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Rockets From Gaza and Israeli Response Break Cease-Fire Rockets From Gaza and Israeli Response Break Cease-Fire
(34 minutes later)
JERUSALEM — Another Gaza cease-fire collapsed on Tuesday when Palestinian militants fired barrages of rockets deep into Israel, drawing retaliatory airstrikes from Israel and prompting the Israeli government to withdraw its delegation from Egyptian-brokered talks in Cairo for an agreement to end the latest conflict. JERUSALEM — As the latest short-term cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip collapsed Tuesday, rockets from Gaza reached Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and Israel resumed airstrikes in Gaza. But the most telling move came in Cairo, where Israel yanked its team from talks aimed at a more durable truce.
Militants had fired at least 50 rockets by midnight, targeting Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and many parts of southern Israel. Most fell in open ground, causing no damage or injuries, and several were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, according to the Israeli military. The military said it had carried out more than 25 airstrikes in response, Many targeted open spaces, but the Health Ministry in Gaza said that three people were killed when a house was bombed. The prospect of a negotiated and lasting peace had seemed distant from the start of the Cairo talks as each side set bottom-line goals that the other flatly rejected.
Israel has repeatedly said it will not negotiate under fire. As a five-day cease-fire expired at 11:59 p.m. on Monday, Israeli and Palestinian officials had announced a 24-hour extension to allow the negotiations in Cairo to continue. After weeks of intermittent negotiations and fighting, analysts said that Israel’s leadership might well have considered it preferable to let the conflict continue at a low simmer rather than give concessions that could be seen as rewarding militants who fired about 3,000 rockets into Israel, penetrated its territory through tunnels, and killed 64 soldiers over a month of bloody battle.
“Today’s rocket attack on Beersheba is a grave and direct violation of the cease-fire to which Hamas committed itself,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli government. “This is the 11th cease-fire that Hamas has either rejected or violated,” he said. “My approach would be not to go for any agreement with Hamas, because any agreement would give them something, and that’s a mistake,” said Dan Meridor, a former Israeli minister who served in several governments. “If the deal is seen by people as a victory for Hamas, that’s bad for us, it’s bad for the future, and bad for deterrence.”
Within minutes of the first rockets landing, Israel instructed its negotiators to leave Cairo. The Palestinian delegation to the talks planned to leave on Wednesday. The Palestinian negotiators said they had given Egypt their final offer and were waiting for Israel to accept or reject it by 11:59 p.m. But Israel appeared unlikely to accept the draft, which it had rejected in the past, and the talks appeared on the verge of collapse. Israel’s walking away from the talks leaves Hamas — and the broader Palestinian leadership that has been negotiating in Cairo — with little to show for its war effort. Gaza is devastated: About 2,000 residents were killed, most of them civilians, and perhaps 100,000 rendered homeless as entire neighborhoods were reduced to rubble.
Hamas, the militant group that dominates Gaza, denied responsibility for the latest rocket fire and blamed Israel for the escalation. Buoyed in the Palestinian public for having achieved more militarily than in previous violent exchanges with Israel, Hamas is nonetheless under extreme pressure to deliver a tangible change to daily life in Gaza. During the war, the rising death toll put pressure on Israel. But during the cease-fire Hamas finds itself with diminished leverage, and so has resorted to threatening and provoking Israel.
“Hamas does not have any information about the launching of any rockets from Gaza,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the group in Gaza. “The Israeli occupation is aiming through this escalation in the region to abort the talks in Cairo,” he added. It sent a flurry of rockets that reached Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and on Monday the group’s armed wing even invited a Reuters crew inside a tunnel like the ones through which it repeatedly attacked Israeli soldiers last month, showing off masked gunmen talking tough.
Smaller groups in Gaza may have been behind the rocket fire, with or without Hamas’s blessing. Muhammad Walid Tushtash, who runs a supermarket in Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, reflected the hopes of many of his neighbors that the suffering would be compensated by Israel’s yielding to Palestinian demands for a lifting of restrictions on travel and trade.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have engaged in indirect talks in Egypt for about two weeks in an effort to find more durable solutions to end the monthlong hostilities, in which more than 1,900 Palestinians were killed as well as 64 Israeli soldiers and three civilians, one of them a guest worker. “The definition of victory for us is when the occupation submits to the conditions,” Mr. Tushtash, 29, said in a recent interview.
The resumption of fighting came as the talks in Cairo reached a critical phase. A Palestinian official with knowledge of the negotiations said that there was no possibility of reaching a comprehensive agreement, but that there had been talk of a partial agreement for gradual measures and a monthlong cease-fire, to be followed by further talks on more difficult issues for both sides. The Palestinian delegation had called for a complete lifting of what it calls Israel’s siege on Gaza, the reopening of border crossings into Egypt and Israel and the building of a seaport and revival of an old airport in the crowded coastal territory. Israel demanded the demilitarization of Gaza with strict international controls to prevent the rebuilding of tunnels its troops just destroyed.
