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JERSUSALEM — Israel retaliated after Palestinian rocket attacks on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem with airstrikes before dawn Saturday on the Gaza City offices of Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas — the militant Islamist group that governs Gaza.
GAZA — Israel expanded its four-day assault on Gaza on Saturday, broadening its airstrikes from military targets to the civilian political infrastructure, leveling the headquarters here of the Hamas prime minister and striking police and security buildings.
The Israeli military said Saturday that it had struck more than 200 targets overnight, including underground rocket launchers and smuggling tunnels in Rafah, on the Gaza-Egypt border.
Hamas continued to fire rockets at Israel, including a pair intended for the city of Tel Aviv. One landed harmlessly, probably at sea; the other was thwarted in midair by Israel.
Along with Mr. Haniya’s headquarters, which was destroyed, the Israeli military said that it struck the police and homeland security headquarters of Hamas, as well as the house of a Hamas commander, Ahmed Randor.
In Cairo, the leaders of Hamas, Turkey and Qatar gathered to try to broker a truce. Hamas officials were in indirect contact with Israel through Egyptian intelligence intermediaries, an official of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said.
The talks were reported to be deadlocked on Saturday evening, while continued attacks in Gaza and Israel, and Israeli preparations for a possible ground invasion, suggested that neither side was ready to end the fight.
The air raid that struck the office of the Hamas prime minister, Ismael Haniyeh, came about 4 a.m., reducing the four-story building where weekly cabinet meetings were held to a huge pile of rubble.
Three Palestinian flags that used to hang over the entryway were draped across the dusty mess, with datebooks and personnel records scattered about. Mr. Haniyeh’s gray-bearded face beamed from a page of a Hamas booklet promoting “the government’s achievements despite the obstacles.”
A security official, who asked to be identified only as Abu el Abed, took one of the fallen flags and replanted it upright. “We will rebuild this place as we have rebuilt others,” he said. “Every structure that is demolished or destroyed is a big loss, but the blood of anybody wounded is more important than any structure. This place will be rebuilt and the occupation will go and we will stay.”
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, said government buildings had been targeted because Hamas “makes no distinction between its terrorist military machine and the government structure.”
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, said government buildings had been targeted because Hamas “makes no distinction between its terrorist military machine and the government structure.”
“We have seen Hamas consistently using so-called civilian facilities for the purposes of hiding their terrorist military machine, including weapons,” Mr. Regev said.
“We have seen Hamas consistently using so-called civilian facilities for the purposes of hiding their terrorist military machine, including weapons,” Mr. Regev said.
About 30 rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel on Saturday morning, one landing in the yard of a house. Three soldiers were slightly injured by one of the rockets, the Israeli military said.
The Israeli military said that it had struck more than 200 targets overnight, including underground rocket launchers and smuggling tunnels in Rafah, on the Gaza-Egypt border. The military also said that it struck the police and homeland security headquarters of Hamas, as well as the house of a Hamas commander, Ahmed Randor.
Hamas said seven of its members were killed Saturday morning in two separate attacks — four in Rafah, and three in the Al Maghazi refugee camp, in the middle of the Gaza Strip. Despite the fighting, Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem of Tunisia visited Gaza on Saturday, condemning the Israeli attacks during an appearance at the Al Shifa hospital.
Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for firing an Iranian-made rocket at Tel Aviv.
“Israel has to understand that there is an international law and it has to respect the international law to stop the aggression against the Palestinian people,” Mr. Abdessalem said, according to The Associated Press.
Israel appeared to be keeping up the pressure on military targets as well.
On Friday, emboldened by displays of Egyptian solidarity and undeterred by Israel’s advanced aerial firepower, Palestinian militants under siege in Gaza broadened their rocket targets, aiming at Jerusalem for the first time, sending a second volley screeching toward Tel Aviv and pushing the Israelis closer to a ground invasion.
Hamas said seven of its members were killed Saturday morning in two separate attacks — four in Rafah, and three in the Al Maghazi refugee camp, in the middle of the Gaza Strip. The deadliest airstrikes today were reported in the southern town of Rafah, which borders Egypt, where six people, including four Hamas fighters, were killed in separate raids.
Israel’s government more than doubled the number of army reservists it could call to combat if needed in the increasingly lethal showdown in Gaza with Hamas fighters and their affiliates, after they fired more than 700 rockets into southern Israel over the last year. The escalation has raised fears of a new chapter of war in the intractable Arab-Israeli conflict.
