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| Cease-Fire in Gaza Expires With Rockets Fired Into Israel | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| JERUSALEM — A 72-hour truce in the Gaza fighting expired at 8 a.m. Friday as Palestinian militants fired a barrage of rockets into southern Israel, signaling Hamas’s refusal to extend the lull and its desire to apply pressure for its demands to be met at talks in Cairo for a more durable cease-fire agreement. | |
| Israel had said it was willing to extend the truce unconditionally and has vowed to respond to any fire from Gaza. Israel has withdrawn its ground troops from the Gaza Strip, but the air force has been on standby, and forces have remained on alert along the border. There were no immediate reports of Israeli retaliation. | |
| After three days of quiet, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said that at least 10 rockets were fired at 8 a.m. and in the minutes afterward. One was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile defense system over the city of Ashkelon, and the others apparently fell in open ground, causing no injury or damage. The military also reported two launches of rockets or mortars from Gaza before dawn. | |
| Just at 8 a.m., as television correspondents stood on the beachside road in Gaza City to do their live reports, the first rocket was fired. The signature white plume of the Israeli interception was visible in the air for miles. A few more booms were heard in the next 15 minutes, but they hardly disrupted the trickle of donkey carts on the street. | |
| Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, wrote on Twitter that the Palestinian factions did not accept an extension of the lull, adding, “We will continue negotiations.” | |
| There was no word from Hamas about the rocket fire, but Islamic Jihad, another militant faction that has taken part in the fighting and is represented at the talks in Cairo, claimed responsibility for firing the rockets. | |
| The 72-hour truce came after 29 days of fierce fighting that left more than 1,800 Palestinians dead, many of them civilians. On the Israeli side, 64 soldiers and three civilians were killed. Israel said its military campaign, which began July 8 with an aerial assault and led to a ground invasion, was aimed at quelling rocket fire and destroying Hamas’s network of tunnels leading into Israeli territory. | |
| Indirect talks underway in Cairo appear to have yielded few results so far and not even an agreement to extend the temporary cease-fire. Hamas is demanding a lifting of the blockade on Gaza imposed by Israel and Egypt and an opening of all the border crossings to allow the free movement of people and goods in and out of the Palestinian coastal territory. Israel is demanding measures to prevent Hamas from rearming and, eventually, the demilitarization of Gaza. | |
| A spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said in a speech aired on Hamas’s Al Aqsa television on Thursday night that Israeli forces had left Gaza defeated. | |
| “We gave a space for negotiations in order to agree on the demands of the Palestinian resistance and bring our people a better life of dignity,” he said, warning, “We are ready to resume the gun battle again.” | |
| “We will not accept to end this battle without stopping the aggression, lifting the siege and the most important demand of building a seaport for Gaza, and we will never accept less than that,” he said. |