The initial accord was expected to allow for an easing of movement of goods through the crossings into Gaza to aid in reconstruction. Thousands of homes were destroyed in the latest fighting. As the temporary halt in hostilities was extended — from an original 72 hours last week, for five more days and then an additional 24 hours that was supposed to last until midnight Tuesday — people involved in the talks said these maximalist demands had been dropped, or at least postponed.
Earlier Tuesday, before the resumption of rocket fire and airstrikes, Hamas officials in Gaza had said the talks were at a stalemate. The focus was instead on more incremental changes in Israeli rules on imports and exports and on an internationally monitored rehabilitation of Gaza. For the Palestinians, it was too little and too late.
“If Netanyahu does not understand the message and the demands of Gaza through the political language of negotiations in Cairo, we know very well the way that will oblige him to understand it,” Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said in a statement, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. “Israel’s postponement and losing the determination to reach a final agreement is the main reason for the stalemate,” Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said in a statement. “The occupation is wasting opportunities and should stop playing the game of time.”
It has become clear to both sides that their maximal demands are not likely to be met in the foreseeable future. Hamas has demanded a complete lifting of the economic blockade on the Palestinian coastal enclave, allowing the free movement of people and goods in and out, the creation of a seaport, and the reconstruction of a long-defunct airport. Israel wants mechanisms to prevent the rearmament of Hamas and eventually, the full demilitarization of Gaza. Before the cease-fire broke down Tuesday evening, another Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, warned that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel “does not understand the message and the demands of Gaza through the political language of negotiations in Cairo, we know very well the way that will oblige him to understand it.”
Many analysts view the goals of the two sides as irreconcilable and have suggested that the war might end without formal agreements. Hamas wants to be able to show its people a clear achievement after a month of fighting that devastated large sections of Gaza. But Israel does not want Hamas to be rewarded in any way after a war in which Gaza militants launched more than 3,300 rockets and mortar rounds against it. Hamas denied responsibility for the first round of rockets, fired before 4 p.m. local time. But by 11 p.m., it claimed credit for firing two toward Tel Aviv and two more toward Ben-Gurion International Airport, among others. The Israeli military said about 50 fell before midnight, including one on open ground in Jerusalem.
Israel responded with more than 25 airstrikes in Gaza, the military said, but it declined to specify targets. Witnesses said Israeli F-16 warplanes dropped at least four bombs on a Gaza City house around 9:30 p.m.; the Gaza-based Health Ministry said the strikes killed a man, a woman and a child, and injured 45 others.
“Electricity is off in the area, and search among the rubble is going on,” said Noor Al-Dalo, 28, a relative of the homeowner.
It was unclear on Tuesday night whether the renewed exchange would lead to an escalation, given the exhaustion of the publics on both sides. Israel, which has been condemned by world leaders for the high number of civilian casualties, may be granted some leeway to respond to fire, but that would be likely to disappear if the death toll began to rise quickly. While Hamas may see little choice but to continue launching rockets, analysts said the Palestinians need a deal more than Israel does.
Azzam al-Ahmed, the head of the Palestinian negotiating team and an ally of President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, said in a late-night news conference that his delegation would also leave Cairo but that he did “not consider that we have withdrawn from the negotiations.” He blamed Israel for the failed talks, saying it did not respond to the Hamas demands.
Israelis has blamed Khaled Mashal, the exiled political leader of Hamas, and his Qatari sponsors for setting a hard line and thwarting progress.
Mr. Meridor, the former minister, and other analysts said that even without an agreement, Israel might unilaterally ease the movement of goods through its land crossings for the reconstruction of Gaza, in cooperation with Egypt and perhaps Europe.
“Israel prefers to end the war without committing itself to lifting the siege in writing,” said Mukhaimer Abusaada, a political scientist at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City. Accusing Israel of exploiting the rocket fire as “an excuse to sabotage the talks,” he added, “A unilateral decision by Israel to gradually lift the siege will deprive Hamas of a sense of victory after this destructive war.”
Kobi Michael, a former head of the Palestinian desk at Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, said Israel’s move “weakens Hamas — it kills it softly in front of its people.”
“Israel prefers a de facto cease-fire and reconstruction in a controlled manner in coordination with the Egyptians,” said Mr. Michael, now at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “If Hamas is doomed to be a marginal player, it would prefer to be one without an agreement and not be marginal in an agreement.’
But Sami Abdel Shafi, a Gaza-based consultant and political commentator, said Israel’s unwillingness to make concessions, and the Palestinian leaders’ lack of leverage to force them, left the people of Gaza in “potentially explosive” despair.
“The only place to look, and the appropriate place to look, is toward the international community and the United Nations,” he said. “They have to seriously step up to the plate and defuse a situations they will be seen as responsible for if they don’t come forward and push the Israeli government to recognize that people cannot be treated this way.”