Rising Death Toll_ More Than 500 Gazans and 27 Israelis - NYTimes

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Rising Death Toll: More Than 500 Gazans and27 Israelis

By JODI RUDOREN JULY 21, 2014

JERUSALEM Four Israeli soldiers and 10 Palestinian militants were

killed inside Israeli territory Monday morning, Israeli military officials

said, after gunmen from the Gaza Strip managed to infiltrate through two

more of the tunnels that Israel says its ground operation is targeting.

As diplomatic pressure for a cease-fire mounted on the conflicts 14th

day, the Palestinian death toll topped 500 and the number of Israeli

soldiers killed hit 25, more than twice as many as in Israels last Gaza

ground operation in 2009. Two Israeli civilians have also died from rocket

and mortar fire.The military provided few details about the incursions into Israel,

outside Gazas northeast corner, saying only that two terror squads were

detected. An airstrike targeted one group of militants, the statement said,

and soldiers who were called to the scene engaged the other.

The military released video footage showing several masked gunmen

in bushes that it said were about a half-mile from the Israeli border town

of Sderot, and an explosion that targeted them as they retreated back into

the tunnel. Three other Israeli soldiers were killed in battles inside Gaza on

Monday.

Ismail Haniya, until recently the Hamas prime minister, said in a

speech broadcast from Gaza that the fighting would continue unless an

agreement met the movements demands: opening crossings; lifting
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restrictions on fishing, farming, import and export; and releasing

prisoners who were freed in a 2011 exchange for an abducted Israeli

soldier and recently rearrested.

Well never go back to the period before the aggression, well never go

back to the slow death, Mr. Haniya said in an address laden with Quranic

verses. Gaza will be the graveyard for the invaders, as it always was in the

history.

In Gaza, the United Nations reported nearly 100,000 people in 67

shelters, as an airlift of 45,000 mattresses and 10,000 blankets was en

route from Dubai.

As the Palestinian death toll has climbed over two weeks, thousands of

people streamed toward Gaza City from the north on foot, in donkey cartsand packed into cars. The Israelis seemed to be stepping up artillery

shelling in the central Gaza refugee camps of El Bureij and El Mughazi,

where they had earlier urged people to evacuate.

Hamas radio reported that four people were killed in a strike on Al

Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in El Bureij.

Knots of 10 to 12 people were hurrying with plastic bags of belongings

across the main road, Salahadin Street, where a shell hit next to a car full

of international journalists, spraying shrapnel on the roof. Hazem Abu

Ghaben, who lives in El Mughazi, said he had gone to a relatives house

over the weekend, returned home because he thought things had calmed

down, then regretted it and was fleeing anew.

The situation had gotten a million times worse, Mr. Abu Ghaben

said.

At the Abu Jamei familys home near the southern town of Khan

Younis, people searching beneath the rubble left by an overnight attack onMonday counted 26 bodies, by far the most victims of a single strike in this

offensive. In the southern border town of Rafah, artillery shelling of homes

belonging to the Siam family killed 11 people, witnesses said, including

three children.

Rocket fire from Gaza slowed somewhat from earlier days, but more


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than a dozen sirens sounded around midday. One rocket hit a home in

Sderot, near Gaza, while the occupants cowered in a safe room, and

another landed in an open field near Tel Aviv.

Across Israel, funerals were scheduled for at least five soldiers from

the decorated Golani Brigade who were killed in Shejaiya on Sunday. The

military said it had still not determined whether a soldier had indeed been

captured alive, as Hamas claimed in a statement on Sunday night. The

Israeli military announced that two of the dead were among the hundreds

of Americans in the Israeli Army: Max Steinberg, 24, from Southern

California and Nissim Sean Carmeli, who grew up in Texas but finished

high school in Israel.

The new underground incursions highlighted a dilemma for Israelsleadership, which has tried to build international support for its ground

operation by saying it was a limited one focused on the tunnel threat, and

by embracing cease-fire proposals from Egypt. Now, with President

Obama dispatching Secretary of State John Kerry to Cairo to seek an

immediate halt to hostilities, Israel may be pressured to leave the tunnel

mission unfinished in order to restore quiet.

Its a very difficult question, a senior Israeli military official said

Sunday night, speaking on the condition of anonymity under military

protocol.

We have a mission, and we are going to fulfill it Israel is not going

to leave the threats of tunnels beneath the border between Gaza Strip and

Israel, he said. Still, he added, after 13 days of fighting, and so many

casualties, I believe that its the right time for all sides to stop.

