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Netanyahu Vows to Continue Destroying Gaza Tunnels
72-Hour Cease-Fire Announced in Gaza Conflict
(about 3 hours later)
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Thursday that he would not agree to any Gaza cease-fire proposal that prevents the Israeli military from completing the destruction of Hamas’s tunnel network.
NEW DELHI — Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Friday that Israel and the Hamas had agreed to a 72-hour humanitarian cease-fire in the Gaza conflict.
“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.
“The United Nations representative in Jerusalem, Special Coordinator Robert Serry, has received assurances that all parties have agreed to an unconditional humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza,” Mr. Kerry said in a joint statement with Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general.
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.
The cease-fire was to begin at 8 a.m. local time on Friday. It was to last for 72 hours unless it is extended.
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.
“During this time the forces on the ground will remain in place,” said the announcement, meaning that Israel troops who have entered Gaza can remain. As soon as it takes hold, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will head to Cairo for talks.
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.
“We urge all parties to act with restraint until this humanitarian cease-fire begins, and to fully abide by their commitments during the cease-fire,” said the statement.
Hamas officials in hiding in Gaza issued statements responding to Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks as the Palestinians worked to put together a delegation for possible cease-fire talks in Cairo.
“This cease-fire is critical to giving innocent civilians a much-needed reprieve from violence. During this period, civilians in Gaza will receive urgently needed humanitarian relief, and the opportunity to carry out vital functions, including burying the dead, taking care of the injured, and restocking food supplies. Overdue repairs on essential water and energy infrastructure could also continue during this period.
“The Israeli prime minister is in crisis due to the strikes of the resistance and he is seeking an exit,” Khalil Al-Hayya, a leader in the group’s political wing, said in a statement. “His only exit is accepting the conditions set by the resistance.”
“Israeli and Palestinian delegations will immediately be going to Cairo for negotiations with the government of Egypt, at the invitation of Egypt, aimed at reaching a durable cease-fire. The parties will be able to raise all issues of concern in these negotiations.”
Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas, said: “Netanyahu is gambling with his people and pushing his army to the unknown to maintain his stature, position and allies regionally and internationally. They fooled him and pushed him to a loser’s war with uncalculated consequences.”
The statement thanked “key regional stakeholders for their vital support of this process, and count on a continued collaborative international effort to assist Egypt and the parties reach a durable cease-fire as soon as possible.”
At least nine Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes and shelling early Thursday, according to health officials in Gaza, and by evening the Palestinian death toll totaled at least 1,410, 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. An Israeli was seriously injured by shrapnel from a rocket that struck the town of Kiryat Gat.
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.
At the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, two top officials described a stark portrait of death and deprivation in Gaza from more than three weeks of war. Valerie Amos, the United Nations humanitarian relief coordinator, exhorted both sides to spare civilian targets and said more than 250 of the Gazan dead were children. Pierre Krähenbühl, the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or Unrwa, which provides basic services to Palestinian refugees, said by telephone from Gaza that his agency had been overwhelmed by the urgent needs of nearly a quarter of a million people displaced by the Israeli assaults. He also said eight Unrwa workers were among the dead.
The 15-member Council then went into a closed session to deliberate on what steps it might take to halt the fighting.
The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, told reporters outside the Council’s chambers that the remarks of Ms. Amos and Mr. Krähenbühl were basically an indictment of Israel’s actions. He also said that the Israeli government should face accountability and that it was “injecting hate and resentment” into the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. He said the Security Council was facing a “big test” in its response to the Gaza crisis.
In another sign of rising tensions between the United Nations and Israel, the organization’s top human rights official, Navi Pillay, said Thursday that the Israelis appeared to be deliberately defying international law in their military actions in Gaza. “We cannot allow this lack of accountability to go on,” she said at a news briefing in Geneva. Ms. Pillay also said Hamas militants had violated international humanitarian law by firing rockets into Israel.
The Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, rejected the growing international criticism of Israel’s actions and reiterated his country’s arguments that it was doing what any country would do when facing an enemy on its border that fired rockets and dug incursion tunnels. He also rejected negotiating with Hamas, which does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, calling such an idea the equivalent of “negotiating the flowers for your own funeral.”