Israeli F16 airplanes hit a house for a commander of the Qassam Brigades in southeast Gaza City, but the house was empty at the time, Hamas officials said. The Israeli military also released video of what it said was an attack Saturday on the house of the Hamas northern brigade commander, Ahmed Randor, and said that it showed the secondary explosions that took place because of ammunition stored under the commander’s house.
The Israeli military closed some roads adjacent to Gaza in anticipation of a possible infantry move into the territory, which would be the first Israeli military presence on the ground in Gaza since the three-week invasion of 2008-9.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said that 40 Palestinians had been killed in the fighting so far, and more than 385 people wounded. Three Israelis have been killed.
Ghazi Hamad, the Hamas deputy foreign minister, said Saturday that the Tunisian foreign minister’s visit, following the visit Friday by the Egyptian prime minister, showed that “we as Palestinians are not alone.”
This latest battle between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza, began Wednesday, when Israel launched airstrikes on Gaza in retaliation for a surge of rocket attacks in recent months from Gaza. The assault has drawn comparisons to Israel’s invasion of Gaza in late 2008, but so far Israeli ground forces have not entered Gaza.
“All Arab nations are with us and against the occupation,” Mr. Hamad said. “This will give a strong message to the international community.”
Last week, Israel shifted infantry brigades, authorized the calling up of 75,000 reservists and blocked roads near Gaza, indicating an invasion of the coastal territory was possible.
Asked about the possibility of a cease-fire agreement, Mr. Hamad said Israel would have to agree to cancel the buffer zone, a strip of land almost 1,000 feet wide along the northern and eastern Gaza borders where Israel does not allow people to go; those who enter can be shot.
The region’s political landscape has also shifted since the war four years ago, with Hamas gaining crucial allies in Egypt, Turkey and Qatar, as well as longer-range, apparently Iranian-made, missiles.
The attacks on Hamas government buildings, Mr. Hamad said, are “a policy of Israel to put pressure on people” but would not significantly change the dynamic of the current fighting.
Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system appears to have successfully intercepted many of the rockets from Gaza. After an attack on Tel Aviv last week, Israel deployed an Iron Dome anti-missile battery near the city, which became operational on Saturday.
“Israel has the capacity to destroy all buildings in Gaza, all homes,” he said. “But this is against humanity.
The missiles intercepted one of the Hamas rockets on Saturday evening in the sky above the city, Israeli authorities and witnesses said.
“They destroyed our government buildings before many times, but we rebuild again,” he added. “It’s a long struggle, a long story. It will not stop today or tomorrow.”
In Cairo, a senior official of the Muslim Brotherhood confirmed that President Morsi was working furiously to secure a cease-fire but insisted that the Israeli side of the talks remained the “sticking point.” The official did not identify a specific issue.
Many residents of Jerusalem, which Israel claims as its capital despite objections from the city’s large Palestinian population and others throughout the Middle East, were startled Friday when wartime sirens warning of impending danger sounded at dusk, followed by at least two dull thuds. Hamas’s military wing claimed in a statement that they were rockets fired from Gaza, 48 miles away, and had been meant to hit the Israeli Parliament.
While the regional leaders met in various combinations around Cairo, foreign ministers of members of the Arab League met in an emergency closed door meeting to discuss responses to the situation, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said.
The police said one rocket crashed harmlessly in an open area near an Israeli settlement south of Jerusalem. It was unclear where the others landed, but no damage or injuries were reported.
President Obama, who has asked President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt to try to mediate the crisis, called Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on Friday to press for a solution, the White House said. Mr. Erdogan was among the regional leaders meeting in Cairo.
Earlier in Tel Aviv, 40 miles from the Gaza border, air-raid sirens wailed for a second day as a rocket fired from the territory approached. A police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said it apparently fell into the Mediterranean.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s powerful Islamist group, called for Mr. Morsi to expel Israel’s ambassador and freeze relations with Israel. Mr. Morsi, a former Brotherhood leader, had already recalled Egypt’s ambassador to Israel.
Although the rockets missed their intended targets, the launchings aimed at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the two biggest population centers, underscored the ability and willingness of Hamas rocket teams to target Israeli or Israeli-occupied areas that up until the past few days had been thought relatively immune.
