The U.N. chief called for an
immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday and U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton headed to the region with a message that escalation of the
week-long conflict was in nobody's interest.
Nevertheless, Palestinian
rocket fire and Israeli air strikes continued for a seventh day.
Hamas militants said they
fired 16 missiles at the southern Israeli city of Beersheba after Israel's
military targeted roughly 100 sites in Gaza overnight, including ammunition
stores and the Gaza headquarters of the National Islamic Bank.
Some 110 Palestinians have
died in a week of fighting, the majority of them civilians, including 27
children. Three Israelis died last week when a Gaza missile struck their house.
In Cairo, U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for an immediate ceasefire and said an
Israeli ground operation in Gaza would be a "dangerous escalation"
that must be avoided.
He had held talks in the
Egyptian capital with Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby and was due to meet
Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Mursi before travelling to Israel for talks
with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel's leaders weighed the
benefits and risks of sending tanks and infantry into the densely populated
coastal enclave two months before an Israeli election, and indicated they would
prefer a diplomatic path backed by world powers, including U.S. President
Barack Obama, the European Union and Russia.
The White House said Clinton
was going to the Middle East for talks in Jerusalem, Ramallah and Cairo to try
to calm the conflict. An Israeli sources said she was expected to meet
Netanyahu on Wednesday.
Netanyahu and his top
ministers debated their next moves in a meeting that lasted into the early
hours of Tuesday.
"Before deciding on a
ground invasion, the prime minister intends to exhaust the diplomatic move in
order to see if a long-term ceasefire can be achieved," a senior Israeli
official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said after the meeting.
A delegation of nine Arab
ministers, led by the Egyptian foreign minister, were due in Gaza later on
Tuesday in a further signal of heightened Arab solidarity with the
Palestinians.
Any diplomatic solution may
pass through Egypt, Gaza's other neighbor and the biggest Arab nation, where
the ousting of U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak and the election of Mursi is part of a
dramatic reshaping of the Middle East wrought by Arab uprisings and now
affecting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Mursi, whose Muslim
Brotherhood was mentor to the founders of Hamas, took a call from Obama on
Monday telling him the group must stop rocket fire into Israel - effectively
endorsing Israel's stated aim in launching the offensive last week. Obama, as
quoted by the White House, also said he regretted civilian deaths - which have
been predominantly among the Palestinians.
"The two leaders
discussed ways to de-escalate the situation in Gaza, and President Obama
underscored the necessity of Hamas ending rocket fire into Israel," the
White House said, adding that the U.S. leader had also called Netanyahu.
"In both calls, President
Obama expressed regret for the loss of Israeli and Palestinian civilian
lives."
EGYPT SEES DEAL
Mursi has warned Netanyahu of
serious consequences from a ground invasion of the kind that killed more than
1,400 people in Gaza four years ago. But he has been careful not to alienate
Israel, with whom Egypt's former military rulers signed a peace treaty in 1979,
or Washington, a major aid donor to Egypt.
Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham
Kandil told Reuters a ceasefire was possible: "I think we are close, but
the nature of this kind of negotiation, (means) it is very difficult to
predict."
After Hamas leader Khaled
Meshaal laid out demands in Cairo that Israel take the first step in restoring
calm, and warned Netanyahu that a ground war in Gaza could wreck his
re-election prospects in January, a senior Israeli official denied a Hamas
assertion that the prime minister had asked for a truce.
"Whoever started the war
must end it," Meshaal said, referring to Israel's assassination from the
air on Wednesday of Hamas's Gaza military chief, a move that followed a scaling
up of rocket fire onto Israeli towns over several weeks.
An official close to Netanyahu
told Reuters: "We would prefer to see a diplomatic solution that would
guarantee the peace for Israel's population in the south. If that is possible,
then a ground operation would no longer be required."
Fortified by the ascendancy of
fellow Islamists in Egypt and elsewhere, and courted by fellow Sunni Arab
leaders in the Gulf keen to draw the Palestinian group away from old ties to
Shi'ite Iran, Hamas has tested its room for maneuver, as well as longer-range
rockets that have reached the Tel Aviv metropolis.
LOWER INTENSITY
Israeli statistics showed some
easing in the ferocity of the exchanges on Monday. Israeli police counted 110
rockets, causing no casualties, of which 42 were shot down by anti-missile
batteries. Tuesday's salvo also caused no injuries.
There has been no attack on
Tel Aviv since Sunday.
Hamas said four-year-old twin
boys had died with their parents when their house in the town of Beit Lahiya
was struck from the air during the night. Neighbors said the occupants were not
involved with militant groups.
Israel had no immediate
comment on that attack. It says it takes extreme care to avoid civilians and
accuses Hamas and other militant groups of deliberately placing Gaza's 1.7
million people in harm's way by placing rocket launchers among them.
Nonetheless, fighting Israel,
whose right to exist Hamas refuses to recognize, is popular with many
Palestinians and has kept the movement competitive with the secular Fatah
movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who remains in the West Bank
after losing Gaza to Hamas in a civil war five years ago.
"Hamas and the others,
they're our sons and our brothers, we're fingers on the same hand," said
55-year-old Faraj al-Sawafir, whose home was blasted by Israeli forces.
"They fight for us and are martyred, they take losses and we sacrifice
too."
In scenes recalling Israel's
2008-2009 winter invasion of the coastal enclave, tanks, artillery and infantry
have massed in field encampments along the sandy, fenced-off border.
Israel has also authorized the
call-up of 75,000 military reservists, so far mobilizing around half that
number.
Although 84 percent of
Israelis support the current Gaza assault, according to a poll by Israel's
Haaretz newspaper, only 30 percent want an invasion.
In an echo of frictions over
the civil war in Syria, Russia accused the United States on Monday of blocking
a bid by the U.N. Security Council to condemn the escalating conflict in the
Gaza Strip. Washington has generally stopped the U.N. body from putting what it
sees as undue pressure on its Israeli ally.
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