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Gaza-Israel Escalation Threatens Cease-Fire Leaders Deny Report of a Truce in Mideast Violence
(about 9 hours later)
JERUSALEM — Hostilities between Israel and the Gaza Strip continued Thursday, a day after the most intense cross-border exchange in more than a year left a 16-month-old cease-fire and the fragile Middle East peace talks in jeopardy. JERUSALEM — Islamic Jihad, the militant group responsible for firing dozens of rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, announced Thursday that Egypt had intervened to restore calm, offering what at first looked like a familiar resolution to an escalation of violence that had shaken both sides of the border.
Islamic Jihad, the militant Gaza group that sent more than 60 rockets into Israel Wednesday in retaliation for a Tuesday Israeli airstrike that killed three of its members, said that Egypt had brokered a truce starting at 3 p.m. Thursday, restoring the principles of the November 2012, ceasefire that ended eight days of violence. But Hamas, the militant Palestinian faction that has ruled Gaza since 2007, said it knew of no such truce, a sign of just how much has changed in recent times in the coastal enclave. Throughout the evening, about a dozen more rockets were launched by smaller cells in Gaza, showing how those changes could affect events on the ground.
“We agreed that each party stops from its side to re-enforce the lull,” Nafez Azzam, an Islamic Jihad leader, said in a telephone interview. “It’s the same 2012 agreement, but today it was emphasized. We are committed to the cease-fire as long as Israel is.” A weakened Hamas has struggled to maintain control since Egypt’s military ousted that nation’s Islamist leaders last summer. Since then, Gaza and its 1.7 million residents have become increasingly isolated and desperate as Egypt shut down hundreds of smuggling tunnels, frequently closed its border crossings and declared Hamas a terror organization. Unemployment is at 39 percent, fuel shortages have led to half-day blackouts, prices for staples are soaring, and travel is thwarted. Hamas has faced mounting challenges from its political rival, Fatah, the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad, and a host of less organized radical groups.
Another leader of the group, Khaled al-Batsh, wrote on Facebook, “Following intensive Egyptian contacts and efforts, the agreement for calm has been restored in accordance with understandings reached in 2012 in Cairo.” The upset to the status quo, experts said, may force Israel to rethink its longstanding deterrence strategy, known as “cutting the grass,” occasional incursions carefully calculated not to create too much chaos.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, declined to comment. “It’s quite clear for Israel that the balance of power in Gaza is changing, and not to a very optimistic direction,” said Shaul Shay, director of research at the Institute of Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. “Israel and Hamas both have no interest in escalation, but there are other parties that are playing in the Gaza Strip, other bad guys.”
Reports of the renewed cease-fire came as Israeli airstrikes hit seven locations in southern Gaza, including a training site for Hamas, the Palestinian faction that controls the coastal enclave, in the border town of Rafah, and smuggling tunnels underneath Gaza’s border with Egypt. The Gaza health ministry reported three people injured in those strikes. Tony Blair, the Middle East peace envoy, said the rocket strikes “underline and illustrate the depth of the problem.”
Thursday morning, two rockets hit open areas near the southern Israeli cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon, leading to some panicky parents picking their children up early from school. Four others had been launched earlier but failed to make it to Israel; a fifth had hit in the wee hours. “One thing we are going to need, medium- and long-term,” he told reporters in Jerusalem on Thursday, “is a completely new strategy toward Gaza.”
Thursday’s exchange was moderate compared with the barrage the day before, though the only reported injury Wednesday was to a 57-year-old Israeli woman who fell while running for cover. Israel had retaliated for Wednesday’s rocket assault with airstrikes that hit what the military described as 29 “terror sites” in the Palestinian coastal enclave. After an hourlong barrage of more than 60 Islamic Jihad rockets Wednesday afternoon, which had followed Israeli strikes in Gaza, Israel on Wednesday night bombed what it called 29 “terror sites” across Gaza. It was by far the most intense exchange since the cease-fire that ended eight days of violence in November 2012. But the only reported injury was to an Israeli woman who fell while running for cover.