Though Israel had a task force studying the tunnels for a year, its

forces have discovered since entering Gaza on Thursday that the network ismuch bigger and more sophisticated than they had anticipated. There are

multiple exit and entry points for each tunnel, making them difficult to

track and demolish. Our goal now is to finish the job by really destroying

as much tunnels as we can, if not all of them, the Israeli official said. Its

very difficult for me to say all of them because theres always a chance we


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dont know all the tunnels, and what you dont know you simply dont

know.

The ground invasion began Thursday night after the Israeli military

thwarted a tunnel attack early that morning by what it said were 13

militants. On Saturday morning, some eight men from Gaza disguised in

Israeli military uniforms attacked two army jeeps a few hundred yards into

Israeli territory, killing a 45-year-old reserve officer and a soldier. There

were two other incursions Saturday, one in which the militants were

carrying handcuffs and tranquilizers, which the Israeli military said

indicated they were planning an abduction.

Dan Shapiro, the United States ambassador to Israel, said Monday

that Mr. Kerry would be working with Egyptians, Israelis and leaders ofthe Palestinian Authority to bring back the quiet that followed a 2012

agreement ending eight days of cross-border violence. In an interview on

Israel Radio, Mr. Shapiro said Washington supported Israels right to

protect itself and understood the need to destroy tunnels, but was also

worried about the number of dead and injured.

Start with a cease-fire, he said, and only after hold discussions on

the problems at the base of the crisis.

But Gilad Erdan, a right-wing member of Israels so-called security

cabinet, which makes strategic decisions, said Israel must not agree to

any proposal for a cease-fire until the tunnels are eliminated, according to

the Israeli news site Ynet. Speaking after he visited wounded soldiers at

Barzilai hospital, Mr. Erdan raised the specter of a reoccupation of Gaza,

saying that a green light has been given to expanding the action, and we

should consider leaving forces in the northern part of the Gaza Strip to

deal with the tunnels at the end of the operation.Tzipi Livni, Israels justice minister and representative to the

American-sponsored peace negotiations with the Palestinians that

collapsed in April, said demilitarization of Gaza was essential but was

something we will discuss with the international community the day

after.


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Now we are focused on the need to stop these terrorists, to act against

these tunnels, and to stop these rockets against Israel, Ms. Livni said in a

conference call with international journalists that was interrupted by

sirens signaling incoming rockets from Gaza overhead. The whole idea of

the proposal is to cease the fire, stop the fire. This is the main goal right

now.

Noting that Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations,

was headed to Cairo as well as Mr. Kerry, she added, These days are, I

believe, crucial days.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner of the Israeli military said in an early-morning

briefing that intense fighting had continued overnight in the eastern Gaza

City neighborhood of Shejaiya, where more than 60 Palestinians and 13Israeli soldiers died in the clashes Sunday. Colonel Lerner said that 10

Hamas fighters were killed Monday in Shejaiya, and that six underground

tunnels had been completely demolished across Gaza in the past 24

hours. A total of 16 tunnels with 43 entry points had been uncovered since

the start of the ground invasion Thursday night, he said.

The latest tunnel incursion unfolded Sunday morning near kibbutz

Nir Am, a community of 400 people established before the state of Israel.

Micha Ben-Hillel, who has lived on the kibbutz for half a century, said he

heard heavy gunfire throughout the night but had no idea what it was

about. Kibbutz security officials informed him about 8 a.m. that militants

had exited a tunnel about 500 yards from the communitys center.

When our kids were younger we used to have picnics there theres a

nice forest there, we have pine trees, and thats actually where the battle

took place, said Mr. Ben-Hillel, 68, who teaches English. Its quite

shocking how different the situation is today than it used to be.Mr. Ben-Hillel said that about three-quarters of the kibbutz residents

had left in recent days to stay in hotels or with relatives elsewhere in Israel,

but that his family had stayed, in part because his wife, who was born on

Nir Am, is in charge of caring for its elderly residents. One is her own

father, Nissan Tsuri, 99, who Mr. Ben-Hillel said was commander of the
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kibbutz in 1948.

He doesnt run away from these rockets, doesnt go to the safe room,

the son-in-law said. He says it was worse during the War of

Independence.

Tyler Hicks and Fares Akram contributed reporting from Gaza.

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Rising Death Toll_ More Than 500 Gazans and 27 Israelis - NYTimes