In Gaza City, Ghazi Hamad, the deputy foreign minister of Hamas, said Israel’s shift in strategy, attacking Hamas government buildings, would not significantly change the dynamic of the current fighting.
“We are sending a short and simple message: There is no security for any Zionist or any single inch of Palestine and we plan more surprises,” Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the military wing of Hamas, said in a message reported by news agencies.
“Israel has the capacity to destroy all buildings in Gaza, all homes,” he said. “They destroyed our government buildings before many times, but we rebuild again. It’s a long struggle, a long story. It will not stop today or tomorrow.”
Even Saddam Hussein, during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, avoided targeting Jerusalem when he aimed Scud missiles at Israel, not wishing to inadvertently destroy Muslim shrines or hit Arab neighborhoods.
Jodi
Rudoren reported from Gaza, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Reporting was contributed by Fares Akram and Tyler Hicks from Gaza City, and Mayy El Sheikh and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo.
Despite three days of repeated Israeli aerial assaults on suspected stockpiles of rockets in Gaza, the Israeli military said more than 100 rockets were fired into Israel on Friday, apparently including Iranian-made Fajr-5 projectiles that Israeli officials say are the only ones in the Hamas arsenal with a range that can reach Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.
Hamas contended that it had produced those rockets, which the group called M75s, referring to a range of 75 kilometers or about 47 miles. Israeli munitions experts said they had not heard of that weapon.
Regardless, the rocket barrage caused widespread panic and damage. It also shattered plans for a temporary cease-fire during an unprecedented trip to Gaza by the Egyptian prime minister, Hesham Qandil, a visit that illustrated the shifting dynamics of Middle East politics since the turmoil of the Arab Spring uprisings began nearly two years ago. Under Egypt’s last president, Hosni Mubarak, regarded by Israel as an important strategic ally, any relationship with Hamas would have been unthinkable.
“The time in which the Israeli occupation does whatever it wants in Gaza is gone,” Mr. Haniya, the Hamas prime minister, said in a meeting with Mr. Qandil.
The persistent ability of Hamas to keep firing missiles at Israel appeared to weigh heavily in the Israeli military’s calculations about a ground invasion. Mr. Netanyahu said the army was “continuing to hit Hamas hard and is ready to expand the operation into Gaza.” Israeli television later reported that Defense Minister Ehud Barak had authorized the military to call up 75,000 reservists if necessary — more than double the 30,000 authorized Thursday.
No Israelis were reported killed in the rocket attacks on Friday, leaving the reported death toll on Israel’s side at three civilians. The number of Palestinians killed so far has risen to at least 39, Gaza health officials said, underscoring what critics of Israeli policy called Israel’s disproportionate use of military force. Israeli leaders have said they are selectively targeting militants in the Gaza attacks, and they accuse Hamas of installing rocket batteries in civilian areas.
The Israeli military said Friday night that it had killed Muhammad Abu Jalal, a Hamas company commander in Gaza, and Khaled Shaer, who was involved in rocket development. A military spokesman said that earlier in the day, the Israel Defense Forces had sent text messages to about 12,000 Gaza residents warning them to stay away from Hamas operatives.
In addition, the military said it had crippled Hamas’s burgeoning drone capabilities after striking a number of sites. Hamas, it said, had been developing unmanned aerial vehicles for use as another means of striking Israel.
At the four-story headquarters of Mr. Haniya, where weekly cabinet meetings were once held, a huge pile of rubble stood Saturday as testimony to the 4 a.m. barrage. Three Palestinian flags that used to hang over the entryway instead draped onto the dusty mess, their poles nearly perpendicular to the ground.
Amid the rubble were datebooks and personnel records. A copy of the official Palestinian book of laws had singed pages. Mr. Haniya’s gray-bearded face beamed from one page in Hamas’s signature green: the cover of a 2008 booklet declaring “the government’s achievements despite the obstacles.”
Just before 10 a.m., a security official who asked to be identified only as Abu el-Abed took one of the fallen flags and replanted it upright.
“We will rebuild this place as we have rebuilt others,” he said. “Every structure that is demolished or destroyed is a big loss. But the blood of anybody wounded is more important than any structure. This place will be rebuilt and the occupation will go and we will stay.”
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Jodi Rudoren, Fares Akram and Tyler Hicks from Gaza City; Alan Cowell from Paris; Rina Castelnuovo from the Gaza-Israel border; and Mayy El Sheikh and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo.