“Our policy in the south is clear,” Mr. Netanyahu said Thursday morning. “We will strike at anyone who tries to attack us and will respond very forcefully to any attack.” Hostilities continued Thursday: Israeli airstrikes hit nine targets near the southern border town of Rafah, injuring three, after two rockets from Gaza hit open areas in the Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod, sending panicked parents to pick up children early from schools.
The exchanges represented an escalation that many officials and analysts have said could threaten not only the 2012 cease-fire between Gaza and Israel, but also the American-led peace talks that started last summer. At the same time, both sides seemed to be making some effort to limit the fallout: The Gazans did not fire their longer-range rockets, and Israel’s airstrikes Wednesday night, while forceful, hit in open areas, with no casualties. “Our policy in the south is clear: We will strike at anyone who tries to attack us, and will respond forcefully to any attack,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel declared at a Thursday morning appearance here. “It would be worthwhile for terrorists in the Gaza Strip to start internalizing the fact that they have an issue here with a very determined government and a very strong military.”
“We have a range of responses, a range of options, and the goal is to bring quiet,” Mr. Regev said Thursday morning. “If there can be quiet, that’s obviously a good thing. The question is: Can there be quiet?” Then, around 3 p.m., Islamic Jihad announced an Egyptian-brokered truce on Facebook. “It’s the same 2012 agreement, but today it was emphasized,” Nafez Azzam, one of the group’s leaders, explained in an interview. “We are committed to the cease-fire as long as Israel is.”
On Wednesday, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad’s armed wing said in a text message that the rockets “establish a new phase: any aggression will be met with fierce response.” But Israeli and Hamas officials denied the cease-fire, and there was no report of it on Egyptian state news media.
The Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said he saw “no alternative other than a complete takeover of the Gaza Strip” and would oppose any more limited operation. Over the next seven hours, the Israeli military reported 10 more rockets fired from Gaza. The Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees claimed responsibility for eight of them, and Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for two. No injuries were reported in Israel, but one rocket fell on a house in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, wounding a woman and two children.
President Shimon Peres, one of Israel’s most vocal supporters of the peace talks, said, “The people of Gaza have to choose — it’s either peace or violence.” “This put Hamas in an embarrassing situation,” said Akram Attalah, a Gaza-based political analyst. “Hamas has always wanted to be the first force when it comes to fighting against Israel. Now, the Iranian money and military aid go to Islamic Jihad, not for Hamas. Islamic Jihad is making progress and growing, while Hamas doesn’t appear as a resistance group.”
Mr. Netanyahu issued a statement even as the rockets were falling around 5:30 p.m. declaring, “We will not be deterred.” With President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority scheduled to visit the White House on Monday, Palestinian leaders accused Israel of purposely escalating the violence this week in hopes it would make Washington pressure Mr. Abbas to extend the peace talks that started last summer. Some Israelis, however, argued that the Gaza factions might be using the rockets to derail the talks.
In Gaza on Thursday, many residents seemed more worried about an electricity crisis caused by Israel’s closing of its commercial crossing than about further airstrikes. There was a sense of solidarity and pride on the streets.Ahmed Yousef, a Gaza-based analyst close to the Hamas leadership, said that Hamas had tried to maintain calm through a council of Gaza-based militant groups, but that Egypt’s economic stranglehold on the strip, coupled with this week’s Israeli killings, stirred things up.
“The people are so angry, so upset, so frustrated — we are not going to die gradually by sanction and restriction,” Mr. Yousef said. “We are squeezed to the corner. This is not the situation that can be tolerated by Hamas or Islamic Jihad or anybody. So escalation is something that should be expected.”
Giora Eiland, a fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said that after years of battling Hamas, Israel now finds itself in the strange situation of needing to shore it up as the best of bad options.
“The Israeli interest should be that Hamas is strong enough and stable enough and can maintain its power and can enforce law and order in Gaza,” said Mr. Eiland, a former national security adviser and retired army general. “At the end of the day, Hamas is the only organization that has some kind of government accountability, and the more accountability they have, the more careful they will be.”