that it was possible that Hamas had obtained the soldier’s details from part of his kit, or had simply retrieved his information from social networks. “All the friends knew, everybody is following the Twitter or the Facebook,” he said. “Hamas very easily sees our networks.”
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza also continued on Tuesday from the air and sea, and artillery shelling could be heard into the night. The Palestinian Health Ministry said that at least four women were killed, including a pregnant woman, 25, whose home outside Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza was hit by an artillery shell. Another woman, 25, was killed in similar circumstances east of Rafah in southern Gaza and two more women, aged 70 and 50, died from Israeli fire, also in southern Gaza. More than 575 people have been killed, many of them civilians, since the fighting erupted. The drama over Sergeant Shaul came during intense international efforts to broker a cease-fire. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon exhorted both sides to “Stop fighting; start talking” at a joint news conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv.
Holding an Israeli soldier, dead or alive, would be a significant coup for Hamas, which has not succeeded in inflicting many casualties on the Israeli side. The militant group has long advocated capturing Israeli soldiers and holding them hostage to exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. A total of 27 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the latest fighting erupted two weeks ago, and two Israeli civilians have been killed by rocket or mortar fire. Secretary of State John Kerry held a two-hour meeting with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt Tuesday and said that the United States was prepared to address the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip and the political demands of the Palestinians living there, but that a cease-fire had to take place first.
The questions about the fate of Sergeant Shaul could further complicate international efforts to broker a cease-fire. Israel is unlikely to agree to withdraw its forces until it recovers him or his remains or knows for certain what has happened to him. The Israeli military official said that the Hamas militants who claimed to be holding Sergeant Shaul may have simply gotten his name from his equipment at the battle scene, or from social networks, which were busy with rumors naming soldiers involved in the incident within hours of the attack on the carrier. “Hamas has a fundamental choice to make, and it is a choice that will have a profound impact for the people of Gaza,” Mr. Kerry said. “And 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.”
Israel has gone to great lengths in the past to secure the return of missing soldiers or their remains, agreeing to release large numbers of prisoners in lopsided exchanges that critics say encourage the militants. Israeli public opinion has been souring on such exchanges. In Gaza the Palestinian death toll rose to at least 620, according to the Palestinian health ministry, with monitoring groups reporting that more than 230 were women and children. Among those killed on Tuesday were four members of a family whose home was hit by artillery shelling in east Gaza City and two women killed by artillery fire in Rafah in southern Gaza.
Secretary of State John Kerry continued his efforts on Tuesday to obtain a Gaza cease-fire, meeting in Cairo with Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry. Mr. Kerry planned to meet later in the evening with the head of Egypt’s intelligence service, and was also scheduled to meet with the head of the Arab League, Nabil el-Araby, and with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Al Jazeera, the television network, said its bureau in Gaza had come under fire and blamed Israel. No one there was injured. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which assists Palestinian refugees, said one of its schools in the Mughazi refugee camp, where about 300 Gazans had sought refuge, was “struck by explosive ordnance believed to have been fired by Israeli forces.” The agency said that one child was injured and that it had raised the incident with the Israeli authorities.
Sketching out a two-stage process, Mr. Shoukry said he was hopeful that Mr. Kerry’s visit would result in a cease-fire “that provides the necessary security for the Palestinian people” and that “medium- and long-term” issues on Gaza’s future could be addressed after it was in effect. Rocket fire from Gaza continued on Tuesday, reaching deep into Israel. One rocket fell near Ben-Gurion International Airport on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, causing damage but no injury. It prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to instruct American air carriers not to fly to Israel for 24 hours. Mr. Netayahu asked Mr. Kerry to arrange for the flights to Israel to resume, according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.
On Monday night, Mr. Kerry met with Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Secretary General, and with Majid Faraj, the chief of intelligence for the Palestinian Authority. In addition to the Israeli soldiers that have been killed since the ground operation began late Thursday, two Israeli civilians have been killed by rocket and mortar fire since July 8. More than 2,000 rockets have been fired into Israel by Hamas.
Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas official, told an Arabic television channel on Tuesday that Israel would have to “pay up front” for any piece of information about the missing soldier, even for a picture.
Lior Lotan, a former chief of the Prisoners of War and Missing in Action department of the Israeli military, told reporters that the lack of evidence could be a function of logistical problems. Under the current circumstances in Gaza, it would be difficult to take the soldier to a safe house, photograph or film him and then distribute the evidence to a news outlet without giving away the location. “Or they don’t have an Israeli soldier but are talking about part of the body of a soldier,” he said.
The Israeli military said militants fired antitank missiles from within a mosque at soldiers in Khan Yunis on Tuesday morning and said its aircraft aimed at the mosque in response. One soldier was killed and several others were wounded in that incident.
Analysts said that even if Hamas was holding Sergeant Shaul, it would not change Israel’s main calculation regarding its military operation in Gaza.
“It would be a tragedy of course,” said Ehud Yaari, a leading Israeli television analyst and a fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But it is not going to have a major impact on either the fighting or the cease-fire negotiations.”
And despite the lopsided prisoner exchanges of the past, the Israeli government and public are becoming increasingly opposed to such deals, with critics saying the deals encourage kidnapping.
“There are two conflicting values,” said Michael Herzog, a retired Israeli general and former peace negotiator. “There is the redeeming of prisoners and the principle that Israel does not leave soldiers in the field, and on the other hand, you do not want to reward terrorism.”
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, and Jodi Rudoren from Tel Aviv. Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting from Cairo and Fares Akram from Gaza.